Tuesday, March 13, 2012

One MI's Thanksgiving in NOLA

This year I was fortunate enough to spend my Thanksgiving with family visiting friends in New was therefore unable to experience the holiday in NOLA.  This post will therefore be written by my first guest writer- my much esteemed MI & Graduate Assistant (GA) colleague, Will. Will is a fellow 1st year at the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine; however he is in the Department of Global Health Systems and Development (GHSD) specializing in something…

To say Will has embraced NOLA and its culture would be an understatement. Originally hailing from Apalachin, New York, he graduated from the University of South Carolina in 2011 with majors in Anthropology and French. Will is an outgoing and enthusiastic fellow and we think he may be a hard worker.  In his spare time he has been coerced into working as a GA in the GHSD front office. This entails odd jobs such as sorting and delivering mail as well as “scanning files until his fingers fall off.”

Will is also currently in the Peace Corps application process. He is slightly ahead of me, having just finished the medical portion, and is anxiously awaiting the next step. He either wants to serve in Rwanda or “one of the random –stan’s out there.” Will has previously made appearances in this blog; first he was mentioned in “B-Movie Night” and then was exploited for his ‘photogenic appearance’ in “Biking in New Orleans.”

As a disclaimer, the following words are solely Will’s and therefor I relinquish all responsibility for anything written or conveyed here forth.  So please give a warm welcome to my esteemed and often shoeless colleague, Will!!

Thank you, thank you. You’re too kind. Well I guess I am only getting to write this blog by virtue of the fact that I was technically in New Orleans for the Thanksgiving holiday. However, I will make the most of my platform whilst it lasts.

I’m sure most of you readers had a typical Thanksgiving with family, or perhaps friends. For me, I don’t exactly have a tradition; since going away for college I’ve always been just too far away to make a few days off worth the trip. Over the past six years I’ve had a hodge-podge of Thanksgiving experiences: going to my girlfriend’s beach house, spending it on my apartment balcony because I locked myself out (personal favorite), and working. Thanksgiving is supposed to be about being thankful and appreciating what you have and who you are with. For me, that ship has sailed. Now, I’ve moved on to a new holiday: MeGiving.

                Now yes, calling it MeGiving sounds really selfish and counterintuitive to the whole point of the real holiday, but 1) it’s my blog post, and 2) it’s not as bad as it seems.

Senior year of high school and all four years of college brought me varying degrees of Thanksgiving success and failure. Either way, it seemed like my fate was always dependent on others, whether I was crashing their family dinner, customers making me do my job, or unable to get into my apartment (still bitter). So I decided to make Thanksgiving all about me for the last couple of years, hence: MeGiving. I do what I want. I eat what I want. I watch what I want on TV. I can sit at whatever table I want. And I clean up when I want (i.e. never).

"No mom, I'm not married. Just pass me the damn gravy!"
 This year, MeGiving was a great success. First, my Packers beat the Lions to remain undefeated so I was already in a good mood by 2 in the afternoon. Then came the main course: chicken pot pie and the “Intervention” marathon. I had gotten a hankering for chicken pot pie the week before Thanksgiving so I decided that was going to be my feast. It actually turned out (surprisingly) well. As for the “Intervention” marathon, I watched all of season 9 which, let me tell you, was pretty intense. For those of you who do not know, ‘Intervention’ is a show on A&E that follows the lives of addicts (alcoholics, crack heads, opium fiends, etc.). The protagonists believe they are on a show about addiction, but unbeknownst to them, at the end of the episode, the family and friends of the addict will hold an intervention in hopes to get them to rehab. There is something about watching this show that just seems to fit into Thanksgiving. Some episodes are very uplifting, some are depressing, and some are bittersweet—but in every case it begins and ends with the family. I know so many of my friends who go home and say that they feel like this:     à   after being home for just a couple of days. I suppose this marathon is my way of getting to appreciate my family without those nasty side-effects.

As I lay on my couch, getting my glutton on, drinking some grape juice from a box, and watching the television I began to reflect on life in New Orleans so far. Like most incoming students, I had never lived here before, and have only been here on two prior occasions. I remember my first night here, alone in my apartment with no electricity, 100 degrees.... Celsius and thinking to myself “I am going to die tonight.” At this point it seems like that was at least a year ago at this point.  Next I went out to my balcony; It was a bit windy, the leaves across the street were red and blowing off the branches with each gust. “Finally some autumn up in here” I said to myself. I mean it’s basically December, but hey, better late than never I suppose. The city was pretty calm. I got to tear up and down St. Charles on my bike because there was hardly any traffic. These are the little things that must be taken advantage of.

On a more social note, Saturday turned into just ‘one of those New Orleans nights.’ It is one of my favorite days of the year, highlighted by all the big college football rivalries: the Civil war, the Egg Bowl, the Iron Bowl, the Battle for the Golden Boot, and most importantly, the Carolina-Clemson game.  This year was off the charts. The Gamecocks handled Clemson for the third year in a row so I was in a good mood to say the least. I had planned on just quietly staying at home for the night, but the victory kind of pepped me up and I decided to go to the local joint. Next thing I know I’m talking to everybody there, we go across the street to another place, go to a couple of house parties, and wind up out until dawn. [As a side-note in the ever-continuing saga of my shoe-challengedness I wound up coming home with a completely different pair of shoes than I had when I left my house]. Now that I think of it, many nights in New Orleans are like this and it is something I’ve come to love about the city in the short amount of time I’ve been here. It doesn’t matter how old you are, what race you are, where you came from, or where you are going—you can make friends anywhere, anytime in this city. I’ve hung out and had a great time with people I wouldn’t have expected before. For instance my roommate and I have these 50 year-old arch-enemies (read: friends) from a trivia night. I feel like this is something New Orleans does wonderfully. People get together and have fun because they share a common interest. It doesn’t matter if you’re in the same social ring—it’s just people. Also, there is something about this place that can just keep me going. I’ll think I’m getting tired and start thinking about going to bed, but next thing I know, it’s already three in the morning. The city doesn’t need the hurricane-slurping tourists of Bourbon street to keep the party going, the city has so much energy on its own and I’ve come to learn that it is infectious (mainly via droplet nuclei but also in unpasteurized dairy products).

So in this blog-induced reflection on Thanksgiving in New Orleans, I’ve come to two realizations that I previously overlooked. Firstly, I am thankful for the (temporary) relief from the tyrannical sun and crippling humidity. Secondly, I am thankful that in lieu of my real family (whom I will get around to visiting one of these days), New Orleans itself really is a big family (not to get all Hallmark on you). I’ve lived in South Carolina and know all about the concept of Southern Hospitality. I believe that in South Carolina, it exists because it is taught and expected, whereas in New Orleans, I feel like it is just endemic in the population. On that note I will leave you with the overused, yet still sage advice, of simply being more open: start up a conversation…because in this city you never know what can happen next in this city.   

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