Day 22: Thursday, January 26

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day 22: Thursday, January 26

We started early on this chilly morning. 5:00 for Dave, Feke, Justin, and Shawny, 6:00 for everyone else. We got the usual wakeup whisper: "(Name), it's Shawny. It's 6:00 Thursday and we're in New Orleans. It's 38 degrees out. Time to get up." This time, though, there was a new line: "We're going home today." We started hustling around even before the sun rose, all the while trying to let Leo sleep in preparation for his long drive home to Marion, Indiana (about 15 hours from NOLA).

We sorted through unclaimed goods, brought down the tents, ate leftover snack cakes and granola bars, and packed the trailer for the Verrips brothers' drive home. We made sure that our showers, portapots, and water dispenser would be taken away. We pulled our bus out onto the street and gathered around it for one last photo all together. Even though we are meeting on campus on Friday, the brothers will not be back in California yet, and once they get back, Jorge will be on his way to a semester abroad in Mexico. Leo, of course, will be in Indiana, so there will be no time soon when this group will gather again. We took a couple of final photos and we sent Chris and Justin on their way.

The rest of us headed off to the airport, where we said goodbye to Leo and gathered our piles of luggage. We struggled at the airport to readjust to having rooms filled with electric lights and a range of choices of food to eat. Some of us caught our first glimpses of television in more than three weeks, while others learned that Angelina Jolie is pregnant. We wondered together what had happened out in the world beyond NOLA while we've been operating in all-work-all-the-time mode from our beloved lot in Algiers Point.

We flew to Chicago, and started running for McDonald's and Starbucks as soon as we left our seats. We called Chris and Justin and learned that they, too, had gone in search of Big Macs, but, finding none, had settled for Jack-in-the-Box. They had already made it past Baton Rouge before our first plane even took off.

We all sat down to eat our food while Marcia and Shawny struggled to send yesterday's pictures and journal entry during our brief layover. They started laughing at us from across the room. We were sitting facing each other along the floor, stretching about 20 or 30 feet long and eight feet wide. We had re-created the space of the bus, and we had all chosen to occupy it together even though there were plenty of available chairs scattered throughout our gate.

When we got on the plane, we were congratulated over the intercom, and we got a loud round of applause from all of the passengers. Even though there was a movie playing during the flight, most of us wrote or re-read our journals or worked on our projects until our computers died. Some of us slept. Really hard. As we felt ourselves nearing California, we started wondering how much we would miss each other. We feared that it might be bad. Casey offered to have a slumber party at her place, where we could all stay together, then go off to class on Friday just like we were still in NOLA.

Our arrival was delayed by air traffic in San Francisco, so we found ourselves circling and circling, but never landing. We got pretty antsy and gathered in the aisles to talk and laugh. Whoever among us wasn't sitting in a row full of "us" came closer to where the biggest clumps of us were. We were surprised to go so stir-crazy, as there was no one else on the plane who was more accustomed to being cooped up in a confined space. Once we hit the ground, we found ourselves unable to connect with the bus we had chartered to take us back to campus. We had confirmed that the bus would be there during our layover in Chicago, but we hadn't fully confirmed where "there" was. After a maddening hour or so trying to connect with the bus, we just jumped on Super Shuttles and finally made it back to campus that way.

We were met by lots of friends, including most of the Student Life staff. Members of our beloved ASSMC executive team were there, so we got to thank them in person again for all that they did to support us while we were in NOLA. The College president, Br. Ronald Gallagher, came out of a regents meeting to welcome us home. They all held banners, blew horns, and threw confetti. We got hugged a hundred times each.

Before we went our separate ways, we yelled "Get on da bus!" one more time and gathered in a circle. Shawny talked about the end of the book/movie Jarhead, where Tony Swofford says, "We are still in the desert." Shawny reminded us that WE are still in New Orleans, and that New Orleans will always be in us. She asked us to keep New Orleans in the front of all of our conversations about our trip, and to remind people always how big the problems still are, how bad they still are, and how long they will go on. She talked about the day we first approached Donald Feliciana's house in the Lower Ninth Ward, and how impossible that job looked to us. She reminded us that we changed that situation entirely for Donald, and that we can change more situations if we continue to be the people that we were when we were in NOLA. She told us how much she loves us, and we all crunched in on each other for a big group hug.

A lot of us decided that we aren't yet ready to part ways. We are all going to Casey's house, and we will eat together before class at 10:00 a.m. on Friday. Some of us went home with our parents or the roommates who have missed us while we've been gone.

What a different place Saint Mary's College is than the streets of the Ninth Ward. We hope we can help people here to see those battered streets, even from thousands of miles away...