New Orleans Day 4: Austen and Matt

Today we had the amazing opportunity to visit the Metairie Park Country Day School. While we were there, we listened as faculty and students alike shared their experiences of hurricane Katrina. It was extremely interesting and eye opening to hear these stories and it was especially captivating to hear the sense of unity that existed between New Orleanians during the aftermath of Katrina. When we think of Katrina, we think of a disaster and a tragedy, but several of the people we talked to said that although it was a tragedy, a silver lining existed. For example, the public school system greatly improved when national attention was brought to New Orleans. After this, we had lunch with the students of the school and talked about life in New Orleans compared to life in Connecticut. One difference we noticed was in the language. Whereas in Connecticut hardly anybody says 'y'all', it is a staple in conversation down here. Another difference we noticed was how much of the student life takes place outside. Obviously, this is partly due to the weather, but they also had their lockers outside, something you never see in Connecticut. After this wonderful experience we visited the National World War II museum which was especially interesting because it correlated with our study of WWII in the earlier portion of the year. After meandering around the museum and observing the artifacts, we attended a movie presentation that was extremely cool. It practically placed you in the jungles of the pacific and kept us 100% captivated. For dinner, we went to Bubba Gump's shrimp and had some delicious shrimp after having beignets at Cafe du Monde. Overall, it was a great day!