Life in Emory

It can get boring at times. Life here in Emory. The past few days have been good. My first full week of classes ended up going well. I can't believe we are into the new semester already..and almost two weeks at that! It doesn't feel like we have been at it for that long.

This past weekend I lead a service project in Abingdon. It was for the Martin Luther King National Day of Service. We went and moved some stuff from a storage building for a food pantry. The day of service was supposed to be on MLK Day, but since we had school we had to push it back to this past Saturday.

I headed up to Blacksburg on Saturday evening to visit Tarah and Dove and everyone up there. I spent the night on Saturday night. We basically sat around, listened to music, and I washed clothes. It was terribly exciting. It was good to visit with them though. I enjoy going up there just to get off campus.

I have set some goals for myself. I dropped a few pounds while I was in California and I continued to do so up into last semester. I think I've gained a little back. So, I need to start eating healthier in the cafe. I have also decided that even though my car is close by, I am not driving if I have to go anywhere on campus. I am going to walk everywhere. It is silly to drive when I can walk anywhere in a matter of 5-10 minutes.

Random thoughts

• I got a new fish...his name is Henry.
• The IRS makes me angry. Why taxes, why?
• I like to travel.
• I need to learn Spanish.
• I also need to write my paper due at 9:30 in the morning..."What does it mean to be an American?"

Until next time, Zach will leave it at that.

I'm Sorry/Christmas/Orange Bowl

I know. I'm sorry. I didn't keep to my word and update this thing regularly like I said that would. Everything has been going good. I will give you a rundown of what has been going on.

I ended up with good grades last semester. I got 3 A's, an A-, and a B. I ended up with a 3.7 GPA for the semester, which put me on the Dean's List. I was really excited about that because I had never been on the Dean's List before. I enjoyed all of my classes from last semester. Christmas with the family was good. I didn't get to go home until around the 18th of December, so I didn't have much time for break. I spent Christmas with everyone and then left for Florida on the 28th.

Me, Tarah, Dove, and Jenna went to Blacksburg on the night of December 28th. There, we met Erin and Corey and left for Miami on the 29th. Despite being plagued with kidney stones for part of the ride, it was fun. We made a pitstop in Savannah, Georgia. At the time we stopped, it just so happened that power was out all over the city. It was a coincidence we were there but we did have time to walk around and take a few pictures.

We found what claimed to be the Smallest Church in America. It was a church on a side-road we took to avoid traffic on the interstate. It is tailored for travelers to stop in and worship.

We stayed in Jacksonville with a guy that Erin knew on the night of the 29th. We left Jacksonville on the morning of the 30th and drove on into Miami. Along the way, we stopped in St. Augustine which was a really nice city. We got to our hotel and decided to visit the beach. We went to Ft. Lauderdale beach and then we headed north to Deerfield Beach. There, we met up with my good friends who I worked with in California, Colton and Lance. We hung out on the beach for a couple of hours and then headed back south.

The next day, we woke up and the girls took their sweet time getting ready. We went to what was supposedly the 4th largest mall in America. It was huge! We were there for about 4 hours and didn't even see the whole thing. Once we got back to our hotel, Colton and Lance stopped and picked me up and I spent the evening with them. The crew I went with wanted to go to South Beach for the New Year, but I didn't feel like fighting the crowd, so I went north with Lance and Colton. We hung out on the beach, dug a huge hole, and watched the fireworks. It was a good evening and a relaxing way to spend New Years. Below is a picture of the fireworks from the beach.

On New Year's Day, we got up and checked out of our hotel. We headed to Dania Beach, which was close by, and layed on it for about 3 hours.

We left from there and headed to Dolphin Stadium for the Orange Bowl. The game was a ton of fun. Even though we had very, very high seats, they were right on the 50-yard line with an awesome view.

Three pictures are below. The first is a picture of a sunset at Dolphin Stadium. The second is a picture of the megatron with the Orange Bowl logo. The third is me, Colton, and Lance at the ballgame.

I came back to school on January 5th. We had RA training and stuff and now I'm back into classes. I'm taking four actual classes and an independent study class. Even though my class schedule isn't a lot, I stay busy with all my service work, RA stuff, and other committments.

I'm excited about my Spring Break. As of right now, me and a few other people are planning on flying to Orlando for a few days. It is going to be cheap and it will be fun. I leave for Ecuador on May 11th, return June 9th, and just a couple days later leave to work in California again! It will be an adventurous next few months, but I am looking forward to it.

