Halloween in Nola and Surveying in Hoffman Triangle 11/7/07

So New Orleans during Halloween... I still can't figure out exactly how to explain it. The costumes are OUTRAGEOUS and so creative! For most people, it seems to be the test run for Mardi Gras - if the costume can last the night walking and drinking during Halloween with few troubles, it's good for Mardi Gras. On Halloween, I went down to Bourbon St, which surprisingly, was not that crazy (however, my definitions of crazy have changed slightly since living here). But, I walked farther into the Quarter to Frenchman St, which was NUTS. All of the people there were natives (or at least not tourists) and they had the best costumes, mostly self-created or very elaborate. Basically, the entire street was a block party! It was great :)
This past weekend, I helped do a household survey of this area called the Hoffman Triangle. It's in Center City (so was badly flooded) and this particular area has not recovered well. So, basically, my job was to go house to house and survey people to get demographic info and do a basic needs assessment. It was really sad b/c there were so few houses that were actually occupied. But, it was REALLY exciting when we found someone to survey and (almost) all the people I talked with were extremely friendly. I can't imagine living there and can definitely understand why people decided not to move back. Except for a few well-populated streets (and they were usually isolated from other well-populated blocks and still had vacant houses), the area was very sparse. Moving back, gutting your house, trying to get your kids in school and have friends, getting groceries, etc, would all be huge challenges and there's little incentive to face them. I was glad to be able to walk around that area though and get to know the city a little better. This week, I'm busy entering the data into spreadsheets to analyze it. Should be interesting what we find out!

That's pretty much all that's going on right now. I'm looking forward to going home over Thanksgiving (I'm taking a week and visiting my sister and my aunt in NYC then going home for 2 days). My sister and I have been counting down the days :)