Deep Woods and Going Crazy

So today was not the most pleasant day for most of us.  We were sent into the woods, yes woods, of City Park.  Here we had the hard experience of pulling up large ragweed, other weeds, and pulling seemingly endless vines off of trees.  Trust me when I say we were all very tired after this.  In addition to performing this menial labor, three of our number were also eaten by fire ants.  Not actually eaten like in Indiana Jones and The Crystal Skull, or whatever that disappointment is called, but still bitten.  This resulted in a long walk back to the edge of the woods for sting wipes.  however once we had finished our task we were all having fun riding back in the back of a truck.  I personally had a lot of fun waving at the strangers walking by as we drove.

After lunch we had the pleasure of visiting the 6th oldest synagogue in the United States.  The lady here, gave us a wonderful talk about the beliefs of Judaism and the destruction of Hurricane Katrina.  We also learned the actual cause of the flooding and a bit about stereotypes portrayed in the news.  Seeing as how the media reflects the flood victims as being poor african americans, when really all people were affected.  We even received the chance to view one of the synagogues torahs.  This was really cool.

Once we got back we all took our much needed showers and hung out till dinner.  The mission doesn't provide food on weekends, so we ordered pizza from Papa John's.  After dinner, we had planned to go Mini-Golfing, but there was a huge thunderstorm on the way.  We wanted to still go but in someone's words, we would be holding up a small metal rod so we decided against this idea.  We then tried to go bowling, but the local lane's next available time for a reservation was 10:30.  So then we tried to go to the movies, but all of the showtimes for the movies we wanted to see either had a showing in 10 minutes or around 10:00.  So that was a no go.  We ended up just hanging out.  We broke off into different groups and played different games.  I personally played a highly competitive game of Spoons.  It got intense ya'll.  Yes I'm saying ya'll, we are in the deep south.  Deal with it!  Then a few of us made a trip to the CVS next door for ice cream.  We ended the night with a dance like nobody's watching to the radio and ice cream party.  It was really a lot of fun even though we all still wanted to be mini-golfing.

Tomorrow we are going to spend our day chilling around in the French Quarter.  That is hopefully going to be a lot of fun.  We also found out that like 70 more people are going to be joining us at the mission tomorrow and Sunday so we are all hoping to still be able to shower on a regular basis...  So we will see what tomorrow brings.

-Sophie