Today we arrived in Dulac! It’s a lot different from New Orleans, but I expect that we will work outside more which I think I’ll like. Last week was pretty wild. I did construction in 3 houses and got to explore the area once the work was done. We also went to an urban farm on saturday. It was a mini version of the plant nursery I grew up on-lots of greenhouses and raise bed gardens. The best part of this experience was the talks we had with Nat-the guy who runs show. He talked about a lot of things, one of which was social activism. In a nutshell, he basically motivated us with the ever popular question “if not now, when? If not you, who?”. I’ve heard this many times and never really thought about it until Nat put it into context for us. One idea he gave was to get kids from the poorer schoools in schenectady and run with them, to promote good health. He said that Michelle Obama has a program within “Let’s Move!”-her campaign for healthier kids, where if you document an after school program that you do with the kids that promotes better health, then you can get the school a significant grant of money. More details can be found here: http://www.fns.usda.gov/tn/healthierus/index.html. I think I might try to initiate something like that when I get back to school. You can check out the farm’s blog here: http://schoolatblairgrocery.blogspot.com/.

Another thing that was interesting this week was my encounters with New Orleanians. At the Rock N’ Bowl I met a guy named Ben who taught me how to swing dance. It was really fun and he was interesting to talk to. He told me that he is from Mississippi and comes down the Rock N’ Bowl every week! A stranger encounter occurred while walking in a french quarter: I gave a homeless person a dollar and he offered to sing for me. I couldn’t really say no so he took my shoulders and sang to me about “Keep on, holding on” very close to my face. It was very uncomfortable. It almost felt like this guy had seen so many people walk by and ignore him, that the first person to really interact with him, he felt the urge to really engage. I can understand that one must feel very isolated being ignored all the time, wanting to explain themselves or just plain talk to someone (besides the woman and child who were with him). All in all the week in New Orleans was filled with new experiences.