N'Awlins

I am behind on my writing, so I'll start where I left off last week--the weekend trip to New Orleans with taiko. We drove all night on Thursday and performed two sets on Friday afternoon and evening. The sets would have been exhausting for me with a full night's sleep, but it was especially hard after "sleeping" in a car. Let's see...we played 10 songs, and I played 6 of those on the oodaiko (big drum, punching motion, very tiring) and 3 of those on the chus (medium size, big motions, occasional jumping). Ha, wow. I'm kind of glad I added that up now and not beforehand. All things considered, everyone played pretty well.

It was a pretty good trip overall, too, even though there was a lot of taiko togetherness between myself and the other 8 girls (you know, the obligatory naked pillow fights, girl-on-girl action, [insert other male fantasy here]). It was a good chance to get to know some of the other taiko members better, and even if all of their...uh, I'll call it "geek speak" (anime-type things)...goes over my head, they're a good group. It's a whole other world that I know nothing about, and all I can do is laugh and share a glance with the few other members as clueless as I am. The members are all mostly sweethearts and I appreciate their authenticity, though.

The city itself? Eh, the voodoo history and flamboyant debauchery are entertaining, but too gaudy and phony for me to stomach on a regular basis. We randomly came across 3 parades on our rainy Saturday excursion, though--2 for St. Joseph's Day, an Italian thing. I got a garter, a kiss on the cheek, and a fake rose from a cute Italian guy! It's a tradition. Mmm Italians...okay so the place has it's perks, but I digress. Part of me wonders if they just made this holiday up to have another celebration, but it doesn't actually matter. Oh, and I bought a voodoo doll, so don't say I didn't warn you. ;) The verdict: excellent location for a crazy weekend a couple times in your life, but I wouldn't want to live there...Besides, they eat entirely too much seafood.