Until next time, Zach will leave it at that.

Good Weekend

Hey everyone! I hope you had a good weekend.

Friday evening, me and my friends Michael and Colby went to Johnson City to do some Christmas shopping. I didn't even buy anything. Most of our time was spent in Gamestop playing a dirt bike game. I have never been much of a gamer but sometimes I wish I had something to keep me occupied in my downtime. I think I am better off without anything like that though. I have purposely tried to steer away from video games since I've been in college. I find myself much more useful when I don't have things like that to get me distracted. On our way back through Abingdon we stopped and met mom and picked up Blake. He spent the night with me on Friday night. It was a good time. We just hung out and watched Christmas Vacation.

Saturday we went Christmas shopping. I still didn't buy anything for anyone. I spent my $10 Target card that I won at the RA Christmas party on an iTunes gift card so I could buy some music. I also bought a few things from Ross and Books-a-Million. It snowed and the roads got pretty bad. I almost wrecked on the way back from Emory. I'm not scared to drive on the snow but last night was very scary. I came back, took a shower, then headed to Blacksburg.

It was my friend Tarah's 21st birthday. She didn't know I was coming up so it was a suprise when I answered the door at her apartment. It was fun. We just hung out last night then went to eat at Cracker Barrell this morning. I'm going to Miami for the Orange Bowl! I'm excited. Me, Tarah, Dove, and a few of their friends from VT are going. I'm really excited about it. I have been in need of a road trip and this one will be good. VT is playing Cincinnati so I'll get to see Colton and Lance, my two friends from California while I am there. I am stoked!

Have a good week everyone. Until next time, Zach will leave it at that.

Buddy the Elf

Below is the picture of the whole Claus family...me, Daniel, and Tessa dressed as Buddy the Elf, Santa, and Mrs. Claus.

From Blogger Pictures

Buddy the Elf...What's Your Favorite Color?!

Hey everyone! Everything has been good the past couple days. I have just been busy. Since I am the RA over 5 houses...that means I have 5 bulletin boards to do, which is not fun. But, I worked really hard this month and actually did 5 awesome boards! I made them interactive so my residents could "color their stress away." Each of my residents had a space on the board and they all received a personal box of crayons! It turned out to be good.


I got an email from the director of the organization in Ecuador today! He is going to let me work with them. He said I would be able to travel with their workers into the different communities and see what all they are doing. I took some money out of my Ecuador fund yesterday and went to Books-a-Million and bought stuff to learn some Spanish. I'm going to try and learn as much as I possibly can. If I do, I'll have a better chance of getting to do more while I am there. I am really excited. He told me that Altropico's website was going to be translated into English soon. As soon as it is, I will post the website so you can check out where I will be working. If you are not familiar with the location of Ecuador, here is a map:



View Larger Map


Tonight was the RA Christmas party. A few weeks ago, the Residence Hall Association ordered me an Elf costume to wear at our Angel Tree party so I could amuse the kids. Well, I along with Daniel and Tessa decided to wear our Angel Tree outfits to the RA Christmas party. It was quite entertaining. Something is up and the blog won't let me put in pics, but as soon as I figure out what's wrong I'll put up a picture. Hope you are having a good week!

Here's a shout-out to Jen Davis! She is one of my previous "bosses" I guess you would say. She left us this year and went to Radford. All the RAs miss her, especially me! Come visit Jen!

Until next time, Zach will leave it at that.

Pictures

Hey everyone! I hope you had a good weekend. The next week is going to be crazy for me. If I can get three big papers done I will only have to worry about 2 final exams for exam week. So, that is my goal. If I can get them done by the end of the week, I will feel very accomplished. I would rather work really hard and wear myself out this week and have the rest of my semester to relax!

I back up all my pictures on my Google account so that if something happens to my computer then I don't lose them. I got onto my account and unlocked some of my albums so you can look through and check out my pictures. I only posted a few pics from the summer on my blog and the albums have a lot more. I also have a lot of pictures from my other trips I have taken. I hope you enjoy. Here is the link.

http://picasaweb.google.com/zacharytriplett

Until next time, Zach will leave it at that.

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.

CTY Goodbye

Wow. I can't believe I have been in Santa Cruz for 6 weeks. The time out here has gone by so fast. It seems like just yesterday I took off from the east coast to go on a trip where I didn't know what to expect. This summer has been so much more than anything I ever thought it would be.

