Lessons from hostels

Writing doesn’t lie. If it’s not what you really want to think about, you can’t write about it.

I spent the last week in New Orleans for my last spring break as a university student. I expected good food and good drinks. What I didn’t expect was not wanting to leave the creaky, metal bunk bed in a room I shared with four people and the bathroom I shared with more at the hostel where we stayed.

Hostels are great places if they are done right. Long story short, this one was done right.

At the end of the week, a reporting project I’m working on took me to Baton Rouge. Downtown, I sat on a metal bench in that looked out over the Mississippi River trying to write about what lay in front of me. But all I could write about was what  I had learned from all the people that I had met the last week:

How to travel (all you need is time, money will fall into place), how to dance to jazz (follow the rhythm), how to tell stories (do, all the time, everyone has one), how to how to miss people (don’t, you’ll see the people you need to see again).

It was then that I realized how much you can learn when you least expect it, from a place when you least expected it. I’ll remember NOLA for the beignets, river and crab cake po'boys. But I’ll remember NOLA mainly for the people that made me unable to forget the city.