LETTERS FROM THE LIVING
Friday, February 16, 2007
Finally returning to student mode again after a rockin' time at New Orleans in Louisiana to celebrate Mardi Gras. I have not been able to blog due to the cumulation of homework due, exams and quizzes this week! Been sleeping less than 5-6hrs for a few days and nearly missed lessons too!
History: New Orleans is home to jazz/blues music, and also presents a mish-mash of both Southern and French colonial flavour, and it just recovered from the devastating Hurricane Katrina. Mardi Gras is "Fat Tuesday" or something in French, where there will be parades, parties and merry-making throughout Mardi Gras week. It's the first time I visit a place that parties 24/7! Adults and children wear Mardi Gras beads like a fashion statement early in the morning and everyone's just in a festive mood. The most happening place in New Orleans during Mardi Gras is perhaps the French Quarters. Here, you'll find hotels, restaurants, Voodoo shops and of course Mardi Gras outlets selling beads and party accessories. The highlights include a series of "chingay-ish" parades where marching bands and gigantic floats will roam the main street in New Orleans. During these parades, people on the floats will throw colourful and sometimes special beads to the crowd. The adrenaline rush comes for the crowd to get the beads. Btw, from the pics, u can see i got the most beads on Saturday night, and got kudos from the rest of the GIP(eeps)!!!
At night, the wildest place will be Bourbon Street (yes, named after that liqour!), there are countless watering holes, strip clubs and fantastic restaurants along the street that stretches at least a kilometre! This is also where infamous bead-throwing takes a whole new meaning! Party-goers will be prowling the streets for more exclusive and bigger, nicer beads. People who have beads stay on the balconies along the street to throw them to the crowd! The catch? The girls have to flash their boobies to get those exqusite beads!! We saw a few girls on the balconies who requested guys to flash their privates!! Usually, most are sane enough not to do it, but we witness some sporting (or rather tipsy) people (both sexes) who did it!!! The place is not sleazy as cops are stationed on horses every other corner of the street.
There's more to New Orleans than Mardi Gras, as we managed to sample their signature dishes as well! We tried the best baked ham in the world at Mother's and we had amazing biegnets, which is the french equivalent of donuts at a famous cafe called Cafe Du Mont. It's more of like a "hum-chim-peng" with a huge dose of extremely fine sugar powder coating it! Another is Cajun-style cusine, where we tried both fried and grilled alligator meat, fried frogs' legs, and many other South-meets-French kind of food! It was worth every cent we spent!!! (Salivating again...)
We also visited the D-Day Museum, which showcased the part the US played in World War too!! We also took a walk along a part of Mississipi River! All in all, it was a fantastic time spent and so much so we prolonged our stay till Sunday late afternoon! We ended up speeding back to Atlanta (hitting more than 100mph/160kmph!!) and reached back to campus at 2am!!! Many turned into non-flesh eating zombies the next coupl of days and became stuck in their dorms catching up lost time on homework and revision!
Laid to Rest at 2:34 AM;
