Corruption, Salsa Dancing, and the Superdome 10/2/07

The city has kept growing on me. There's just so much to do and so many things to see and hear and taste. New Orleans is definitely a 5 sense city! While school work keeps me pretty busy during the week, I've been trying to do something fun on the weekends. I've been to Bourbon St (I would recommend it once, just to see, and then to get away as soon as possible!), jazz clubs (jazz is my new favorite music), salsa dancing, and the Superdome (Tulane vs. LSU - Tulane lost, but not as badly as expected). Have you ever been to New Orleans? If not, I would highly recommend it. I know it's known for it's, umm, interesting places, but it's also a city full of churches and people who really care - about each other and about their city.

My program is also going really well - there is someone here from almost every country, including Iraq and Afghanistan. People from other countries bring such interesting views to our discussions. The more people I meet from other countries, the more I want to travel to all of the countries. I have a friend who's from Guinea and he's already invited me to come stay with his family once I'm done with school. It's wonderful!

Louisiana has some corruption in the government but I'm still not sure of the extent or what they actually do that makes them corrupt, but many of the people running for office now talk about ending corruption and bringing morality back to the government. It's odd b/c the politicians also accuse each other endlessly of being corrupt!

This weekend I went salsa dancing! It was awesome! There's a street in the Quarter called Frenchmans - it's basically like Bourbon St, but without all the tourists and there are not as many crazy people. So, they had salsa dancing and while there were actually an equal number of men and women, there were only about 10 men dancing, while the others stood around looking stupid. However, those 10 men definitely got around - but they were all old men! It was still a lot of fun to actually dance - not just weird American dancing.

On Saturday, I went to the Tulane vs. LSU (Louisiana State University) football game in the Superdome. It was definitely worth while b/c I think it will be the only time I can afford to get into the Superdome. It's all fixed up now, but it was weird going there knowing what happened there when Katrina hit. But the game was great (although Tulane lost 37-9, ouch). :)