Morning Walk

Without much time to spare, I forced myself to take a short walk around the block to just appreciate the morning.  It was beautiful, cool, and slightly foggy, and just those 5 minutes spent observing the world were so wonderful.  I need to learn to do this more often.  

A lovely lemon hanging just beyond reach in our neighbor's yard. 

One of my favorite trees.  Can you imagine having this is your yard as a kid?  It would be so magical.

Japanese Magnolias

Spring time in New Orleans is a wonderful, beautiful thing.  The first real hint of spring you get is the little buds popping up on the japanese magnolias, and you're just hoping that it gets warm again and they start to bloom.  Then,  in the blink of an eye, they've burst into a wonderful, ethereal cloud of white, mauve, and magenta and it's suddenly 70º outside.  

The Smell of Water

The other day I went for a bike ride on the levee instead of going to the gym.  It was absolutely wonderful. I love biking on a day that is slightly cool so that while you're hot from biking, the cold air on your bare arms is refreshing and invigorating.  Even though New Orleans is a city surrounded by water, I hardly interact with it the same way that I do with water at home in Charleston.   Here, the only time I really see the water is when I go to the levee.  Just the smell of water in the air is absolutely beautiful for me, and one of those things that I don't notice has been gone until I smell it again.  Riding my bike and breathing that air made me realize that I absolutely have to live on the water.  That smell just soothes me and takes me home, and I absolutely can't live without it.  I can't stop thinking about that smell, and wanting to get back to it, but unfortunately it's dropped about 20 degrees since my bike ride and the levee is always windy - way too cold for my southern blood.  

Here are some places by the water I wouldn't mind living.  

Be the Change You Want to See

I let one of my more personally important New Year's resolutions fall through the crack over the last few week - updating this blog 2-3 times a week.  But, I wanted share one of the things that I've been working on so busily lately.  As the Green Club president, I've been overwhelmed with planning many things, and this event, Get Waste with the Wave, happily came to fruition and went better than expected!  

Get Wasted was supposed to raise awareness for the amount of waste we (as a campus, as a nation, as a culture) create on a daily basis.  (Did you know that there's a landfill in New Jersey that you can see from outer space?  What a great way to remember our culture right?  What can you see from outer space?  The Great Wall of China and a landfill.  Really pathetic America.  We can do better than that.)  We had structures made of chicken wire that were strung together so that you could walk through and see all the trash.  Each column represented a certain amount of waste created by the Tulane uptown campus.  You can see our brilliant designer, Tippy's, head popping up in the first photo.  She truly did a great job with everything.  

We sold over 100 reusable cups at the event, gave away even more reusable shopping bags from our generous donors including Winn Dixie and Coca Cola, and we got over ten pages worth of signatures on a petition to get our food court to use ceramic plates, silverware and cups as the default option instead of automatically handing food out in styrofoam or plastic to-go boxes (the majority of people eat in the building).  

I know this is a long, and rather specific post, but I'm so excited to be part of such an exciting change on campus, and sad to be leaving after this semester because there is just so much positive energy!  And, this kind of stuff is just part of who I am, so if I didn't throw myself into it, I wouldn't be doing myself justice.  In signing off, I hope everyone reading this realizes just how much waste they create - try bringing your own bags to the grocery store next time, carrying your own water bottle, or your own coffee mug - you even get discounts at a lot of places!  There are so many easy solutions to our waste problem, you just have to get in the habit, and "be the change you want to see in the world."