Louisiana Livin'!

Hi, everyone!

I arrived in New Orleans yesterday, and will be going out to the research site at the Pearl River Wildlife Management area this evening. I have already had many adventures, including going to a nearby drugstore to buy vampire fangs for Halloween! I also got some glow in the dark nail polish.

At the bottom of the post there are the homework questions - you might want to scroll down and read them now to keep them in mind as you read.

I thought it would be a good idea to work on our map skills and also to make sure you know where these places are - so let's start BIG!!

Here is a map of the world, can you find North America?
The United States is located in the middle of North America, except for Alaska at the top left, and the Hawaiian Islands under the words "Pacific Ocean"






Here is a map of the United States.
Can you find where we live in Massachusetts?
Can you find Louisiana (it is red in the picture)? It is East (to the right) of Texas and on the Gulf of Mexico (body of water at the bottom of the picture) .
East of Louisiana (towards Florida) you see the state of Mississippi. (It is fun to spell - do it fast and loud!)




Here is a map that has some of Texas, Louisiana in the middle, and parts of Mississippi and Alabamba.
Can you find New Orleans? It is near the bottom center.
See how north of (above) New Orleans there is a lake? It is called Lake Pontchartrain (hard to spell).

Here is map of Lake Pontchartrain. New Orleans is the pink part south of (underneath) the lake. Can you see the blue line that runs south of New Orleans? That is the Mississippi River. The Mississipi is a BIG HONKING river - a lot bigger than the Charles that runs through Boston. The light blue part on the right hand side of the picture is the Gulf of Mexico.
You can see it really well in the picture above. (*I just checked my post and there is a strange blue thing here that I didn't put in and it doesn't have an icon on my page so I can't get rid of it. SORRY!)

As you see, New Orleans is surrounded by water. It is so close to the sea, that most of the city is right at sea level (0 feet in elevation). That means that wherever you go in New Orleans, you don't have to dig down very far to hit water. Some of the ground is actually below sea level - that means that the water would just flow right over it if it could.

The reason it can't flow right over it is that engineers have built levees all over the place. A levee is a like a really big, really deep ditch. All the water flows to this deeper place, so it keeps the area from flooding. Any of you who have visited grandparents in Florida have probably seen the man made canals all over the place. Same idea.

Here's a levee I saw yesterday on my way to what I thought was a Jazz/Blues festival in the City Park:

The levees keep the city from flooding, but they cause all kinds of BIG TROUBLE for wetlands and especially when hurricanes come, which we will talk about later.





Remember how I told you that I went to what I thought was a Jazz/Blues festival? Well, I heard from someone else staying in the hotel that there was this big festival in the park and you could sit in the grass and listen to all kinds of bands. Since New Orleans is known for Jazz, I figured it must be a Jazz/Blues festival, so I got on a trolley car and headed on over.
It turned out to be a Nine Inch Nails concert. OOPS!!! It isn't my favorite kind of music, but I got really cool T-shirts for my daughters as souvenirs. On my way out of the park, I wandered into a boggy area because I couldn't see it in the dark. Remember how the water is always near the surface? So I've only been here a few hours and my shoes are already stinky and gross!

Hope you guys had a great weekend - VK - make sure to tell me how the cheerleading competition turned out!

Miss you already,

Mrs. Feynman

HOMEWORK: Answer the following questions on a piece of notebook paper with a proper heading. Mr. Griffen will ask you for it in class tomorrow -

1) What is the name of the lake near New Orleans?
2) Why is New Orleans so dang wet?
3) What is a levee and why do we make them?
4) What happened to Mrs. Feynman's shoes?