Postcard from New Orleans, Pt 2

After we finished working on Tuesday, we went to downtown New Orleans. We walked down Canal St and rode the ferry across the Mississippi River. The ferry is free unless you have a car and, well, you don't want me trying to pull the mini-bus onto the ferry. I could begin to see some of our team building relationships and getting to know each other better. Here's our team picture from the ferry. On the walk down to the ferry, there was a street band playing at the corner of Canal and Bourbon and most of the group stopped and listened to the band for a few minutes.

Wednesday we worked a half day. I spent the morning on the floor of a house covering it with brown paper for protection - no AC this time. In the afternoon we spent some time doing some serious shopping in downtown. We also went into St. Louis Cathedral at Jackson Square. The cathedral was pretty big and contained a lot of cool architecture and art work. One of our college students thought that it was neat that the pews all had little footrests. The highlight of Wednesday was supper at Mulates. We rode the trolley from the French market down to Julia St and ate at a very cool cajun restaurant. The food was very good - alligator, crawfish tails, crawfish etouffee, skewered shrimp, or a hamburger (for Andrew Kiel). But the best part was the band that played the whole time we ate and the dancers who took to the floor just in front of our table. There were probably about 6-8 couples who danced for almost an hour. Some were so good they looked like they were gliding around the floor. One of our guys - Mic Anderson - couldn't stand it and asked one of the ladies to give him a spin on the dance floor. Mic earned some beignets at Cafe Du monde for his effort. Soon, we had a few of our group giving the dance floor a shot and providing a good time for those who were too chicken to hit it ourselves. For the record, neither Jimmy Watts nor I made it to the dance floor. We were too busy eating. Most of us (there were three exceptions, you know who you are) finished the night at Cafe Du monde for beignets and cafe au lait. The food was good but the powdered sugar fight was the highlight of the trip. Before we left most of us had quite a bit of sugar in us and on us.

Tuesday night and Wednesday really became a great time of team-building. I have a couple of more stories to share and some reflections about the trip before I completely leave NO in the rear view.

-- Peace, Jamie