New Orleans

Trip to New Orleans was pretty awesome! Went with my jazz band. New Orleans = birthplace of jazz.

We left on Monday at 8 PM...16 hour bus ride down there and got there at about 1 PM, chilled at the hotel for 3 and a half hours. Then we met in the lobby and walked around the French Quarter to dinner at Bubba Gumps and everyone was all excited because apparently Forrest Gump was filmed there but I've never seen the movie and when I told them that, they all freaked out and pretty much shunned me for the next five minutes. Anyway, the food was good. I was boring and had a cheeseburger, but it was a REALLY GOOD cheeseburger.

After dinner we went to Preservation Hall to listen to some jazz. I stood on a ledge in the back so I could actually see, which was pretty nice :D and the bass player totally lowered my self-esteem because he was really good and I could never ever play like that but I've only been playing for like, 2 months so I guess its not really the same, but whatever...

Then we went to Cafe du Monde's to eat beignets. They're like French donuts with powdered sugar on them. They tasted exactly like funnel cakes except more fried and oily.
went back to the hotel at about 10:30 and my roomies and I chilled until about 12:00. I slept on a cot because we had five people in our room--the only girl's room on the whole trip and the rest were all guys. Which was pretty nice, because then we didn't have to wait in line at the bathrooms and they did, for once.

Then on Wednesday, we went on a 1 and a half hour long walking tour of the French Quarter. The French Quarter was pretty cool because of the old buildings and the HUGE cathedral.

After that we went to Mardi Gras World because New Orleans is the birthplace of Mardi Gras. We saw where they make the huge floats for the parades and they were awesomeee! They make them out of syrofoam for the most part and spray paint them and They look really life-like.

Went on a Cajun Swamp Tour after that and saw a bunch of alligators and turtles and blue herons. Fed the alligators marshmallows. Saw a little gator and we named it Jeffy and fed it marshmallows and it pretty much waited for us to come back because we saw him again on the way back.

Went back to hotel to chill, then went to Palm Court Cafe and Jazz Band 1--I'm in Jazz Band 2--played about an hour of jazz at the restaurant and there was a crazy "drunk" lady there with an English accent who was the owner of the cafe. She was dancing (really badly, I might add) and she pretty much forced the girls in our group to dance with her. I feel so sorry for one the jazz member's little sister because the crazy lady just grabbed her and started dancing with her and she was looking at us with a "help, get me out of here" kind of face. And then we ate dinner there, went back to the hotel.

On Thursday we went to the World War 2 Museum and walked around for 2 hours and went to see a 4-D movie about WWII, then both bands performed in the atrium. Apparently almost no one in Jazz Band 1 knew I played bass. My solos actually weren't that bad, at least not as bad as in practice.

After that, we had free time for about 4 hours. My group and I wanted to go to Hard Rock Cafe to eat lunch, but none of the parent chaperones wanted to go with us so we had to go eat with them and we were pretty annoyed because we had about 10 chaperones and they all wanted to go eat at the same place...but we got over it :D and ate at another place. Then we went to the French Market and shopped for awhile. We spent like, half an hour at this sunglasses place because my group and the group behind us wanted to get sunglasses and tried on pretyt much every pair. The owners of the place spoke Chinese and I talked with them and one of them was from Singapore (I don't know why she spoke Chinese if she was from Singapore) and the other was from Taiwan....he got really excited when I said that that was where I was from too, then got mad because I couldn't understand what he was saying. He had a crazy accent! I swear, he is definitely not from Taiwan...

After that we went on the Natchez Steamboat Cruise and ate dinner on the boat. It was pretty fun and there was live jazz on the upper deck.
Had an hour of free time after that and then went back to the hotel...

On Friday we got up, ate breakfast, got on the bus, and drove 16 hours back home.

The End.

:D