Day of Relaxation ...or Day of Contemplation?

After 5 days of travel, learning, and difficult service work, today was designed as a day of relaxation and reflection. First on the schedule was visiting the Hurricane Katrina museum. After that, the afternoon was ours--we were going to break up into groups and tour the French Quarter. Fairly straightforward, right?
However, today was the capstone of my New Orleans experience in ways that I could never have expected.
I walked into the Katrina museum and, seeing a destroyed grand piano lit by eerie blue light, knew I was in for a riveting experience. I drifted through each captivating slide show and exhibit in the museum and was taken back to that summer of 2005. I followed the news like any good 6th grader back then, but reading each piece of information through a college student's eyes made me appreciate all the work I've done this week. Furthermore, I found that the upstairs portion of the museum (which was dedicated to the cultural history of the city), made me understand how my perception of the South has changed during my week in NOLA. Honestly, I had always pictured myself living along the east or west coasts because I held unfounded presuppositions about the southern way of life. But, I learned during my week here that the south isn't just about kind manners and good cooking. The second floor exhibits showed me that people everywhere can learn from how well New Orleans balances hard work, celebration, and cultivation of beautiful art.
I was allowed to experience that beautiful art during the rest of the afternoon as 3 friends and I wandered through the Quarter. My favorite part of our travels was visiting the Armstrong park. I absorbed the distant music of street artists while looking at the dark metal sculptures of famous musicians and knew that this wasn't going to be the last time I'd visit New Orleans.
I know it sounds cliche, but I'll seriously travel home tomorrow as a changed person. The Katrina museum reminded our group how easy it is to forget catastrophic events after just a few years. These events still need our support, but local service work is also unending. I'm making a promise to myself to get involved in more service work at home at my closest available opportunity, so the lessons I've learned here don't simply fade into oblivion.

--Tom Pesek