Saturday, August 27, 2006 was supposed to have been a day of fun and celebration with my friends. However, it ended up being a day of rushing, packing and being stuck in traffic. My friends and I planned a suprise going-away party for one of my other friends who had been accepted into medical school early and would not be attending Dillard that year. The party had been in the making for weeks and we spent countless hours decorating my apartment. Everything was planned to the time she was to walk through the door. But little did we know as we were planning for that simple suprise and much greater suprise was underway. My friends and I had to decide what we were going to do about the storm because all of our parents called concern about the weather. No one really wanted to leave, especially me, because I planned on going home the following weekend, which was the Labor Day holiday and I did not want to be on the interstate 2 consecutive weekends. Since I had a new apartment, I had to strictly monitor my spending habits and gas for driving home was definitely an issue. We decided to have the get together early and then get out of town before it was too late. The party was nice but the traffic was horrible. It took an unusual 4 1/2-5 hours to get to Jackson, MS. I experienced the well talked about contraflow system, which was sort of exciting because I was driving on the \"wrong\" side of the street and it was okay. When I made it home all of my immediate family decided to stay at my parents\' house until the storm passed. We were without electricity for about 3-4 days, so we did not know what was going on in LA except for what we heard on the radio and even then it was difficult to imagine. My friends called informing me of the hurricane images they saw on the news and still could not grasp the magnitude. Later, my family found out that one of my other relatives had electricity so we spent a few nights with them and that is when I was able to see for myself the devastation Hurrican Katrina had caused. Seeing the familiar streets and interstate overpasses covered in water and people was terrible. As soon as the Jeffereson Parish residents were allowed back into the state, my family and I went to my apartment to clean up and gather my belongings and all we could do was pray for all the people still left in the city. In September I enrolled at Jackson State Univiersity to complete my course work for the Fall 2005 semester.