FBI, Toga, NOLA pt. 1

Hey ya,

This week was actually quite an experience-filled one! From warmer weather to basketball, exciting classes and another weekend trip away, there’s definitely lots to share!

Monday 18 November

This morning was relatively uneventful aside from some messaging in the group chat for my dorm where some guy was asking everyone to look out for a hamster. What we all initially thought was that his hamster had escaped his room turned out to be a case of one of the fraternity’s house hamster escaping, in which case the poor guy probably got killed by a car or something.

I spent the afternoon working on an article critique for my journalism class.

My journalism class was boring tonight because it was entirely spent listening to students presenting their group presentations, and three groups presented on basically the exact same topic, so it go boring very quickly and easily. Thankfully my partner and I got assigned the class after thanksgiving week for presenting, which worked out great considering we hadn’t even started the project yet lol.

I spent the night at Dylan’s where we watched the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie. He eventually fell asleep and due to some particularly horrendous snoring on his part (think severely angered beast in a horror movie constantly screaming and screeching) I didn’t fall asleep until the early AM’s.

Tuesday 19 November

Today turned out to be a beautiful, bright and warm fall day – 19 degrees!! I took Dylan to the Grill for brunch today and he loved it. Pasta lady knew my order again (what a gem) and the smoothie station was back open so I grabbed some berry smoothies.

My drug crimes class was some more chit chat about drug crimes and our final assessment pieces which are due soon. For the first time in my life, I was one of only a handful of students who raised their hand when our professor asked the class who had finished a particular assignment which wasn’t due for another 3 weeks.

I again skipped my family law class to go to the basketball (in my defence, I’ve already passed the class and have plenty of time to study for the final exam). This game was batman-themed (no idea why) and Dylan came along. We got on the jumbotron (which was super embarrassing) and then Dylan tried to get us onto the kiss cam (also super embarrassing).

I spent the rest of the night making memes about my friends, because who doesn’t show their love for their friends by roasting them through personalised homemade memes? I have now made a grand total of 140-something over the semester, and they love them and we all get a bit of a laugh out of them.

Wednesday 20 November

Today was another pretty day on campus. Not as warm, but still bright and a little sunny.

My business negotiation class tonight was one of my favourites! Given it was our last official class (our last one is when we’re completing part of our final), we did a hunger-games/free-for-all-style negotiation. Basically, half of us were assigned a US city (divided into East and West divisions), and the other half were assigned a musical artist (and also assigned a division) (I was assigned San Francisco, therefore West division). The aim of the game was to fill up our schedules by either booking artists or booking cities by negotiating with our classmates. There were 4 rounds (December 1-7, Dec 8-14, Dec 15-21, and Dec 22-31), and the rules changed each round:

As a venue, I had it pretty easy. I could simply take a smaller cut of pay in order to convince an artist to come to San Francisco, and in the final round I was able to double book on Christmas and NYE (whereas an artist could only play once per day). My grand total over the 4 rounds came to $2,025,000 and I don’t think any of my randomly drawn favourites knew they were my favourites (so I milked a lot of money out of them haha).

I met up with Dylan afterwards at the building next door to where my class was as he was attending a journalism school documentary screening. He knew there was going to be free food after the event, so we used that as an opportunity to snag some free dinner. I felt like such a scab but no one noticed I wasn’t meant to be there and the food was delicious haha (pizza, sliders, garlic knots, chicken nuggets and brownie cookies). I then went back to Dylan’s and we both crashed super early.

Thursday 21 November

Dylan and I headed to the Grill for brunch again today, so of course I had pasta and smoothies, and they also had fried chicken today.

