nola - new friends

as i was driving toward new orleans, my philly friend thomas contacted his sister laura in new orleans to help me find a place to stay during my visit there. new orleans is their hometown, so they had connections and solid info about the city.

while i was in the french quarter, laura texted me to meet up. our first phone conversation consisted mostly of her giving me turn-by-turn directions, trying to extract me from what felt like a traffic version of a chinese finger trap. she called just in time and successfully rescued me using tchoupitoulas street - the name of which took me forever to pronounce properly.

laura and two of her friends, kim and lindsay met me at the bulldog in uptown - a really great pub which has a great menu including delicious burgers. even though it was kind of chilly outside, we decided to eat where there wasn't smoke and excessive noise. we sat as close to the fire pit as possible!

we got back to their house where i met laura's other roommate rebecca and her friend corey.  we chatted about various things including embarrassing stories.  so fun.  i really enjoyed hanging out with laura and her housemates and friends.  they are such a cool bunch.  i could tell the weekend would be a lot of fun.  

that night, as we started to fall asleep while telling stories, we finally decided to call it a night.  i was so thankful and happy to be indoors with friendly people.  laura, kim, and rebecca were awesome hostesses. i slept cozily on their futon with sheep sheets, although no sheep counting was needed for me since i was already so tired. : )