Cultural differences, middle schoolers and spiders

I have officially been here for three weeks now and over that time I’ve come to recognize some distinct cultural differences between this city and Seattle. First of all, I must clarify something though. As multiple locals have told me, New Orleans isn’t really “the deep South” as one would stereotypically picture it. It is part of the “urban South,” however most people have told me the city is really kind of its “own country.” Instead of having thick Southern draws when they talk, they have a “Yat” – instead of saying “Where are you at?” they say “Where YAT?” with a mild Southern accent kind of strewn together with an East Coast accent. Some cultural differences have come as quite a surprise. For instance, I heard just today that New Orleans is one of the rainiest cities in the nation. I wouldn’t buy it at first, but after googling it I found that it receives the 3^rd highest amount of annual rainfall a year! I can see why after experiencing some of the rain-filled thunder and lightning storms down here. As it pours, lightning strikes less then a street block away – in fact it even hailed in the 85 degree heat storm today. Nuts, I know.

Another cultural difference I have noticed is that some women wear curlers in their hair around town. The interns and I were shopping in the grocery store and there was an African American lady wearing like 30 aqua blue curlers! It cracked me up for sure. Also, some people down here tag their cars with big brand name logos. One would assume that the owner was getting sponsored to drive around the car, but Mikey informed me that they just do it to get looks – so that people pay attention to their hot ride. For instance, we saw someone driving a new orange Ford Mustang with the Cheetos logo painted all over his car. To me it just looked goofy but I guess it’s a big deal down here. Another thing that is different from Seattle that affects me daily is this whole concept of air conditioning and keeping doors closed in order to keep it from escaping into muggy un-air conditioned parts of the church or house. For example, I’m always going in and out of my room at the Thompsons and every time I leave – even to go to the kitchen for a glass of water – I shut it to prevent my precious cold air from leaking into the hallway. This is just weird sometimes because although privacy is nice, I typically like to keep my door open. Hence, sometimes I feel as if my host family might think I’m secretly dealing drugs outside my bedroom window!

Some of the food down here is of course another big change for me – a pleasant one to be sure. My favorites thus far have been jumbalaya – a spicy dish with chicken, sausage, rice, garlic, and tomatoes; shrimp Po Boy’s – a sub sandwich loaded with fried shrimp, lettuce, tomatoes, and tartar sauce; mufalattas – an amazing sub sandwich with ham and other meats and a thin layer of an olive and onion sauce on top; snowballs – a snow cone on steroids that is served in a styrofoam cup and is stuffed with vanilla ice cream that is a taste of heaven on any hot humid day (my flavor of choice is the wedding cake and strawberry combo); and of course authentic sweet tea which was served with jumbalaya when the interns and I went over to an elderly couples’ house for dinner awhile back. My next goal is to get my hands on some crawfish before the season ends. Finally, I must say the fast food customer service down here is subpar – one truly understands “Louisiana time” when standing in line at a Taco Bell or Wendy’s and watching the pace of the employees. Unbelievably slow!

This week we have had our only middle school work team of the summer here from Baton Rouge – about an hour drive away. Needless to say, middle schoolers are quite different then high schoolers, and this is clearly evident in the general work ethic of the different age groups. On Monday, which was the team’s first work day, we worked in the lower Ninth Ward where we were clearing (weeds/brush from) resident’s empty lots all day so that they wouldn’t be fined by the government. Typically our high school groups would work all day resting to get water when necessary, but working fairly constantly for the whole day. In less than 10 minutes, the middle school boys were picking up long weeds they had pulled and running around hitting each other with the dirt clumped roots on the ends of the weeds like a bunch of hooligans. The middle school girls worked harder than the boys at times, but had to ask the leaders to make the 20 minute drive to the bathroom like 4 separate times. Then, in the afternoon between 1pm-2pm all but 5 of the 25 person team were sitting in the vans or in the shade of the trees seemingly exhausted after their first morning of work. Clearly motivation and focus was a problem. For example, I gave a kid a can of ant-killer and he walked around for over a half an hour looking for random fire ant hills to demolish. Or take the time when I gave a kid a pick-axe to chop down a tree. He and 10 of his middle school friends spent half an hour watching one another hack at a tree. Geez, these kids really need to learn about effectiveness and efficiency. There was also the time yesterday when I was scraping the paint off of a house on an extension ladder quite high (I’ll leave the actual height out of it for my mother’s sake) off the ground and the kid who was supposed to be holding my ladder simply walked away to go and talk to a friend. That fall wouldn’t have been too fun.

Then there was Lance. This scrawny soon to be seventh grader happens to be the most attention-needy child I’ve ever seen. There are many stories to tell but I’ll limit myself to two. On Monday, when we were pulling weeds, Lance comes up to me ten minutes after we have started working with a bottle of sunscreen in his hands and in an innocent and sincere voice asks “Hey could you put some lotion on my legs for me?”. Dumbfounded, I paused for a few seconds wanting to make sure I fully understood what had just happened – a middle school aged boy just asked me for assistance applying sunscreen to his legs. I mean if we were at the beach and he needed it on his back or something I would understand. But his legs? Strange. Anyways, I held back a laugh, suggested that he sit down on the curb and put it on himself (I’m that mean I know), and Anna, my fellow intern who had overheard his request, proceeded to lather up his legs as he helplessly stood amongst the weeds. A second “Lance moment” happened Wednesday morning in Fellowship Hall when I was telling the team what we would be doing that morning. I was warning them about the poison ivy that we would run into in City Park, and Lance eagerly raised his hand to comment. In front of the 25 of us, he first proclaimed that not everyone was allergic to poison ivy. Then, to make sure we believed him he proved it to us by telling a brief story: “This one time my brother and I were swinging on a poison ivy vine and afterward he got poisoned and I didn’t!” Evidently not everyone needs to fear the dreaded poison ivy. (I’m working on getting a picture of Lance, it will be coming shortly don’t worry.)

Finally, another big event that happened this week was Mikey got bit on his right calf by a poisonous Brown Recluse spider last Friday. Initially he thought it was just a large bug bite, but then the pain and swelling came. He waited two days hoping the swelling would go down but after limping around on Monday morning at work, he got to a point where he couldn’t even walk and had to sit in the truck the rest of the afternoon. When we got back to the church, Mikey ran into Sam Thompson (the father of the boys I am living with) who was working on the church. Sam happens to be a registered nurse. Sam told him he needed to be in the hospital yesterday and quickly took Mikey over to our house where he got a sterilized safety pin and tweezers and popped a hole in the epicenter of the bulging bite. I’ll spare you the details of this painful purging but basically a lot of poisonous pus was removed as Mikey let out multiple yelps of discomfort. Afterwards he said that this hurt more than the multiple times he had dislocated his knee playing soccer. Ouch! While this little operation did help the swelling go down initially, Mikey woke up the next morning and couldn’t walk. He ended up going to the doctor who gave him a bunch of shots and antibiotics and told him to stay off of his leg for the next three days. So Mikey’s a little under the weather to say the least, though on Thursday he was feeling much better. He goes to see the doctor again tomorrow, and our hope is that he will be able to accompany us to Florida tomorrow night.

Oh yah, I forgot to mention we’re going to Pensacola, Florida for the weekend as the start of our week off! It’s about a four hour drive, but I look forward to white sand, naps on the beach, and body surfing. Maybe there will even be some volleyball nets. Unfortunately we won’t have a pool because us poor college kids on ministry salaries can’t afford hotels and are staying in a local church’s youth room, but the possibility of “pool hopping” is definitely an option.

I’ll update more after our adventure in the Sunshine State. = )