This weekend we had the Mason Dixon tournament here. Mason Dixon is a basketball tournament that 12 schools from 11 southern states come together and compete in. This year LSD got to host the girls teams. My responsibility was to help wherever needed. We got to help with concessions and in the hospitality room (make sure none of the students snuck in for food because our food was AMAZING) I already mentioned Mason Dixon and some foods, but here are some more different things I got to try. These are crab balls. It's a crab mixture that's breaded and fried. They were tasty, but pretty spicy so I couldn't really eat eat them.
This is gumbo. When I asked what was in gumbo they just told me, "you make a rue (pretty much just oil and flour) and pretty much whatever you want. I think this one had rice and chicken and green chilis in it. Aly (one of the girls I'm here with) made sure to tell me not to eat it.
Something really funny about this culture is they are constantly eating and they eat at early times too. A lot of people were looking for lunch around 10:30 and it was served at 10:45, and dinner was served at around 4:15.
I became official and got my name badge! It also serves as my key to get into the gates because we are in a gated area.
This picture looks so lovely...We had been volunteering all day and going into a social with extremely loud, old Soulja boy playing wears you out a little bit. We didn't get out until midnight and had started at 8:30 in the morning.
Every night after the tournament, all the girls would come into the Student Center to eat, socialize, and dance. These girls love to dance. We ate spicy fettuccine, crawfish pies (which were also unfortunately spicy) and more of my king cake that I love.
On Saturday it was a little slower with the tournament, so Aly, Cody, and I decided to take off early. We went to the Mall of Louisiana and then went over to the Stake Center for the adult session. Cody had Priesthood first, so Aly and I walked around the temple since it shares a parking lot with our stake center.
The temple as decorative kale and holly around everywhere. It's kind of pretty.
After, I went back to the school to help with the very last social. I was walking around and they have a picture of the original school behind an original classroom door on display.
This school was enormous! It got me thinking about how many kids they would have had to have had in order to build this school. That really blew my mind. It also made me sad, because even though the campus we have now is decent size, we only have maybe 150 students total. And because of the decrease in size, the blind school moved in within the last 10 years into buildings that weren't being used anymore. I really wish people were able to get more information about these schools for the Deaf. It's so frustrating to know that there are students out there who are in hearing schools and are not getting the proper education they need, or in their own language. But one day I will change the world a little bit by being a person who educates others about the option of going to a Deaf school.
Today I helped with bus duty. Since we have many students that live more than 25 miles away, it's the school's responsibility to provide transportation for those students. I went along with the New Orleans route this afternoon and got to see some really fun things (these were all taken from a bus window, but soon I'll be visiting New Orleans and will take way better pictures)
I got to see the ocean right before we got into downtown New Orleans.
And New Orleans herself along with the super dome that the Saints play in
Another really neat thing I forgot I would most likely see here is an above ground cemetery. The pictures aren't very great, but this one was huge and right along the freeway
We also had to drive across the Mississippi and saw a few cruise ships pulled up on shore
We also went into some back woods areas with tons of swamp land, but we were going too fast to get good pictures of that. That will definitely come later. When we got back to the school, I went and hung out in the middle school dorm for a bit. More pictures to come!
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