A place to call home?

Well, I have now been a New Orleans resident for 4 days.
I settled into the sublet that I have through July. By settled, I mean, got the boxes arranged along the wall so that I can walk around the room without tripping every 5 seconds. No point in unpacking completely if I am only going to be in this apartment for 2 months, right?
Since we arrived, I have basically just been doing the tourist thing with my parents, which has been good, but draining at the same time. My legs are tired from walking around, but it's great to be able to spend time with my parents as they experience my new city for the first time.
I am almost starting to learn my way around. The Mississippi River curves around in New Orleans about 3 times, making it difficult to tell which direction is where, not to mention, everything down here is just wacky. Uptown is actually down river while Downtown is up river. At least there is some semblance of a grid system that actually makes some logical sense, as opposed to everything working it's way out from the capital building... :P

I was talking to a man at a concert in Lafayette Square yesterday (they have a version of Concert on the Square down here too. But get this! They do theirs in the spring and fall because the summer months are actually the icky ones! (Have fun, suckers! I get double the amount of concerts than you do now! :P) Anyway... Felix runs a job center down here and we got to chatting after an introduction. His center focuses more on jobs for people with not as much education as I have, but he was helping me come up with ideas, nonetheless. He asked me why I was in New Orleans--A question many of you (and I) have asked myself. But then he asked a really interesting question--How long will I give myself before I pack it in if this doesn't feel like home? I didn't really have an answer to this question. I have focused this whole time on getting down here and have known for a while that I would probably be down here for a long haul. But the idea of "home" really got me thinking. How long will it take for New Orleans to feel like home?
Certainly, sitting here in my room, surrounded by everything I own that is packed up in boxes currently makes me doubt that this will ever happen. And after checking the Blackhawk website a few minutes ago just to see what was going on and seeing a picture up on the main page of me and a group of girls from Study Day, that reality cut a little deeper. Will anything feel as much like home as Madison, Wisconsin does?
I don't know the answer to this. But I know that when I got out of the car in the neighborhood of Central City the other day and a woman named Tess yelled across the street to me, ran over and gave me a hug, it felt like this could be home. And sitting on a blanket in Lafayette Square, listening to jazz music in the Louisiana sunshine, a little bit of my heart opened up more to the idea of it. Joking with the cop and the clerk at the counter at the local Winn Dixie grocery store certainly made big New Orleans feel a little smaller.
Will New Orleans ever feel like Madison did? Probably not. But do I believe that God is going to bless me with a feeling of home and community within this community? You can bet your parking spot at the 10:45 service on it.

As for the coming days, I will say a sobbing goodbye to my parents tomorrow night. This is the goodbye that I have tried to put off the longest, even making them drive me down here and stay for a week with me. :P It will be awful and I am not looking forward to it.
I will start really diving in and looking for a job when my parents leave. Please pray that God will teach me the things he needs to teach me in this time of uncertainty. I look forward to the challenge of a new job, but am also just anxious to secure something.

Thank you again for all of your prayers and words of encouragement!