Nearing the End...Plus a book recommendation

Sunset over Lake Pontchartrain from the North Shore

We are fast approaching the end of my YAV year in New Orleans. It would be really cliche of me to say that the time flew by, wouldn't it? I won't say it, but you can assume that it's still true. 

Anyway, I really just wanted to share a book recommendation. Right now the house is reading Henry Nouwen's Life of the Beloved. It is a short, simple read. I'm only a couple of chapters into it, but it's really beautiful. Written by a Catholic priest for his Jewish friend, it is a book about God's love written for the everyday purpose. I would definitely recommend checking it out: 

St. Joseph's Day

St. Joseph's Day is apparently a big deal here in New Orleans. I had never really heard of it before and didn't know of any traditions associated with it. I thought it was really interesting and so I wanted to share a bit about it with y'all:

It falls on March 19th each year (last Tuesday). It celebrated Joseph, Mary's husband and Jesus's step-father (Is that his proper title?). The holiday is mostly celebrated by Italians and Italian-Americans. In the United States, New Orleans has the largest tradition of celebrating St. Joseph's day.

Churches, schools, and homes can build altars to Joseph. The altars have lots of food, candles, pictures, plants, and statues displayed. They are usually open to the public. The doorway to the building is marked with a green branch to let passersby know their is an altar inside. At each altar, visitors are given a dried fava bean for good luck and some free treats or cookies. The fava bean tradition comes from Sicily where they say that if you carry the bean you will never go broke. Some of the altars also offer free meals or feasts. My parents and I went to two different altars. One at De La Salle High School and another at St. Stephen's Church on Napoleon. Here are some pictures:

St. Stephen's altar

St. Stephen's altar

De La Salle High School's altar

(I didn't take this picture, but I did want to show the Fava Beans)

My New Orleans March

Spring has sprung here in New Orleans! Flowers a blooming and the sun is shining. Everyone keeps telling me that these couple of weeks in late March and early April are the reward for a New Orleans summer. I'm definitely going to enjoy it while it lasts.

March has been a busy and exciting month. We're now more than halfway through the YAV year. It's hard to believe it. I'm still having a wonderful time with all of my roommates. St. Patrick's Day was a week ago and we spent it hanging out on the neutral group on Napoleon Ave. watching the parade go by. I tried to take more pictures at this parade to make up for the fact that I didn't take many during Mardi Gras. The St. Patrick's Day parade was like a smaller than last month's parades. There were large sections of men walking and exchanging flowers for kisses. Following them were large floats with people throwing food to the crowd instead of beads. I caught some Ramen and Lucky Charms. I also caught a cabbage and some carrots. You're supposed to be able to catch the ingredients needed to make an Irish stew at home. We honestly haven't yet cooked out cabbage. 

St. Patrick's Day also happened to be Super Sunday this year. Super Sunday is the Sunday closest to St. Joseph's Day (March 18). On Super Sunday all the Mardi Gras Indians meet at a park in Central City. It's a great opportunity for the public to see the Indians and take pictures. Unlike on Mardi Gras morning, they are out to be seen. I was able to take a lot of wonderful pictures of their costumes. Each costume is hand made without using any glue and can weigh up to 70 pounds depending on the type of designs. 

My parents were in town last week. We ate a bunch of wonderful food and went to a bunch of great museums. It was a definitely a great week. Some of my favorite parts included going to the zoo and the botanical gardens. We also went to a couple of St. Joseph's altars. 

So those are basically the best parts of March for me. We're now heading towards Easter. I hope you are all having a wonderful spring and Holy Week! 

I also want to extend a huge THANK YOU to everyone who has donated money to my fundraising. I have reached my fundraising goal of $6,500! Thank you all so much! If you would still like to donate, feel free to. Any additional fundraising will go to support the program and my house. 

Love, 

Valentina 

Grand Bayou

Two weeks ago, all the YAVs went down to Grand Bayou. Here are some pictures:

Ragun Cajun

Pelicans - Their beaks can hold more than their belly can! 

Just to prove that I was there...it's me! 

Mardi Gras

So I know that we are well into Lent and Mardi Gras has come and gone. There are no more parades or king cakes. I still don't feel like I have fully recovered and beads still control a major part of our house. I figured I would still share a bit of my experiences because it is one of the biggest events of the year.

Lauren, Layne, Me, Nate, and Chad at Orpheus 

Before moving to New Orleans, I didn't really have a concept of what Mardi Gras was like. I pictured a weekend, maybe 5 days, with some parades and parties. I didn't know New Orleans celebrates carnival for a month and that there are weeks of parades. Some days have as many as 5 parades. I counted that over the course of a couple weeks, I went to 31 parades. Here they are: Krewe du Vieux, Cork, Oshun, Cleopatra, Pontchartrain,Choctaw, Sparta, Pygmalion, Chewbacchus, Carrollton, King Arthur, Barkus, Ancient Druid, Nyx, Babylon, Muses, Chaos, Hermes, Krewe d'Eta, Morpheus, Iris, Tucks, Endymion, Okeanos, Mid-City, Thoth, Bacchus, Proteus, Orpheus, Zulu, and Rex. It was, needless to say, exhausting. I don't think I will ever go to that many again in one year.

The stands outs were King Arthur (just because Pastor Fred was in it), Barkus (all dog parade in the Quarter), Nyx (new all women's parade), Hermes (really beautiful floats), Iris (all around fun, cool theme, floats, and throws), Tucks (rowdy and toilet themed), Proteus (each float was an old krewe), Orpheus (Harry Connick Jr.'s musical themed parade. Cool this year because each float was a past theme), Zulu (more than 42 floats in one parade - and I got a coconut), and Rex (Last major parade of the season).

