ladadada we are in the south

After a riviting day of travel, we arrived in the Louis Armstrong airport around 5 (NOLA time!).





After some exciting hurry-up-and-wait, we drove half an hour through the city to our destination at Annunciation Mission, where we are lucky to be staying for the next week.

We tried to pay attention to the city as we passed, so we could be prepared to answer questions like we had been asked upon our return home last year: "what is it like?" "how is progress?" "what is the state of things?"

But it's hard to generalize. You could look at a scape of houses and see shiny, sparkling facades. Or you could look at the same scene and run-down boarded up windows might catch your eye. It's hard to glance over a landscape and sum it up in a word: it's less of a spectrum and instead really depends on the individual buildings. Relative to last year, a lot of the houses that we drove past looked livable, fixed-up and new. There were flowers planted in some yards, fresh paint and cast iron railings around the porches. But on the same street you would also see a home in much worse shape: boarded-up windows, gutted interiors, or missing boards and panneling. It varied a lot.

We wondered to ourselves what it looked like right after the storm: which of these houses were affected? The good-looking ones-- were they rebuilt and new? Or had they simply not been ravaged by the hurricane? And the falling-down ones-- were these the leftovers of Katrina? Or simply worn down by age, like buildings you'll find in many cities?

We thought about our first impressions contrasted to those we'd felt as we passed through the city last year-- it's hard to compare directly. But overall we thought it looked like there had been definite improvement. The city seems alive and functional; we saw people sitting on stoops and working at businesses. Stores and restaurants are open and operating. The streets we drove through are busy and alive.






We can't speak for the place as a whole, certainly. We only passed through busy main streets, not neglected corners of the 9th Ward. But of what we saw along these main roads, our overall impression is that things look in good order and New Orleans is alive and kickin.

Annunciation is beautiful. We've got bunks and clean sheets, and numerous decks of cards.
And with that, nighty night.


-Sandy, Grady, Marina, and Theo