Greetings friends and family!
We've gotten week 1 of our pictures up from our honeymoon, so have a gander, and if you have some time to spare, read the following diary:) I promise the next two won't be so long (well, I say that now!!!).
12/25 Friday, Christmas Day!
Merry Christmas everyone!!! Woohoo, on our way! Tracy drove us (thank you Tracy!) to the SJ airport around 10 AM, flight was at 12:10 and was delayed 3 hours so we waited in the airport bar! $200 later and many cocktails and apps, we got on the plane. We got into NOLA around 11:30, waited an hour for our baggage, then got our car by 1 AM! We got a rust/orange Spyder, convertible and our luggage barely fit! There were only 5 cars on the lot to rent and all the others were 15 passenger vans or a truck. phew on the convertible. I was starving so we found a Denny's after driving around a bit and had the nicest Southern hospitality! Merry <hiccup> Christmas! (<40 degrees when we got in!)
12/26 Saturday
Went downtown via the Street car and drank! oh yah, baby. We hit Fifi Mahoneys for wig and makeup fun. We hit Pate O'Briens for hurricanes. we caught a great house band with a sexy washboard player (female), a beefy accordianist (3 accordians) and an off-stage effeminate keyboard player/vocalist. good times! We met a burner at Fifis...he was fabulous and was dessing in drag for the first time with a friend named Poodle (who apparently is a drag queen...If I were male I'd be a drag queen...just sayin'). We got dropped off at a pub and had some pub food and drinks, then went walking to the hotel...We stopped in at Luckys because we thought we wanted some more alcohol and Craig had fond memories of the dive bar:) We get in there and there's only a singer, a bartender, two kids playing pool and two guys at the bar! Craig says he thinks he recognizes the singer, so I yell out that he thinks they went to school together and they did:) She had a beautiful voice and sang folky kinds of songs with an Irish bent. still cold!
12/27 Sunday
I worked out today! Not bad...it was the first day I could work out, and I made it! We got up late and went to what used to be called Bluebird cafe and now is Coulis. OMG! Amazing food! They've been open for 2 months only and the husband is the chef and has been one for 23 year. Yummmmm. Then we drove with the top down (a little chilly but sun was shining...60-65 degrees baby!) on the 26 mile bridge to Madisonville to visit Danna and family. Got a call from Matt with lowernine.org...sounded tired. We did tie dye with the boys and lil Patrick (great kid!) and tie dyed everything white within reach. Super fun. We watched the Saints lose, lose, lose this day...Geaux Saints! We got back around 8:30 and Vanessa (one of Craig's friends from Loyola) came over and we inundated her with stories and photos from the wedding and went to sleep around midnight. gots to get up early for workin', donchaknow?
12/28 Monday
today is lowernine.org day. We met Matt, Matt's parents, Joe, Ariel, Jonah, Darron, Rex, Tim, Carol and some others:) Vanessa met us at our hotel and we caravaned over there first stopping at a market in the Lower Ninth for lunch food...sad state of affairs for fresh food there, but the guy who worked there was hilarious. We woke up at 6 AM! out the door by 7 to find food but nothing was open. Our purchases were white bread, turkey, pickles, chips, pretzels and bars. mmmmm turkey sandwich for breakfast it is! Vanessa and I go to one home (Amma's house) with Jonah and Ariel to repair drywall and tape and mud...who knew I has mad skillz at taping and mudding!? Craig stayed with Darron, Rex and Tim at a house a couple of doors down from the LowerNine.org house. He was ripping out the sub floor with them and he fell through (about 2-3 feet down) and got a booboo (it's documented in our honeymoon photos!). Poor baby! We met up for lunch and had pickles on our sandwiches, which were oh so good. no pickles on the breakfast sandwich...that's just not right;) hehe. Did we mention that it was super cold this day? 40 degrees!
Vanessa and I also went to another home they were working on to empty the garbage cans into smaller bags for the trash men and ewwwwww...wet drywall is not pleasant to touch, especially when you just don't know what else was in that trash can. This home had been worked on by contractors but the job they did was absolutely horrible. The drywall was hung very poorly with huge gaps and the floor had areas that were dangerous to walk on. There were gaps around the windows that shouldn't have been there...Just really poor quality work.
12/29 Tuesday
Day 2 of lowernine.org work where we went with Joe to another house to finish up the counter top and mudding some walls. The counter top originally was done by some contractor but the seams were absolutely horrible, so they created another. The laminate on formica is hard to cut with a utility knife, I'm just sayin'! But Craig excelled at it so we were on our way to a finished counter top. We were here for only 3 hours before we went back for lunch.
After lunch, Joe took Carol, Craig and me out for a tour of the Lower Ninth ward and showed us the offending levy, houses they had worked on, some green houses, some historical houses, make it right foundation houses, the bayou, the school at blair street grocery (the one guy was from Santa Cruz! They are amaing...see information at the end of the email on them) and then back home. There is only 10% occupied in the Lower Ninth, or even occupiable (a word now!). many of the lots have just a foundation, some no foundation at all and some have hulls of houses with plants growing inside of them. There is this smell of sulpher all around because the gypsum on drywall is made of sulpher and when it gets wet it releases the smell. Peeee-eeeewwwwww. There were 5 schools in the area before Katrina and now there is one. They are trying charter schools.
The issues with the lower ninth rebuild after Katrina, as Joe explained to us, are many. First, it was a working class neighborhood, so many people outright owned the house and paid very low taxes on the property. They were contractors, workers, owned shops around the area...usually lived in one half of the house and rented out the other half (most houses there are victorian style and split down the center to create two dwellings. They are super skinny and long). When Katrina hit, they all had to evacuate. The levy broke and about 2-3 feet of water came rushing out and then came rushing back after it hit the other levy. Water got trapped in the houses (half are made of brick) and rose to 7-8 feet inside the house with no way to get out of the house so many houses just floated right off of their foundation or moved about 3 feet off of the foundation and then broke from landing wrong.
