New Orleans

I was in the midst of grant writing today when a song came on my Pandora station. Somewhere in the heart of work, I sometimes forget what we are actually writing our grants for. I know that seems so ridiculous, but it's a deep hole where you loose yourself in sentence structure, punctuation and persuasiveness. Once I take a step back from the grammar, I remember why we are writing this, why we want to go to Indonesia, and for a couple minutes, I allow myself to think about the possibility of us actually getting to travel there.

I've been so caught up in the actual writing process (we have been spending almost 6 hours a day writing these for our Wednesday deadline), that I took off work and sometimes school to concentrate on this. I slept in yesterday until almost noon, which I rarely ever do. This morning I woke up early, went for a run and then dropped into the coffee shop to work on more grant planning. As I was sitting, feeling uninspired and burnt out on writing and editing, a song from my New Orleans video came on. I got tears in my eyes, as it reminded me of why I'm passionate about this in the first place. It was refreshing enough that I got some work done and I uploaded this video so those of you that couldn't see it before, can now view it. Big thanks to Connor for helping me put this together.

I miss this place and all that the inspiration it gives me. I know I never did a NOLA trip report on this blog, and frankly, I'm not sure I can sum up my experiences enough to justify the trip. It was such a heartbreaking, life changing experience, I don't know that I can list all of the things I've learned.