The Earnest N. Morial Convention Center is absolutely huge! It has 12 separate exhibition halls that can be combined for a total of 1.1 million square feet. I'm not sure if they had the whole thing opened up for us, but I do know that I've ever been in an open-floored indoor space that was so enormous.
This was the site of the Interaction Center. There was a huge variety of activities presented. Some of if was purely for fun. They had climbing towers with zip lines. They had a climbing wall. The had several half-court sized basketball games going. They had both beach volleyball and floor volleyball. They had kickball. But there were other things going on, as well.
There was a wheel-chair obstacle course, designed to give you a feel for what it is to have to navigate through various floor surfaces and to manage things like getting through a door. There were opportunities to talk to people from Africa, about what it's like to go to school in a space where there are no chalkboards, paper, and only a limited supply of teachers. There was a blood mobile. Thrivent was there, sponsoring a Habitat for Humanity project, giving participants the opportunity to build wall units that would be later used in a new home.
The programming for the National Youth Gathering was structured so that from 9:00 AM until 2:00 PM, on any given day, 1/3 of the participants would be out at a volunteer site, 1/3 would be involved in Learning Centers, and 1/3 would be at the Interaction Center. Even with "only" one third of the people in this huge space, it was still packed. One third of 38,000 (the final tally), after all, is still 12,6667 people. That's a lot of Lutherans in one place!
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