old school

Aren't these travel posters gorgeous?!
I kind of want all of them.

 (via)

They're by The Heads of State. It sounds like they will be expanding the store, but for now they feature: Chicago, Phoenix, Seattle, San Francisco, Philadelphia, New York City, Washington D.C. and Miami. It kind of makes me sad that out of all those great cities I've only spent a significant amount of time in one (SF), drove through another (Seattle) and had a couple layovers in a third (Phoenix).

Yay!

So it looks like I'm not going to get the NOLA bug out of my system anytime soon. I just keep coming across more awesomeness.

United Way has begun a partnership to Rebuild NOLA because there are still 971 families living in FEMA trailers. And after 5 years, that is unacceptable.

Okay, I'm becoming an old lady about technology. I feel like I hit my peak with facebook and I'm barely keeping up with each time they redo the website. Twitter is beyond me. At the moment I definitely don't have the time or interest to narrate my life minute by minute. But there are a couple uses that I appreciate it for. One being my favorite non profits and organizations. I just discovered St. Bernard Project's feed and it has me super pumped to hear good things coming out (276 homes completed so far!).

Fun fact: apparently actor Kellan Lutz volunteered with them and tweeted about it and raised lots of support and awareness for the project! yay! Useful & good twitter results! (all his tweets basically support charities and humanitarian organizations, it's really cool to know that a big time actor cares about the world).

against the wind

i swear I'm alive. go figure my last quarter of college ever would be the most time consuming (so much homework, and my classes aren't even challenging...yet). In the minimal amounts of free time that I've scraped up in the 5 weeks since it started, I've attempted to write posts but I'm so braindead it all turns out incoherent and ridiculous. And now I have just emerged from listening to 6 hours of research presentations over the past 3 days in my engineering writing class, bored to tears. I admit it allowed for much daydreaming because forgetful little me managed to forget to bring things to do each day. I can't help but think of when my next adventure will begin.


For now my inspiration is still stuck on NOLA. Treme is so brilliant and heartbreaking. I need some good food, mesmerizing music and some down and dirty housebuilding in my life.

foodie

I might declare a New Orleans week, because the ideas just keep on coming.
You may know from past posts that I love food. I follow quite a few food blogs, one of which is Iowa Girl Eats. She's super sweet, and focuses on eating healthy and exercising but definitely isn't afraid to indulge as well.
She and her husband just ate their way through New Orleans and her four part post has me drooling.
Part 1 - Cafe Du Monde and Bourbon Street
Part 2 - The Garden District
Part 3 - Plantation Tour
Part 4 - Emeril's NOLA restaurant

NOLA

Have you seen HBO's "The Wire"? It's a show about Baltimore cops, written by Baltimore cops. Fiance watched it, because his dad watched it (his dad is a sheriff) and now is making me watch it. And it is quite good. very real.

Anyways, the creators have made a new show. It's called "Treme" and it's about musicians in New Orleans. The show begins three months after Hurricane Katrina hit. It has a few of the same actors from the wire, plus other likes steve zahn and john goodman. I'm so excited to watch it.
a) I love Jazz Music
b) I worked with St. Bernard Project this past summer, helping send volunteer groups to NOLA to rebuild homes
c) NOLA has been creeping up my must-see travel list. It's roughly top five. (one of these days I will actually create a list, for now it is in my busy, forgetful, stressed out brain)
d) I also love john goodman

The show will definitely break my heart a bit. I feel, deeply, about stuff like this. But it's a topic that definitely needs some light, because it's been almost 5 years since the hurricane and from what I heard from people who went out there, progress is minimal. A few people have been going back every year since the hurricane and they say that there are still entire blocks with abandoned homes marked up by rescue workers (searching for dead bodies). There are still big areas with no functioning street lights. abandoned businesses. And a lot of people are still living in miserable FEMA trailers. They feel like the rest of the country/world has forgotten about them and moved onto other issues.

The show starts Sunday, April 11. 10 pm. Since I live in the stone age and don't have HBO I'll have to stream it later. But this is one TV show that will not be a waste of your life.

for what it's worth

Umm...hi. did you miss me?
There was a general lack of travel in my life for the past 6 months though still plenty of dreaming.

While I spent my summer sitting in front of a computer as a volunteer for my church, I DID help other people travel! As an admin intern for global outreach, I had the opportunity to help organize and coordinate house build mission trips to New Orleans. If it weren't for summer school I would have been out there in that sticky humid heat hanging drywall along with the rest of them. But instead I settled for hearing the stories of over 100 people over 7 different trips that took 5 days out of their summer/off of work to travel to the New Orleans area and rebuild people's homes that were destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.

The most surprising things to hear is that even though it has been four years, the community is still ravaged and very much in need. We worked with a non-profit called St. Bernard's Project. The amazing thing about St. Bernard's is that these families' homes are being rebuilt on their actual property in their same neighborhoods, at their same addresses. Our church got involved in disaster relief immediately, then moving on to tear down of homes that were destroyed, having to get rid of the the moldy and mildewed structures down to the foundation. Now finally we have been able to assist in the hopeful rebuilding process. As of August, St. Bernard had completed building 230 homes, each fully finished and painted for about $12,000 each thanks to donations and support. The lowest cost for a quality home when compared with Harry Connick Jr's work with Habitat for Humanity in that area or Brad Pitt's homes (only nine have been finished, they cost $250,000 each and do not fit with the aesthetics of new orleans architecturally).

Those New Orleans trips touched every single person who went in immeasurable ways. We have a few people who are actually moving to New Orleans to work in the community full time. Volunteering with St. Bernard project is on my life to-do list, they accept individual volunteers anytime and you are responsible for only paying for your transportation/lodging/food while there!

P.S. even Obama has something to say about St. Bernard Project! "The St. Bernard Project has drawn together volunteers to rebuild hundreds of homes, where people can live with dignity and security," :D