Touching the Missisippi RiverWe arrived in New Orleans, Louisiana early Sunday morning. We then heard from Brett's friend Gordon there, that they were having Stake Conference and Elder Christofferson, the new apostle, was speaking. So we drove to Baton Rouge right away and got there just in time for Stake Conference and got to hear him speak which was really neat. My favorite part was when he spoke to all the Spanish speakers in Spanish for two minutes and I could actually understand what he was saying! I did learn something in Chile - yay!
After Stake Conference we took some pictures by the temple, which we did not get to go in, since I lost my recommend the week of the wedding, and don't have a new one yet.... then went to his friends Gordon and his wife Amber's house where we stayed the next couple days. They have a really fun house with a TON of property behind it and around it. They breed dogs and sell them, so you'll never see a house with more dogs. They had probably 70 dogs on their property! They breed beagles and train them for hunting, as well as many other varieties of dogs. They also had a big swimming pool, pond, and horse corral in their backyard. One day went fishing in their pond, because they keep large mouth bass in there, and they are really fun to catch because they're so big, but then just throw back so you can catch them again. One evening we went to dinner at Ambers parents' house, and had a traditional southern meal. Fried everything. I'm not kidding either. Fried fish, fried potatoes, fried rolls, fried green tomatoes (which are Awesome by the way), fried potato salad, fried fries, and then some squash pie. It was delicious, but I don't know how they eat that all the time. I think I would get sick from all the oil. They were the perfect epitomy of a 'Southern' family and I laughed the whole time I was there, they were great. Another evening we had a crawfish boil. This is the process... They get big bags of live crawfish, dump them into a container of some sort, drench them in salt and water(this is so they throw up all the bad stuff inside of them), let them sit there for quite a while, dump them into a huge boiling pot along with vegetables and seasonings, let them boil, dump them onto a table, and everybody just chows down from there. Pretty crazy, especially for a girl who doesn't usually like any type of seafood. To my credit, I did eat about 20 just for the experience.
The Crawfish Boil
We also got to take a trip out to Avery Island and tour the Tabasco Plant, and tast test everything Tabasco has ever made. I had no idea they made so many things.... all different kinds of Tabasco sauce, salsa, chile, Tabasco ice cream (not my favorite), etc... Who knew? Then we toured the rest of Avery Island and got to see lots of alligators and really pretty jungle area, as well as a reserve of Snowy Egrets.That night we had a traditional crawfish boil. 
Our last night there, we went to downtown New Orleans and ate dinner, and walked the famous 'Bourbon Street.' The jazz music and culture part was really fun, but to be honest, there was just so much other junk there that it really wasn't my favorite, and I wouldn't want to go back. It's too bad that such a fun place has become so degraded. Before dinner we drove through some of the areas that were hit by Hurricane Katrina and it's amazing how ruined everything still is.
Overall though we had an awesome trip and are thankful we can fly for free so we can go see all these fun places! We found out though, that even though the plane tickets are free, it is still expensive to travel!
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