A Whirlwind Week

Hi! Here to update you on what's been going on for us down south:

On Tuesday we had the luck of seeing the Maraists again (the ND alum and his wife who'd taken us to Lake Martin and Breaux Bridge) and they took us to see St. Martinville, where they'd both grown up. This was our real Acadian history lesson--since Mrs. Maraist is currently writing a book on Acadian history, we had some really knowledgeable people to show us around. The Acadian memorial was our first stop, where they have all the names carved into the wall of the first 3,000 or so settlers who landed in the area from Nova Scotia. They also have a huge mural of the settlers which was recently painted, and a descendant from each family posed for the painting. We also saw the Evangeline Oak, a huge famous oak tree that sits by the Bayou Teche.

The Church in St. Martinville was beautiful, and it was so old it even had those kind of pews where you have to open the little door to get in. After taking a little drive through the country and the sugarcane fields and checking out a country house of the Maraists right on the bayou, we headed to Broussard, another little town. We had dinner there at Nash's, a Cajun/Italian (an interesting and delicious combo) restaurant inside an old Victorian home. We had another fantastic meal, seafood of course, and we're just amazed at the generosity of the ND alumni club here in S Louisiana.

One of the highlights of the week was our dinosaur dig in Turkey. We made our own clay the night before and had the kids make dinosaur bones out of it (after getting to play with it, of course). The first class was a total disaster, though, because our clay didn't have enough flour at ALL and got all over their hands and wouldn't come off! We took them outside after that and we'd hid some "dino eggs" (big easter eggs) around the playground area filled with candy. We also hid pre-made dinosaur bones in the sandbox for them to dig up, which they loved...some of them were even convinced that the sandbox rocks were teeth.

They had their drama, music, and dance performance on Thursday, which was hilarious. The kids had been working on the play, called "The Legend of the Cursed Island," for five weeks, and they'd basically written the entire thing themselves! It was hilarious to see how they'd made their characters act exactly as they do. We got to meet some of their parents and relatives at the play, and hopefully we'll get to meet more of them at the end-of-the-year production.

Friday was a different day because the kids didn't come to camp--instead, we spent the day cleaning the biggest room at the Thensted Center with Daniel and Phillip. It was one of those jobs that is so satisfying...it was dirty. really dirty. We washed the baseboards, walls, cleared the bookshelves, the AC vents, the fridges, vacuumed, etc. Our favorite part was finding a perfectly preserved skeleton of what may have been a baby squirrel about ten years ago underneath an old fire hydrant! It felt so good to clear out the place and give it a good cleaning.

That night we had Stacey's birthday dinner over at Susan's, which was amazing as always! Mandy made an unbelievable birthday cake for Stacey (her favorite yellow cake with chocolate icing and raspberries) and we all celebrated together...great way to spend my last night as a teenager, says Stacey.

Stacey's birthday was pretty different from any other birthday she's ever had, and it was pretty darn awesome. Although we were hitting ourselves on the heads when the alarm went off, we dragged ourselves out of bed at 6:30 to get to Café des Amis in Breaux Bridge, or "Pont Breaux," Louisiana. They have a zydeco breakfast there every Saturday morning where people go to dance! We hadn't yet been to the breakfast and we knew we had to get there before we left, and it was totally worth it. We got the zydeco omelet and some biscuits for breakfast and then just stood and watched the people dance for a little while. Even though it was just the two of us and we hardly knew anything about zydeco dancing, we got pulled out onto the dance floor by some knowledgeable zydeco dancers before we even made an attempt to dance with each other. We learned a little bit about trying to keep our rhythm, but we really weren't the best...

Turns out we just needed to be led by some experts, and we had our wish granted that night! The Oliver boys, who live next to the Comeauxs and are the sons of Mandy's friend Renee, took us to a cajun wedding :) Although we never did end up meeting the bride and groom, we met a lot of the family members and danced the night away! It was striking how good people are here at dancing--we couldn't believe we were in a place where EVERYONE knows how to dance, and can do it well, too!

In between dancing in the morning and dancing in the evening, we went on a bike ride through Lafayette, looking through shops and browsing through downtown. We got some chicken gyros at Cedar Grocery (awesome) on really good French Bread instead of pitas. There were a lot of flags hanging from the ceiling and we were very surprised to see that we could identify most of them because of our trip around the world at the Thensted! After lunch we got ice cream at Borden's-birthday cake dipped in chocolate, Stacey's favorite. We took the bikes back to Susan's and then went shopping to look for souvenirs and clothes.

We had noticed a sign for a mall on the way from Lafayette to Carencro, so we decided to stop and check it out. "Northgate Mall." Well, we felt like we were in a post-apocalyptic world because there were approximately 8 people in the entire mall and there were long strips where there were no stores at all. The only signs of life were a couple of Foot Lockers and a few stores without even a name. Significantly sketched out, we scooted out of there pretty quickly!

After a long and exhausting but awesome week, we got some much-needed sleep last night. We can't believe how fast it's flown by! Stay tuned this week for some updates as we finish up our last week in Cajun country.