Our Cajun Adventure

I promised my sister, Emily, that I would not blog again until after my four tests next week. But, I have some extra time tonight while I'm waiting till midnight so I can register for classes for fall. oh yay.

Over Easter weekend Thomas and I were able to go to New Orleans with my family and then after we all spent Easter Sunday in Beaumont at our apartment. We had so much fun and found out that it is possible to sleep 8 in our apartment and have everybody take showers and get ready for church by 10 am. It must have been a miracle.

On to our trip.. As soon as we got to New Orleans we went straight to Cafe Du Monde to try some Beignets and oh boy.. they were amazing. However, if you have not been to Cafe Du Monde I recommend that you do NOT sit on the side where they have a window that you can peak in. You will most likely lose your appetite. You see exactly how they make the beignets. They deep fat fry them for a long time...a really long time. It was nasty. Surprisingly I still tried it and it was delicious but most everything that is deep fat fried is unfortunately. Then we walked around and went into different shops and over to the French Quarter. After a bunch of walking and site seeing we decided to get a bite to eat at a Cajun restaurant called Mulate's. It was a fun restaurant that had live music and dancing after seven. We were really adventurous and got an appetizer called the Cajun Sampler which consisted of Grilled alligator, calamari, fried craw fish tails, grilled frog legs, and tilapia! For those of you who don't know me very well I have hated fish for as long as I can remember. But, now that I live in Beaumont my taste buds seemed to have changed. I LOVE craw fish and tilapia and really almost anything. And I tried everything on the sampler. I was so proud of myself. Kailey, my youngest sister, had a hard time with the frog legs. Here is her face when she saw what our appetizer was :)
She is great. That ended our first day in New Orleans! The next day we got up early and went on a Cajun Encounters Swamp Tour. It was SO worth it. It was an hour worth of going through a swamp and it was SO much prettier than I had imagined. Although at the beginning I was a bit freaked out when our tour guide said it wasn't odd if a snake came on board but just to let him know and he would take care of it..and only one person had been bitten on his boat as a tour guide. One is one too many for me. Way too many. Luckily no snakes on our tour :) But we saw one alligator in the wild and we were able to hold an alligator! I would post my picture but I looked terrified so I'll post a picture of Thomas and my mom they handled it way better.

After the swamp tour we did some last minute shopping and hit the road back to Beaumont. BUT we made on amazing pit stop at the best craw fish place ever, Steamboat Bills. It is amazing and completely changed my out look on fish. It is amazing and if you are ever going through Louisiana its a great stop in Lake Charles. Surprisingly almost everybody in my family enjoyed the craw fish and Pistolettes. Warning: if you do try these at steamboat bills you will be hooked and crave it after leaving :)
After our yummy dinner we finished our drive back to Beaumont and had a wonderful Easter!

We will be making another trip to New Orleans and Steamboat Bills when Tom's brother James and his girlfriend Lauren come here from England. We are SO excited. Only a month more till they come and school is out for me!! YAY!

Married to a Foreigner

People always say to me “oh don’t you just want to listen to him talk all day?!” I just smile and remember when I was in a trance from his accent. Of course it was very charming in the beginning of the relationship but after a while it has become normal to me. It’s just Tom’s voice just like my mom has a certain recognizable voice and so on and so forth. Occasionally he will say something odd and I suddenly remember he does have an accent! In the beginning it was quite fun because he was a novelty every restaurant and store that we were in. Every time without fail he gets the typical questions “Where are you from?” or “Are you from London?” I now know never to ask someone from another country any of these questions knowing how truly annoying it is to most of them. This is my all-time favorite experience with Tom’s accent. We went out to eat at a Mexican restaurant near our home here in Beaumont. We had just been seated and our waiter comes to ask for our drink order. The conversation goes as follows between Tom and our waiter.

Waiter-“what would you like to drink?”

Tom-“Two waters please”

Waiter-“A what?”

Tom- (a bit slower) “ Two waters please”

Waiter- “We don’t have that here”

Tom-“ you don’t have any water?”

Waiter- “No”.

I’m just sitting back trying so hard not to laugh so I finally pipe up and ask the waiter for two waters. He replies “okay be right back.” For those of you who have not heard Tom talk it is not the typical London or as they call it “posh” English accent. Tom is from Doncaster, England which is in South Yorkshire. A completely different area and accent than London. So when Tom says the word water it comes out more like wa-uh. I really don’t even know how to write it like he says it but that is my best try. NOBODY at any restaurant can get it right the first time without saying what? Or Sorry can you repeat that? It has become quite a joke in our family when we go out to dinner and we all watch him order his drink. It happens every time. I finally decided to post this after he was harassed last night at chick-fil-a. They made him say harry potter, bloody Mary and other English things. It definitely keeps me laughing.

My next post will be about our awesome trip to New Orleans!!!