Weekend Outside

For the most part my weekends have little adventures here and there. There are late nights in the French Quarter or at local bars near our house.  The former JV's who live around the city have us over sometimes. Then there are the stay in movie nights or nights we all just pass out because of long weeks.  So there is not normally too much that i need to update you on from my weekends, but this weekend was different.

Friday night we went to the Sisters of St. Josephs house (a program similar to JVC), where Ellie lives (the other girl who works with Anne and I.  We went with a few other members of the community to listen to Sr. Helen Prejean speak.  She is a amazing woman with a huge heart and very entertaining personality.  Most people know her for her book "Dead Man Walking" which is about her experiences with men on death row.  She is powerful speaker who made me think/question alot of what i know about our jail system, law system, and why America still practices executions.

When we first met Sr. Helen she did not have a name tag on so we did not really know who she was but the minute we walked into the room she gave us each a huge (grandma like) hug that made us feel so welcome.  It also made us laugh a little because it caught us all off guard. 

This was the view coming back from seeing Sr. Helen on the free ferry that takes you across the Missippi.

Becca, Steph, and I decided to go on a bike adventure on Saturday around City Park and up to Lake Pontchartrain.  It was a beautiful ride and about 12 miles round trip.  City Park is a huge piece of land set just above New Orleans and on the edge of Lake Pontchartrain.  There are tons of walk paths, bike paths, and streams.  Along with the New Orleans Modern Art Museum :)  We road through the park, up the center and then off to the left side to hit the lake.  The lake is not nessesaraly very clean water but it was a beautiful view and smelled a lot like the ocean.  It is a mixture of salt and fresh water (because of Katrina).  We sat on the edge of the lake for about an hour talking, soaking up the sun, doing a little bit of yoga, and eating PB&J.  It was just the sun/water expositor i needed :)  The ride home was nice too and the nap after was a perfect ending!

Sunday my community met up with Eric (one of the former JV's who is our support person) who drove us all about 25 miles south of New Orleans to the swamp land.  We were going to go canoeing but the weeds and shrubs this year grew way more than usual and covered the majority of the open water.  We did however take a nice walk along a wood walk path that took us through a good part of the swamp.  It was so peaceful being in nature again, you forget how calming trees and greenery are when you are in a city for so long.  Its about a 2 mile loop and at the end is a big open wet land filled with long blowing 'cat tails.'  It looked like the Louisiana version of fields of grain, haha.  As we walked through the trees on the path we fallowed a river/swap water way.  Eric told us to keep our eyes open because that is where we would see a Gator if we were going to see one.  Sure enough, we did!  We saw three!

This one was chilling under a bridge that we crossed over.  It was about 8 feet!

The sky was ever bluer than this picture shows :)

 It was a very good weekend, mostly because i was outside so much! It kicked off the start of a good week :)

On a side note:   There was some sad news that we heard today that was hard to hear at the beginning of the week, but Emily and Don warned us that we would experience this eventually.  One of the guests at HTC was killed in a hit and run on Saturday night.... Renolda Miller liked to go by Zeus and normally whore a long woman's coat which he called his cape.  The cape was a polyester bright blue rain coat that went very well with his plaid pajama pants, sunglasses, and mostly toothless smile.  He was a character with a big heart and even bigger smile.  He will be missed here but is in our prayers and memories.