As Georgia and I were walking into our drug crimes class today, our professor chatted to us about how he’s really enjoyed having us in his class and he wants us to keep in contact with what we’re up to. How sweet! So when we got into class, Georgia started an iMessage group chat with the three of us in it. She messaged Aussie Aussie Aussie, and I replied with Oi Oi Oi. He later replied with a tick emoji. The class itself was great because we had an FBI agent come and give a presentation! Special Agent Anthony Householder works with the Tarnished Badge Task Force in Memphis which specialises in investigating corrupt law enforcement agents in the greater Memphis area – a specialised division I didn’t realise but am glad exists. He spoke about his career path from jobless college graduate to working in politics and lobbying, and then eventually putting himself out there and applying to the FBI which had been his dream since he was a child. He then delved into some of the more interesting cases he’d investigated, and our professor knew a lot of the cases because he’d worked with, and in some cases even hired/trained/been the superior of, the law enforcement agents involved, given that he was high up in the Shelby County Sherriff’s Department in Memphis until his retirement 5 years ago. We heard about cases involving bribery, prostitution, robbery, extortion and transportation and distribution of drugs. One of the more interesting cases we heard was of a police officer who gave out confidential law enforcement information to men who were paying him. He not only got charged for that, but also for being involved in the kidnapping and torture of a man who his information led the paying criminals to, and he therefore received life imprisonment.

The rest of the afternoon was spent chilling before we started getting ready for tonight’s Toga Party! It was being held at Proud Larry’s by Code Pink, a gay organisation in Oxford. We didn’t have any actual togas or sheets (they’d all sold out at Walmart apparently lol) so we just wore white dresses and added gold touches. The boys came to our dorm for pre-drinks and they’d actually managed to get some sheets, and Declan had even made himself a crown of leaves using leaves from a tree outside the dorm. After the boys threw some glitter on their nipples and chests, we headed into town.

The party was a little empty at first, but pepped up a bit later. Later in the night a few drag queens put on some performances for us. I eventually decided to follow Georgia and Declan to Billups to meet some other friends since the drinks at the toga party were soooo expensive. I downed some drink before eventually crashing and having a little nap on the couch. The others had joined us at this point, but a few of us decided to leave around 1am.

(Georgia and I)

(Myself and Ciara)

(Georgia, me, Ciara and CJ)

(Declan and Georgia)

(When I crashed lol)

I got back to the dorm, heated up some chicken and cheese melts, and fell right asleep despite Georgia not being home yet. That gal seshes on her own clock, and I knew I’d eventually hear her come home (which I did because she was crashing about and talking to herself haha).

Friday 22 November

Slept in this morning and then met Dylan at Rebel Market to get some food. They had a great selection today, including good sushi options (they only ever offer two kinds a day) and catfish! We then went back to my dorm to study for a bit (I’ve finally done a bunch of work on my journalism group project!!) and then he headed off for work.

(How pretty was campus today!?)

Aside from some washing, packing for my trip tomorrow and eventually grabbing dinner with the gang at Rebel Market, nothing exciting eventuated. I went to Dylan’s for a few hours after dinner, but unfortunately spent a good half an hour in the bathroom feeling (and being) sick. He dropped me home around 10:30PM, and I spent the rest of the night writing this blog post before hitting the hay.

Saturday 23 November

After not falling asleep until 5am, I had to wake up at 6:30am! Love that for me! But I wasn’t too stressed about it, because today was the day we were heading to New Orleans (or NOLA for short, which stands for New Orleans Louisiana (LA is the state code)) and I knew I’d be able to get some zz’s in on the 6 hour bus ride there. I packed my last few things, and then jumped on the bus at around 7:45am-ish for an 8am departure.

We made a few stops on the journey there, including a lunch stop in Madison, MS (where we had to run past a very alive looking dead snake on the road and I crapped myself in front of many onlookers lmao) and then at the info centre on the state line.

(Back: CJ (Aus/NZ), Vera (Germany), Declan (Scotland), Al (England)) (Front: Susanna (Scotland), Georgia (Aus), Ciara (Ireland), myself)

(CJ, Ciara, Susanna, myself and Vera)

Along the way, Georgia and I received a text from our drug crimes professor in our group chat. It was a bit of a laugh:

We got to our hostel around 4:30pm-ish and settled into our rooms. I was with Georgia, Vera and CJ. A group of us then headed next door to Popeyes to grab some lunch, where we tried their famous chicken sandwiches (burgers) which are selling out in many restaurants across the country. I don’t really know why though – it wasn’t that good. While we were here I also snapped my left pointer finger nail in half after getting it stuck under my seat while trying to shuffle it forwards. It bled heaps, it hurt a lot from throbbing and I felt super weak for the next few hours. What a great start to the trip! We went back to the rooms and chilled out and/or took naps before getting ready for the night.

