The Road to New Orleans: Day 2

Here I am, sitting on our bed in our hotel in New Orleans. But let me recap what has happened since my last post.

After the incident at our hotel yesterday (see my last post), it got worse. Matt & I awoke at 5 am with a man unlocking the door to our hotel room and opening the door. Fortunately, we had the bolt on so he could only open the door a few inches. He said, "Hello?" and we both said "Hello" back. At that point he closed the door and we hear him say to his friend "They put us in a room that already has people in it!" Kinda scary. But we went back to sleep. When Matt went in to check out today, he found out that we were put in the wrong room and that really was those other guys room. And our room was supposed to have a fridge and the internet (we just got it sporadically in the room we were in). Oh well, life goes on. I was so glad to get out of that motel hotel though!

After checking out of our hotel, we headed back into the city of Atlanta to go to church. We ended up at this church called "Midtown Gathering". This church is a simulcast of Buckhead Church (a branch of North Point Church) and was held in a really nice movie theater. Basically the service from Buckhead Church is put on the movie screen. They call it a "cinematic spiritual experience". I really enjoyed it. They had two movie theaters full of people and everyone was very involved in singing, clapping, brought their Bibles, etc. I was very impressed. After church we stopped at a coffee shop across the street and I got a Mocha Latte. Yum.

We then began our long journey from Atlanta to New Orleans. We made quite a few stops along the way so it took us about 8 hours to get here (instead of the 6 hours it should have taken). We stopped in Auburn, Alabama and went to an Old Navy and took some pictures with a couple tiger statues. We made lots of gas station stops because we didn't plan well. We should have gone to the bathroom and gotten gas at the same time, but no, we didn't. The drive was quite pretty once we got down to MississipIpi...lots of wetlands and marshes.

As we were driving into New Orleans on I-10, we remembered the devastation of the east side of New Orleans that we had seen last July when we were here. Nine months later, this side of town pretty much looks the same. There are still tons of abandoned buildings-- homes, apartments, hotels, restaurants, etc. There are still apartment buildings that have "Help" written on the roofs. Hurricane Katrina hit over 1 1/2 years ago and some things still remain the same. It is a reminder of what so many people suffered through...losing loved ones and their homes. Please continue to pray for those still rebuilding their lives from Katrina...it is a long journey.

Matt & I checked into our hotel and were pleased to have found it a beautiful hotel with a huge room including a refrigerator, dressing room, couch, etc. This may be the nicest hotel I have ever stayed at (and it wasn't that expensive). After getting all of our stuff in our room, we headed out for dinner. We decided to walk to this barbecue place right down the street from our hotel. The name of this restaraunt is "Igor's Barbecue Mama". Haha. I thought that was a funny name but they sure did have some good food! We ate pulled pork sandwiches, baked beans and fries. Yum.

We have no clue what we're doing tomorrow. We have lots of apartments to look at and we will just plan to visit different areas of town on different days. There are many adventures to come!