On Tuesday, as I said, we worked on the house all day. On Wednesday we worked most of the day, but went to church with them that evening. We went to the youth building and sat in on their worship, since the husband is the youth pastor of that church.
On Thursday, we worked until their oldest daughter came home from school and then did some local sightseeing. The first thing we did was stop at one of the sugar cane fields and cut a piece of sugar cane to try. Our friend peeled off the outside with his knife and gave us each a piece to chew on. It tastes like sugary water and the cane is really stiff--like celery only much woodier.
They were really pretty and I wanted to stop, but of course I was following the other guy's car, so I kept going. A couple of miles down the road, my cell phone rang. It was Erick, and he told me that they had turned off and I had missed them. I thought he was joking at first, because I was still following behind this silver car that I thought was our friends'. But he insisted I had passed them, so I turned around and went back. They had stopped at the trees I had been admiring. I was so busy looking at the trees I didn't even noticed they had turned!
The trees were cypress trees, and the spanish moss was absolutely beautiful up close. It didn't look like feathers anymore--instead it reminded me of lace. There were these funny bumps coming up next to the trees, and one of them came loose when we wiggled it so we took it home. They are called cypress knees.
After that we went back and got our friend's wife and other daughter, and we went out to eat. We had told them we wanted to taste authentic Louisiana food, and so they brought us to a place called Bobbe II's Grill and Sports Bar. Their specialty is seafood of all kinds. I'm allergic to shellfish, and so I only tried a little bit of the shrimp and the crab. I ordered the Cajun Chicken which was fantastic. Our friends ordered a seafood platter with all sorts of deep fried seafood, and on top of the plate was a whole, deep-fried soft-shell crab. It looked like a fried spider. You eat the whole thing--it's soft! It was the strangest thing. She offered me a leg and I ate part of it. It was good, but it weirded me out. It cost $100 for our whole family to eat there.
Afterwards we went to see their library which is right by the bayou. It was cold, so I went and sat in the van, but the rest of them fed the ducks and the nutrea rats. I didn't see the nutrea rats myself, but they told me about them. They said they were really big rodents that were introduced during a world fair a long time ago and they just sort of took over.
I'll write more later!
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