Okay. I may have to revise my opinion of long bus trips.
The awake part is great. The sleeping part...well, let's just say that I'm not sure my spine will ever be the same again.

By some miracle, despite the border hold-up, we pulled into Camp Hope half an hour before our scheduled arrival time. I had tried to sleep when we got back onto the bus after stopping for breakfast in Mississippi, but I ended up looking out the window instead.
It is so surreal to be here, to see what we've read about, what we've looked at photographs of:
The FEMA trailers, now abandoned by the hundreds in lots just outside the border of New Orleans. The bridge over the Mississippi river, with a second one with higher pilings being built alongside it. The water that once covered 80% of Orleans parish, still lingering in flooded grassland. The steep, curving onramp bridges I saw in magazines, partially submerged, people and cars gathered at the top, awaiting rescue. The houses marked with Xs.
There are ducklings paddling in the floodplain. They have moved on, as has this country. The world reminds itself of Katrina only once a year, on her anniversary. But these people, these people whose boats are still floating upside down, mournful shells of what once was, how can they move on?
Pictures may be worth a thousand words, but being here is worth a million, maybe more. This place defies description.