Traaaaveling!

We are finally well on our way to New Orleans, after months and months of waiting and preparing. I personally felt like the day we finally got to leave would never come, and now, I’m feeling like the 17-hour journey on this train will never end! Getting to the train station was no problem but we were met with even more waiting. The train station was pretty quiet since our group took up most of the waiting area. We were able to have food delivered to us, which was absolutely amazing. I got a buffalo chicken calzone with ranch dressing and it honestly made me SO HAPPY. I was starving and starting to feel weak, but that calzone revved me right back up! Once we got on the train, I met my seating partner, who was a man traveling back to New Orleans after visiting his family. I LOVED his accent, so was more than happy to listen to his stories about his children and family. He asked if we’d be touring the French Quarter, and when I said yes, he warned me to be very careful and make sure that I stick with my group. Hearing that from a local made me feel somewhat uneasy, but I know we will be smart and stay safe.

 I was still feeling pretty much wide awake at about 1 am, so I listened to some Brain Candy Podcast. The Podcast discusses everything from religion, to politics, to mental health. Both of the hosts are MTV reality starts who got themselves educated in different fields and they are SUPER entertaining. I love it because I have learned so much from them about life hacks and self-love, but they still delve into the world of social media, reality tv, and just mindless crap that I find myself loving without feeling guilty. That helped pass some time, but I quickly realized I would not be getting much sleep. I felt extremely cold, and then sweaty, and then I felt that I dozed off slightly, and woke up to my friend Anne’s face, inches from my face, in the most hilariously creepy way. It reminded me of the feeling I get when I can tell my son is standing over me, staring like a weirdo, waiting for me to wake up and get him breakfast. Later, I dozed again and sort of jerked awake, finding myself snuggling up on the shoulder of the grandfatherly gentleman next to me. I was pretty embarrassed, but he reassured me that I hadn’t bothered him. I still couldn’t bring myself to fall asleep again until he left for the observation cart.

Around 7 am, I got up and went to the bathroom to freshen up. This is not an easy task on this moving, swaying train. I won’t lie, I definitely stumbled and landed on the floor with my pants down. Thank God I finally managed to get the lock to work on the door! All in all, I felt a lot better after a little cleaning up and a fresh change of clothes. I came back to an empty seat so that meant time for a nap! I put my headphones on, covered my head completely with a blanket, and finally got a couple solid hours of sleep. I CANNOT wait to arrive and get this party started J.

I think the biggest thing I have learned from this trip so far is that next time, I’m going to fly. This trip has reminded me of when I moved from Alabama back to Illinois. I was 17, packed a duffel bag of clothing, and hopped on a bus for about 22 hours. It was a pretty horrific journey, but I made it to where I needed to be and my life has drastically improved since I left Alabama. I know that when I get off this train, I am going to have a lot of fun and learn a ton about the culture of New Orleans. I feel like that kind of information can help someone become well rounded and that it will help me in my future nursing career if I know a little bit about people from all sorts of different areas.

Being on the train headed south, having lived in Alabama, and having watched the video and researched information about racial tension has really had me thinking a lot. I went to high school in Alabama, and moved back to Illinois right after I graduated in 2006. I had obviously noticed some things that were off during that time, just seeming very backwards and old school. I feel like all of the things that have been displayed in the media about the Black Lives Matter movement and police brutality have been on my mind a lot lately, and it is just baffling to me that this is STILL going on. The movie about New Orleans made me very sad and doing the research about how black people were treated after Katrina killed me. I was thinking back to high school and some things that I remembers about a very racist area I lived in. I would say that schools were still segregated, sort of like the movie mentioned, just not legally. I went to Southside High, and all of the students were white. There was a school in another area called Gadsden High, and all of the students were black. My dad told me to never cross Talladega Avenue, and I realized later that in that area was where the majority of the black population lived. My dad told me it was dangerous for white people there, but it was dangerous emotionally for black people everywhere near us. I feel that experiences like that could have had the potential to put unnecessary fear and prejudice in me. Luckily, I had lived in Illinois previously and just didn’t feel the way that people felt in Alabama about others. I was seriously so shocked that things were so tense during that time, so it just makes me even more sad and angry that these kinds of things are still going on. Now, we are passing through Mississippi and we see a confederate flag flying. I wish I could have snapped a picture for the blog. I realize there is a history behind that flag that people in the South love to talk about it, but I just feel that knowing it is offensive to an entire race of people, it could have been left off the flag pole.

AAAANDDD FINALLY!

We Made It!