Brawl, Laura, and Mike the Tiger
Easter break just ended, and we’re all settling back to our usual lifestyles here on campus, but the past week has been completely glorious, devoid of classes and homework and assignments and teachers and all that fun students must deal with every day. Personally, I really enjoyed my Easter break. In fact, I enjoyed it SO much, that I will give you all a blow by blow of how it happened…
My break began on Saturday morning, leaving campus with my good friend Dana McGee, who is totally and completely awesome. We drove all the way down to Baton Rouge, rocking out the whole way. It was so much fun, it’s not even funny. She had the entire Transformers soundtrack on her iPod, so I was incredibly excited about that, seeing how I love that movie. Anyway, we made it to Baton Rouge, and a few minutes after we got to her house, the first exciting thing about break happened.
Sadly, a friend of Dana’s family was injured in a tragic accident a few months back, and is still struggling with the repercussions of said accident. She wasn’t hurt very badly, and she has recovered well for the most part, but lately she had been experiencing back problems. Now this lady speaks little English, but is fluent in Spanish, so I was offered the opportunity to help translate for her as she attended the doctor to get her back checked out. I gladly took the opportunity and called it my good deed of the week, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have my personal reasons for doing it as well.
First off, I’m a Theta Chi. Our motto is “The Helping Hand”. As president, I truly make an effort to model my actions to the (sometimes impossibly) high standards that I have committed myself to by joining my Fraternity. Because of this, I could not let such an obvious opportunity to help slip past me. My other big reason for helping is a little more selfish. For those who don’t know, I’m attempting to go to medical school. I’ve always loved the environment that surrounds doctors. The smell of hospitals, the white coats, the low humming of the machines, they’ve always held a special kind of attraction for me. It’s weird, I know. Anyway, translating is how I originally fell in love with the whole thing. I began my incursion into the medical field by translating for American doctors who would perform surgeries in medical brigades back home, and helping Dana’s friend out gave me an opportunity to relive those days, even if briefly.
Anyway, later that day, once this whole issue had happened and ended, I met up with my cousin and we drove down to New Orleans. There, we did pretty much nothing for five days. It was glorious. After the last couple of months, the mere idea of doing nothing seemed unattainable, but now, it had become a pleasant reality. As usual, we busted out the video games, and spent a lot of time playing through the story mode of Super Smash Brothers Brawl. If you’ve never played that game, I highly recommend it because it’s awesome. Anyway, as it turns out, my cousin was moving, so I helped him and his parents move, and that was cool. I think I may have been allergic to their new carpet though, because I developed a pretty harsh sounding cough that disappeared as soon as I left their house.
After spending a few days with my cousin, I moved away from New Orleans and back to Baton Rouge, to spend the last few days of break with Mark Moehle, one of my Fraternity brothers and dearest friends. In fact, Mark and I joined Theta Chi together, which is one thing I know we both remember with great affection. Anyway, so we’re in Baton Rouge, and I’ve never been there before, so Mark decides it would be good to take a tour of the city. So we called up our friend Dana, and set off. We visited the state capitol and went all the way up to the observation tower, which was nice…the view was amazing. We also visited the LSU campus, which is enormous when compared to Centenary’s. We got a chance to see Mike the Tiger, which reminded me of when I was a kid and my father bought a pet tiger for us. He was a just a cub though, and we only had him for a few months. Then he got big and started attacking chickens, but that’s a story in and of itself…Anyway, yeah, we drove around Baton Rouge, saw the pretty places, and had fun doing it.
On Saturday, Mark, his parents and I took a little road trip to visit a few of the plantations in South Louisiana. We headed over to the Laura plantation, and Mark and I got to go through the tour. I thought it was really interesting, and enjoyed the experience thoroughly. The plantation itself was gorgeous, the house was really nice, and the story behind it was very interesting, so I had a good time. We also stopped briefly by Oak Alley plantation, and those oaks they have there are simply stunning. We also stood on the banks of the Mississippi, and to this day I hold that, given enough time to train, I could swim across it. We had a little debate as to the feasibility of my claim, and though they all disagreed with me, I still think I could. I mean really, it’s just swimming…how hard could it be?
Anyway, we drove back up on Monday morning, and though Easter is now behind us, I still feel the need to do nothing and keep disregarding my homework and other duties. But that’s ok. A few more days and I’ll be back into the old rhythm again.
Oh, one last thing. While in Baton Rouge, Mark, Dana and I visited the Apple store at the Mall of Louisiana…and I ended up buying a new laptop. I’m excited, I got a new Mac book to replace my crumbling old XP using behemoth of a laptop, and now, for the first time in my college career, I can actually take my laptop with me and use the wireless internet that Centenary so graciously provides us through our own student fees.
All right, that’s it for me. Take care, have fun, and be good.
Yours,
Marco Rajo
