En Avant de Guingamp qualified in French Cup Final soccer

I have been a big fan of this team for now fifteen years. Awesome... Terrific... Historical.... Incredible victory... You are so amazing guys... Fifi (Pictures from Ouest France and L'equipe).

New Orleans, four years after Katrina

Lower Ninth Ward is a New Orleans neighborhood that was devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005... After a levee failure, the water flooded the whole area.. It was up to"eleven feet high" in certains houses (environ 3 m we would say in French), Johnny, a baptist preacher, told us.

After four years, the area still looks like a ghost town where one only hears the sound of birds or insects...

 

Johnny, 75, and Winniefried, 71, have been married for fifty years. He has been holding this baptist church for 26 years. They renovated it all and now try to bring a bit of hope in the neighborhood.

The baptister of the church... used for the first time since the hurricane last sunday 

It's Easter time... Johnny and Winniefried make the public announcements for the coming celebrations.. Don't miss the one on Holy Friday !!



Another sign of hope ; some inhabitants decided to rebuild their home. A lot of them were home owners. Johnny told us he hopes fifty per cent of the people will be back !

New Iberia Chez Jean Albert

Jean-Albert Landry, who turns 80 this year, holds a nice restaurant in downtown New Iberia. He has both spanish and french ancestors, and likes to speak a few words of french as soon as he can.

His wife Elaine works in the kitchen and that day prepared several "Croque Madame" for Fifi...

"I'm English", Elaine says, even if she has always been living in the US, brought up in Chicago... In Louisiana some people like to introduce themselves with their European origins. Jean-Albert told us that, as a kid, he was not used to speak french at home just because his parents fear he would be discriminated at school.

The Crawfish Day

Fifi's curiosity about this landscape shortly after Eunice, Lousiana, and the view of a man driving a weird boat rejecting muddy water brought us to a new adventure.. The first guy we met was only speaking spanish, he arrived from Mexico only three months ago. His first name : Isidoro

... Isidoro is actually employed on a crawfish farming place (un site d'elevage d'ecrevisses, for our french readers). He navigates to pick up the shellfish traps (strange thing emerging from the water was the extremity of the trap..) and empties them in those purple bags.

 "El patron" Douglas Zaunbrecher just passed to collect the bags when we were talking to Isidoro.. The Mexican worker went away and we had a long discussion with Douglas, about the cultures rotation (crawfish from february to july, and rice in late summer and fall, when the water has been drained), quantity harvested, competition, distribution system ("six to seven bars come directly to our place", he said) etc. Then Douglas proposed to follow him to the farm.

"No No Douglas it's a male look at this !!"

... "And does the female taste better ?", funny French visitors could have asked..

Dwayne (on the right) is the older brother of Douglas and the one who actually seems to run the place.. "I'm a farmer at the head of a small business", that's how he describes himself

The Zaunbrechers' grandfather was born in this house in 1907... the parents of the baby had just left Kassel, Germany, to settle in Louisiana.

Afternoon job for the Mexican workers employed by the Zaunbrechers ; they cut the fish that's gonna be used the morning after as bait, to attract the crawfish in the traps. Those guys (11 on the site) usually work 6 to maximum 9 months a year, until the expiration of their visa. They make 70 USD a day, are off on Sundays only. They come from central Mexico, around San Miguel Allende. Their employer provides them health insurance, he said.

And then, about one hour later, came the time of "apero" and a degustation of this bloody crustace in a small place held by Mike (M and M, like Mike and Michelle, his wife..) in Abbeville (yes Abbeville, city founded by a french catholic priest)

Brice, a 18 year old student, was our cooker of the day in this little Crawfish Drive In Cajun style... yammi yammi!!!

Driving To The South, along the Mississippi River

After the Stax Museum, we decided to head South, leaving Memphis through its Southside neighborhood, with a lot of abandoned houses (this one saw the birth of Aretha Franklin in the 30s)..




This precise point (where the car is stopped) is our 1.000 miles mark... since we started our road trip one week ago
Entering St Francis National Forest (Arkansas)
Impossible to compete with Martha (in the back as you can understand)... At that time (8.30 pm), she has already been sticked to the same machine for 12 hours, no eating, no peeing maybe, just putting quarters in the slot (and smoking!).. She comes once a month from Palestine, Arkansas, to this casino and hotel resort on the Mississippi side of the River... "Big money, big money!!" she said while touching the screen
One of the bridges crossing the River, marking the limit between Arkansas and state of Mississippi.
... And Fifi was suddenly knocked out by a big big Mississippi mosquito
Free, free, free....
Free, free, free....


You park your car, you order and the food comes to you... Another American Revolution !!
Never ending open fields.
Not so usual don't worry !.. We were really off roads ...... Sunset time on Highway 65


BBQ in Ferriday In Louisiana.