Sloan Leaders in Service Trek (SLST), New Orleans, LA: Feb 14/15

The SLST began with a group of twenty Sloanies catching a flight (or many flights - if at all) and heading down to NOLA to begin our work with Idea Village. Most students left for NOLA on Thursday afternoon while the remaining few flew in Friday morning. On Thursday night, the rough weather in the mid-West caused delays and overbooked planes that prevented my luggage from making the journey, but more importantly, one of our SLST members who was never able to leave Boston - a very annoying and rough situation for all as she was a great addition to our team but who now won’t be able to join us nor see New Orleans.

It just so happens that this weekend also coincides with the NBA All-Star Game that is taking place in New Orleans. This being the case, there are a large amount of fans and unbelievable traffic that is not always normal in NO except for maybe Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest. During our flights in, one of our members was on a flight with Yao Ming who was flying in for the game. Pretty amazing to see a seven foot, three inch basketball player waiting for his luggage with a rather large security detail. Then as we were leaving, we saw him try to cram himself into an SUV…it did not look like the most comfortable means of travel for him, but I guess you don’t have too many options when you are that tall. Oh well, on with the rest of the trip.

We stayed the night in a little chain motel that lay between NO and the airport and then in the morning we transferred hotels to our “permanent residence” while in town: The French Quarter Townhouses. The now-nineteen of us are sharing two townhouses on the border of the French Quarter…a great location we’ve been told as long as we only walk in two directions outside of our door. After transferring to the new hotel, we had the morning and early afternoon to discover NO on our own. Splitting into smaller groups, we fanned out across the city to explore. My roommate and I took off to go and see as much of NO as we could. We hopped on the first trolley car that we could see (we found that these just reopened a few weeks ago) that took us through St. Charles St. by a collection of beautiful mansions. After heading out of town for a while, we hopped off the trolley and decided to try and head down to the water front. We ran into Magazine St and found a great collection of bars, restaurants and small boutiques. A great little part of NO that we wished that we had more time to explore. We headed through Magazine and again turned to head down to the waterfront. This time we were stopped by the breakwater and a ferry launch. So we turned to head back towards the French Quarter and stumbled upon a Walmart. Since I didn’t have my luggage, I headed inside and purchased a couple of items to get me through the day, hoping that my luggage would be found and delivered that afternoon. After our brief stop, we started our search for some lunch. Passing by all the chain stores, we found the place to eat: Deanie’s. How did we know that it would be delicious? By all the police cars and cabs parked out front. It seemed that we had chosen a great time to eat as once we stepped inside the rain started falling. Since we were roughly 4 miles away from our hotel and we were equipped with weather-proof clothes, we decided to catch a cab and meet up with the others at the hotel.

Once we were all collected at the hotel, we piled into the largest room and had our first conversation about the ideas and expectations we felt that we could deliver in the short amount of time we had. A group of us had already crafted an idea on the flight down that we felt was a great amount of work to deliver but that also opened a whole host of questions we had for Idea Village. We had a meeting scheduled with both Idea Village that was very productive and that laid the framework for our project: to create (as much as possible) a business model and plan, a collection of profiles of best practices and a list of possible funding sources. After this meeting to determine the scope of our project, the SLST group headed out to dinner to Jaques-Imo’s. Wow! This place was unbelievable. From the best cornbread muffins to interesting dishes like Rabbit Paneed, we ate very well and created fond memories of this eatery. If you are heading to New Orleans, we would definitely suggest that you make time to go and eat there. You won’t be upset. I promise.

After dinner, we headed back to the hotel and debriefed on our meeting that afternoon and crafted a game plan for the next morning. Once we were satisfied that we had a good plan, we split up into groups and some of us headed out on the town, some hung out and met the students we didn’t know and others headed to bed to get some rest before our first big day of work.