A Post about Katrina

I've been trying to write a blog post about Katrina for a couple months now. I keep coming back to it, but every time, I end up not posting it. I've realized that Katrina (at least for me) is a very difficult thing to talk and write about, but I will try my best.

After last night's blackout at the Superdome, twitter went wild with jokes against Beyonce, Entergy, New Orleans, and even Katrina. In case you missed it, here are some of the tweets: "This time, it's the rich people trapped in the Superdome.""This power outage is the worst thing to ever happen in the Superdome." and "FEMA trailers are on the way." I was surprised at the casualness with which the rest of the country joked about the Superdome during Katrina. I will admit that I thought some of the jokes were funny, but at the same time, they all felt "too soon" After all, the storm was only seven years ago. I recognize that to the rest of the world, seven years probably seems like an eternity. I mean, there are second graders today who weren't even alive during Katrina. But here in New Orleans, it doesn't feel like that long ago. 

It's hard to explain why it has been so difficult for me to write a post about Katrina. Every time I begin to write, I feel like I will fail. I will not do the city or the experience justice. The best way I can describe it is that I don't feel that I have earned the right to talk about Katrina. I never knew pre-Katrina New Orleans. I wasn't here in 2005. I didn't have to evacuate or ride the storm out in the city. I didn't endure the days, weeks, and months following the storm. I didn't have my home destroyed and see friends and family scattered across the country. I watched the storm from the comfort of my living room thousands of miles away. 

But here I am now. I am living and working in a post-Katrina New Orleans, and that means that I am experiencing some aspect of the storm. Since moving here, I don't think a day has gone by without some reminder of Katrina coming up. And even if my experience is skewed by the fact that I work at a Katrina relief organization, it's obvious the storm still holds a presence over the city. You still see physical damage (blighted homes and house foundations left on empty lots) in many neighborhoods, and I won't even try to describe the unseen and emotional damage that I know still hangs in the air. New Orleans may have moved forward, but I don't think it has moved past Katrina. 

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That is about all I have been able to write on the subject so far. It's still such an emotional topic down here. I hope to share more of my own personal experience as I am able to put it into words for you. 

ProHo in the news!!

If you are interested in learning a little bit more about the organization I've been working for, you should check out this video. CBS news did a story about Project Homecoming and the work we've been doing 7 years after the storm. It aired last night, and already this morning I have 3 or 4 emails from people who saw it and are now interested in helping us rebuild New Orleans. I'm not in the video, but I know all the people who are. Go watch it - it's only a couple of minutes long!

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-57566314/project-homecoming-helping-katrina-families-get-home-at-last/

Carnival Season

One of the best things about New Orleans is that we have Carnival! I always knew that New Orleans was famous for Mardi Gras, but I didn't realize that Mardi Gras was just the end of a month-long celebration. So here we are mid-January and the rest of the country is settling into their post-holidays winter doldrums. New Orleans, on the other hand, is just getting started. 

This past weekend was the first major parade of the Mardi Gras season. It was for Krewe du Vieux, which is known for being rather...inappropriate. The parade went all through the French Quarter and was crazy fun. We watched it from the corner of Royal and Frenchman, so we got to see it go by twice as it looped around.  There were about 15 different floats and sub-krewes all with their own themes (a lot of plays on Times Picayune and the Super Bowl). There were also tons of brass bands marching. I would post pictures, but like I said, Krewe du Vieux is a little raunchy. Their theme this year was "Krewe du Vieux Comes Early" if that's any indication. 

Here is a picture of the YAV house all decked out for Mardi Gras though: 

Happy New Year

Hey Everyone,

Thank you for continuing to read my blog despite my very infrequent posting. I have to confess, that over the past few months I have begun to dislike blogging more and more. Every time I write a post, I end up over thinking it and editing it again and again. The result is that I have a nearly empty blog and a completely full folder of drafts. Blogging has become a chore to me, but I would really like to change that. When I was in Italy, I really enjoyed it and posted much more frequently. I think part of the reason is that I now feel like there is so much pressure to write something really good and meaningful.

So far the YAV experience has been better than I could ever imagine. I want to be able to do this experience and New Orleans justice when I write about them, but it feels like an impossible task. You all have given me so much spiritual, emotional, and financial support, that I have convinced myself I need to keep having profound moments to write about. When I do write though, I get so caught up in my head, that I never end up posting things. This blog should be about sharing stories (big and small) without pressure.

That said, I am (hopefully) turning over a new leaf. I want to share more stories with you, more often. I hope that I will be more comfortable posting just a few photos or a paragraph about something interesting that happened to me. Feel free to comment frequently! Thank you for your support and patience. Happy New Year and Carnival!

Here's a fun picture of me with my housemates Chad and Nate. We went Christmas caroling in Jackson Square last month.

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If didn't already know, the YAV New Orleans house has it's own blog. I wrote this month's post (after a couple weeks of struggling). You can read about 5 of my favorite YAV moments so far: http://pslyav.wordpress.com/current-yavs-blog/

Also, I wanted to give you all a fundraising effort. Thanks to generous donations from friends and family, I have raised almost $5,500! Thank you all so much! I still have just about a $1,000 left to raise. If you haven't donated yet, or would like to donate again, there are instructions in the side bar. You can also email or message me directly and I would love to talk to you more about it.