Second, the people who left had to find jobs, they had no savings, so they found jobs elsewhere that paid more and then it didn't make sense to come back. So the workers of the area weren't there to help rebuild
Third, the contracters that are helping just take advantage of the people and do poor jobs because nobody is watching them, or just up and leave with the money. Crazy!
Fourth, people are away from their house because it is not livable, the grass and weeds grow over 18" and they get fined by the city, $300/day until it is taken care of. Where do they send the bill? Yep, you guess it...the house that is not occupied! So after only a short while (these houses were probably only $75K or less because they were built a while ago) these houses were seized by the city for nonpayment of fines! Not fair!
It's amazing how many houses are built and being built on the base that is adjacent to the ward and nobody is living in them! yet the people who live there can't utilize them.
12/30 Wednesday
We decided to take the day off from service since we weren't really utilized...we worked for 2 or 3 of 8 hours on average...I imagine it is an oft encountered problem in nonprofits such as these...a lack of good project management. Craig had a full blown cold by now, so he slept in while I worked out. Then we went to breakfast at Coulis again because it was THAT good! It was raining this day so we drove around New Orleans and then decided to go to Macy's to capitalize on a coupon. We found some great clothes for Craig and myself and some yummy Lush bath products. We went back to the hotel in a round about manner so I could see New Orleans with Craig as my tour guide and got ready to go out to a fancy dinner at Delmonico's, an Emeril restaurant. It was pouring rain, so we decided to take a cab. Francisco was our waiter. We had bananas foster! mmmmm. We started out with a rabbit quesadilla, sweet peppers stuffed with pork confit and something else I can't remember. (It's all in the pics) Then we shared the filet mignon! mmmmmm. We ended with some ice wine and port...too sweet for the bananas foster, but still yummy! It was $25/bottle for the corkage fee! We brought 2 with us, and they were perfect. One Tempranillo and one Cabernet....mmmmm.
12/31 Thursday
New Year's Eve!
It was gorgeous today! Probably 70-80 degrees!! I got to work out again (whilst ready Twilight, thank you Nicole...now I'm addicted!!!) and then we made it out to lunch and a store in the Quarter...so dang packed because, duh, it's Sugar Bowl tomorrow! so many crazy people drinking and walking in the middle of the street (though it wasn't yet closed off!) We decided then and there, no French Quarter for us! It would just be miserable. So we went over to Danna and family's after a nice lunch and hung out until 6 or so, drinking and eating. mmmm. Discovered the drink Sazerac (try it!) and had yummy homemade pulled pork. Then we went back to the hotel and chilled out, watched SNL: Best of Christopher Walken and did what honeymooners should do at midnight;) (brown chicken, brown coooowwwwww) (if you don't know the joke, ask when we see you next!) a great NYE for us!
MIAMI:
1/1 Friday
We went to Coulis hoping for breakfast before we left, but alas they must have partied hard for NYE because they were closed! shame! We ended up finding this nice little cafe on the way out of New Orleans that hit the spot. Had tomato soup for breakfast! mmmmmm. Nothing too exciting to report on our trip to Miami, as it was short and sweet. We picked up our luggage at the airport, got a taxi and off to South Beach we went! We went up to our room, decorated, unpacked and dressed up for our "night on the town." Our concierge was oh so helpful with places to eat...who knew that "reasonable" sushi costs 4 times as much as we're used to paying for 4 times less than we usually get! sheesh. What we did have was very good, if you swished it in your mouth to get the full effect since it was all so small;) Being a sushi lover and on a budget in South Beach is NOT recommended! After sushi, we thought we'd walk around but it was COLD there (40 degrees again!) so we decided to just take a cab back to the hotel (Eden Roc, Marriott). Our room was fabulously colored in almost all white. What a disappointment for me that there was no bathtub...a complete waste of perfectly good bathroom real estate in this hotel...note to self, always ask for a tub!
1/2 Saturday
I got up and worked out in the hotel's gym. Pretty sad gym for such a large hotel, but it got the job done. I'm now addicted to Twilight (thanks Nicole!) so that was another motivating factor to going to the gym...blessed reading and sweating time! We went out to breakfast at a restaurant at the hotel and it was a gorgeous day, but very cold! so unfair:( cold in Miami is so rare, yet it was there when we were! Oh well, nothing that a pitcher of mojitos and a hot tub can't fix! We also had massages this day and they were exquisite! so needed. then we had an early dinner. we ordered pizza from some delivery place, and it was quite possibly the worst pizza I've ever had...it arrived cold and we didn't get our drinks. So I called and complained...she asked if I wanted another one delivered...Hell no! that sucked and I'm just calling to let you know the pizza and service were abysmal...it helped me feel better anyway!
1/3 Sunday
and we're off! To Costa Rica. we get to the airport 1.5 hours before our flight, not even thinking about the following: vacation traffic, international airport, end of holiday season and a Sunday! So, we are greeted with a packed airport and the need to check-in 1 hour before our departure, which looks impossible with the crowds! Electronic check-in to the rescue! and then the line to drop the checked baggage was super long...but Miami is efficient and we were able to drop our bags in 10 minutes, get into and pass through the security line in 15 minutes (!!!) and board our flight! Phew! and sooooooo....we are on our way....
STAY TUNED FOR WEEK 2 OF OUR HONEYMOON...I promise the diary will be shorter for those;)
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