We headed into Bourbon Street for the night, because it’s absolutely the place to be on a Saturday night in NOLA. The street almost had a – from my experiences – Thailand vibe to it in the sense that it felt like there weren’t many rules and it was very touristy. People were drinking on the streets (you could buy a drink in one bar and walk the street with it and sometimes even take it into other bars), people on balconies were throwing bead necklaces at those who flashed, street performers playing, gift shops all over the place, and cheap food and drinks everywhere. It was wild! We bar hopped for a little while including grabbing some famous hand grenades (a cocktail drink sold either frozen (the preferred way) or on the rocks, made with vodka, rum, gin and melon liqueur) which are sold exclusively in New Orleans. They are verrrryyy sweet but also very delicious. One of these could definitely knock out a lightweight for the rest of the night.

(Myself, Vera and Georgia)

(Me with a hand grenade, in a plastic cup which is shaped like a grenade at the bottom)

(A drunk lady throwing beads down to onlookers)

We bar hopped some more, tried to score some beads from a drunk lady throwing them from her balcony, and then Ciara, Georgia, Susanna and I paid a visit to Hunk Oasis – a male strip club. When in NOLA, right?! We had an absolute ball, especially Georgia and Ciara who received lap dances from a very hunky man. It was made especially funny by the fact that they did not know they were getting them until the guy came over haha.

(We weren't allowed to take photos or videos in the club but I snuck this hilarious one in)

We met back up with the others and grabbed some huge slices of pizza before getting back to the hostel around 2am.

Sunday 24 November

Woke up a little dusty this morning but reminiscent of the fun last night was. Today was going to be relatively chilled, so we took our time getting ready before heading out. We walked from our hostel into Bourbon Street and strolled it during the daytime. We then made our way to the waterfront at Woldenberg Riverfront Park which lines the Missisippi River and where we checked out some paddle steamer boats. We then headed towards Jackson Square where we watched some hilarious street performers for an hour.

Afterwards, we headed to an Italian restaurant called Frank’s for lunch. I had a pasta that was way too expensive for how much I was given and its subpar taste.

After lunch we strolled around Jackson Square, wandering between the art stalls, the main square, and then ventured into the famous and beautiful Basilica of Saint Louis King of France Cathedral, which is the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans.

(Me and Georgia)

(Back: Ciara (Ireland), me, Georgia (Aus), and Vera (Germany))

(Front: Eamon (Aus), CJ (Aus/NZ), and JL (South Korea))

We then wandered through some other quaint and pretty streets in the French Quarter to get to Louis Armstrong Park. The park, also, was pretty and looked beautiful in the sun. However, there wasn’t much there so we soon after caught a ride back to the hostel to have some chill out time.

(Left to right: Vera (Germany), me, Ciara (Ireland), CJ (Aus/NZ), Eamon (Aus), Georgia (Aus), and JL (South Korea))

For dinner, a few of us girls decided to go to a Mexican restaurant. It ended up not being that great, and it was freezing inside, so we were glad to leave. We met up with the others on Bourbon Street around 10pm, and of course grabbed ourselves some hand grenades again. We spent most of the rest of the night hanging out in a bar we’d been to the night before called The Swamp.

(Left to right: Georgia (Aus), me, CJ (Aus/NZ), Ciara (Ireland), Vera (Germany), and Susanna (Scotland))

After a bunch of the others headed off early because they were tired, Susanna, Ciara, Georgia, Vera and I stayed so we could ride the mechanical bull. It was way harder than I expected and I actually had a little headache after my falls, but it was a fun experience! The girls and I eventually got home around 1:30am.

(Myself, Georgia and Susanna)

(End of my first attempt)

(End of my second attempt)

The NOLA trip hasn’t ended yet, but in the spirit of keeping this blog a Monday-Sunday thing, you’ll have to wait until next week to hear the rest!

- Emily xx