Back to the Blog

I started my blog this past May before I went to California. It turned out to be such a success that people have been urging me to continue to posting. Even though there has been a break in my blog for approximately four months, I think I will pick it back up. This is going to be long and will include a lot (summer plans, school, Black Friday)! So, here it goes:

This past week I bought a ticket to Ecuador. I knew I was wanting to take a trip out of the country this summer and I didn’t really know where to go. I wanted to go to Africa and work on something AIDS related since I want to go into public health. When I talked with one of my professors about it, he told me that airfares to Africa would eat me alive and on top of that, I don’t know how to speak a different language. He told me I should to go Ecuador and take Spanish classes while I am there. So, I’m going to Ecuador. I’ll be staying in Quito, which is the capital of the country. I am going to be taking four hours of Spanish lessons a day, living with an Ecuadorian family, and working for an organization called Altropico. I will be there for four weeks and I think it will end up being a good trip. I will get more nervous the closer I get to the day.

I am hopefully going back to California this summer. As of right now me, my good friend Colton, and hopefully one of his friends are going to be driving across the country to work at CTY in Santa Cruz again. We plan on going up through the Badlands in South Dakota, crossing over to Glacier National Park, heading over to Seattle, then traveling down the West Coast to Santa Cruz. It will be good, not only because the trip will be awesome, but also because we will have a car in California so we can do more traveling when we have free time.

School is going great this semester. It is just rather stressful. I am taking Intro to Public Policy & Community Service, Sustainable Community Development, Intro to the Christian Faith, Marriage & Family, and History of Appalachia. I am liking all of my classes. I am only going to end up with two final exams to study for. I have take home exams for my Public Policy classes and I have a huge research project for my Appalachia class. I have been researching one and two-room schools for my project because they were very common in the Appalachian region many years ago. I interviewed my Aunt Clara and Aunt Vic this past weekend because they were both involved with two-room schools when they still existed.

My Head RA job is going well. Nothing too stressful I guess. I have five bulletin boards that I have to update each month so that gets rather stressful at times. Sometimes I feel like I am not a good RA because I don’t get to visit my residents as much as I would like to. I try my best though. I stay quite busy with everything at school…student government, Bonner, Residence Hall Association and a lot more. Even though I stay super busy, I like it. I hate when I just sit around. I like to stay busy during the week but it is nice to just crash on the weekends.
I went shopping on Black Friday. I had many very interesting experiences. I will start off with the beginning. I went to my apartment at the college and spent the night on Thursday night so I didn’t have to drive so far on Friday morning. I woke up at 3:30 to get ready. I had to meet Dana, LeRae, and Rita in Abingdon at 4:15 to head out. On my way down the interstate, a red Pontiac from Ohio passed me going around 90 MPH. Being the daredevil I am, I sped up because 1) It’s 4:15 in the morning…no cops. And 2) I like to drive fast. After hitting 85, I decided to slow down because I had no reason to be in a hurry. While slowing down, I was passing a car and a cop got behind me and put his blue lights on. Keep in mind this is 4AM. I knew I had been caught. I just put on my signal and prepared to pull over. When I got into the other lane, he kept on going. I was relieved I didn’t get a ticket. It turns out that he had the red Pontiac pulled over about 10 miles down the interstate.

We got to Bristol Mall around 4:30am. JCPenney was the only store open so we went in there to blow some time. I was amazed at the number of people wearing Elf hats. People really got into this. There were people waiting in line at Chick-fil-a before the metal chains were raised! It was nuts. We went to Belk so we could get the $25 Fossil watches that were being advertised. After searching around the jewelry counter for the watches, we were encountered by a sign that said there was a printing mistake and the price was $125 instead of $25. We were angry at this time and stormed out of Belk. Me and Dana had made a rule to be rude all day. We had to be legit Black Friday shoppers with angry faces and no manners. After fighting the crowd at Bath & Body Works (and encountering a lady in stilettos shopping for $5 wallflowers), we were on our way to Exit 7. We walked in Wal-Mart and some lady heard me ask Dana about the $2 movies. After Dana didn’t know, the very excited lady graciously pointed us towards McDonalds. They hid the $2 movies in the deli! What the heck? It was weird. After deciding it wasn’t worth waiting in the check-out line for 3 hours, we left Wal-Mart and headed for Target, Best Buy, and Old Navy. There were excellent deals at Best Buy and Target. I ended up buying a total of 15 DVDs the whole day! I was quite excited. I stopped at Wal-Mart in Lebanon on my way home which was completely in order and not crowded at all. There, I managed to do a little bit of Christmas shopping.

This evening I rode to Norton with Dad to get a hot water heater at Lowe’s. In our search for dinner, I decided we should go to Taco Bell. Our cashier was nuts. We were telling her our order and she stopped, looked at us, and said, “I look so innocent standing here!” Not knowing what to say, Dad was like, “Yes you do.” And the transaction was finished. It was by far one of the most awkward moments I have ever encountered. I was biting my lip to keep from busting out laughing. It was a good time.

Hopefully I will update my blog pretty often from now on. I enjoy writing and I like to go back and read what I have written in the past. I’ll try to find some interesting things to write about. Keep in touch everyone and I hope you had a good Thanksgiving! I’m back to Emory tomorrow!

Until next time, Zach will leave it at that.