We got a late start and went to the convention center for Learning Day. And, no offense to Learning Day, but it was kind of boring. We made some postcards, did a workshop about our aspirations and made plegdes to do some sort of good deed, and then went to a forum about how to be a Christian in a non-Christian world. That actually was pretty cool. I met a cool kid form Minnesota named Nicole and we prayed about situations in our life where we need courage. She is a lot braver than I am, I’ll say that much.
Because we got stamps from all three sections of our activies, we were entitled to a bandana from the ELCA. We trekked across half the convention center to get them and then took a picture with them to show how ganster we were.
It seems to me that the third day of a convention is the day when you start losing energy, and that was definitely true of our trip. I started freaking out because Mom and Dad wanted to eat in the convention center and I really wanted to go outside and get out of the freezing air conditioning. I think my hysteria was excacerbated the fact that I hadn’t really eaten a full meal in two days and I had woken up four or five time that night due to being cold. Mom, Dad, and everyone else pretty much ignored my freaking out and ate inside anyway. I got a hold of myself and maintained my composure until we got to Riverwalk and started looking at masks and other Mardi Gras stuff. Then I started to fall to pieces because I couldn’t see the point of us wasting our time in tourist traps when there was so much cool stuff to do.Then Dad said we were going to get some Hadgen Dazs, nevermind that we had just eaten less then twenty minutes ago and the ice cream line was at least 25 people deep. I sat down on the sidewalk and tried, ineffectively, to calm down. It didn’t help that Justin came over next to me and started telling me everything I never wanted to know about Resident Evil 4. I turned my face to the wall and feigned sleep to try to get a few minutes to myself, to limited success. I realized that I’d have to take it up a notch if I really wanted to be left alone, and pulled my hat over my face. I don’t know what it was, but then I just completely broke down and started crying in the middle of the Riverwalk mall.
After a few minutes, I felt a little better and was ready to rejoin the world at large. I took my hat off and asked the group if anybody really wanted to go to the Garden District, which was our plan for later that day. Nobody wanted to, so we went back to the hotel to hang out until it was time to go to the Superdome. Jimmy and I sat in the lobby and played a few hands of poker, but it was kind of boring because it was just the two of us. (Emily wasn’t playing because she was on the computer and Justin was swimming.) We decided to ask the bartender if he wanted to play a hand, seeing as he had absolutely nothing to do. He played quite a few hands with us and got us a bunch of waters and stuff.
The speakers that evening at the Superdome were awesome. The first was a guy named Spencer West who had his legs amputated at age five due to a muscle disease. He talked about how important it was to take your challenges as they come and the value of standing up for what you believe in. Then he asked us to stand up if we believed that we could make a difference in the world. Everybody stood up, and he jumped out of his wheelchair and stood on his hands. Then he said, “This is 38,000 people standing up for what they believe” and everybody cheered like crazy. He jumped back into his wheelchair (though it looked more like he was flying than jumping, his arms were that strong) and wheeled off the stage.
The next speaker was a former child soldier named Michel Chikwaine. He was pretty cool, although his story was very brutal. Then he said that when he first visited New Orleans right after Katrina, he was reminded of the refugee camps he had lived in as a child and how we needed to spread the wealth and take care of each other more.
Then this band Skillet started playing. Apparantly, they’re some big deal, and Justin loved them, but I wasn’t really impressed, so I left before the second set, along with Jimmy, Emily, and Dad.
Once we got back to the hotel (after a quick, desperately-needed bathroom break at the Holiday Inn), we went upstairs for the dance. We hung out for a little while, but the people there were dancing kind of… how can I say this…un-Christianly and we couldn’t really talk because the music was so freakin’ loud, so we went downstairs and Jimmy bought everybody nightcaps from our friend Eric the Bartender. (Jimmy cannot hold on to money. It burns a hole in his pocket. He’s bought Emily and I more gum, Chapstick, and Vitamin Waters in the past week than our parents have in a month. He is incredibly generous.) The kids got virgin Hurricanes, Dad got a scotch, and Mom got a beer. (Oh no, Lutherans drinking!) Jimmy then took a sip of water and made a face, commenting that the water tasted like mud after the Hurricane. We thought about that for a second. “The water tastes like mud after the hurricane,” he said. “Wow, that is really tragic when you think about it.”
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