I go down south

As most of you know, my Mom and her whole family are from New Orleans. We were convinced by my Aunts, who moved back into town permenantly about a month ago, that my family should come down for Christmas to check everything out.

So we did, and here's the deal: It's really really weird here, and not in the ways that I'd expected. For example, there's a bizzare level or normalcy going on. Parts of the city are just completely ok: all the stores are open and the streets are full of cars and people and life. I went down to the Quarter, had some beignets, and did some shopping without seeing anything amiss.

Bourbon Street ... and never fear, the sketchy bars are still open and doing business at 10 am!!

Then, 20 yards away from everything being normal, there are huge stretches of complete wasteland. These neighborhoods are filled with gutted houses, and still have huge piles of waste in the streets and have retained some of the stink from the summer.

These were once beautiful shotgun houses ... the waterline on the sides of the houses and the piles of junk are just everywhere.

This is one of the thousands of ghost cars that were flooded out, and now just sit on the streets:

This is an interesting picture because it shows the cross-shaped marks on the sides of the houses that the rescue workers made when checking for flood victims. They even checked the McDonalds:

And finally, here's an example of a FEMA trailer, which you see fairly often in front of drowned-out houses, sometimes all alone in neighborhoods that are now completely devoid of life:

So the city is now a patchwork, and every time we go out to a favorite store or restaurant, we have to wonder if it will still be there. That said, everyone here seems to be pretty optimistic about the city's chances. It seems as though the people who have returned really feel like they are involved with the recovery process and are invested in making New Orleans a better place.