Last summer I wasn't happy with my work that I did at the hospital. Since it counted for my community service hours, it made me even more unhappy because I felt like I wasn't having some kind of an impact on other people. I knew I wanted something different this summer. I didn't know what to expect when I took this job. I had never really worked with kids before so I knew it was going to be somewhat challenging. So, I took it on a limb.

I came to California thinking that this job was gonna be easy. I have to be an RA for a group of well-behaved, intellectual, extremely smart young students. I was gonna get paid a good deal of money and I get to live in a beach town for 6 weeks...for free. What more could you ask for? Not much. Even though this sounded like a perfect way to spend my summer, I did have some hesitations. Was I going to be happy counting this as my community service. Is it really service to someone if you have so much fun and get paid a ton? This was a question that I struggled with at the beginning, but it was at the beginning that I realized that I was in for much more than I had originally bargained for.

This summer has been a life changing experience. I have learned new things about myself that I wouldn't have learned anywhere else. I feel like I've come to appreciate so much more since I have been out here. I am going to go home tomorrow changed. Not changed in a bad way, but changed in a way to where I am going to enjoy all of my time at Emory.

I can't even begin to talk about the people I have met out here. Everyone from students to my fellow co-workers have been amazing. You don't realize how well you get to know people until you live with the same one's for six weeks, and some only 3 weeks. We really are like a family. I don't know how it's gonna be at 6:30 in the morning when I get on the shuttle to go to the airport. It's gonna be hard to leave these people, a couple in particular.

This summer has been a big learning experience for me. I am bringing back to Virginia with me more knowledge about me, the world, kids, life in general, that I never expected to learn. I can't really imagine what I would have done better this summer had I not chosen to come to California.

I just want to thank all of the people that I've worked with this summer for this experience. It has been amazing. I'm excited about keeping in touch with them and I can't wait to get back to Southwest Virginia and tell about my summer.

I'm gonna leave you with my favorite picture from the summer. Even though it was taken between 4 and 5 weeks ago, I never put it on here because I wanted to save it for the end. Its most of the RA staff, on a hike, and we found this squiggly thing. I think it's awesome. It's a picture I'd like to keep forever.

You know, I kind of like this blogging thing. Maybe it's something I'll keep going after I get back home. I will be in Charlotte, North Carolina at 9:35 tomorrow night and Haysi around 12 on Sunday. I'm excited. Until next time, Zach will leave it at that.

Day Off/Awesomeness

Good morning everyone! Hope everything is good in Virginia and wherever else you are. The past two days have been great.

I left Santa Cruz around 7:15 on Sunday night. By the time I waited on the bus to San Jose then caught a train to my hotel is was 10:00. You would think since I haven't watched TV in 6 weeks that I would watch it all night. Well, it's really weird, but I just have no interest in watching TV anymore. I've done without it for 6 weeks so whats the use of watching it if I don't absolutely have to. So, I was in bed by 10:30. I got up yesterday morning and caught the 10:10 train to San Francisco. Once I got to the city I was utterly confused because their public transportation is confusing. I ended up catching two different streetcars to the Fisherman's Wharf. I knew one thing that I for sure wanted to do was ride a boat around the Bay. So, I paid $23 and got an hour long cruise. It was a lot of fun. It took me under the Golden Gate Bridge and around Alcatraz and gave me awesome views of the city. I was kind of disappointed that the fog was still around because I couldn't see the top of the bridge. It was also the coldest boat ride I have ever taken in my life.

I had lunch at In-N-Out. Since it is a California thing I figured I should take advantage of it while I can. It was very tasty. After lunch and the cruise I caught another street car back to the Museum of Modern Art. On the way there I was fortunate enough to see the San Francisco Police do their finest work. Four officers was tackling a man right where my street car was stopped. They had out their sticks to hit him and everything. His significant other, who was in a panic, was running around yelling, "don't taze him, don't taze him, he's got metal in his mouth." Even though it was a serious situation, it was quite comical.

I became sort of sick the day before I left, so I was feeling a little under the weather by the time I got to the Museum of Modern Art. I only spent about an hour in the Museum but it was really good. I really enjoyed the photography section. I caught the 5:56 train out of San Francisco and was back at the college at exactly 9:00.

We have a common room on my hall with couches and stuff for everyone to hang out in. I had my kids promise me before I left that they would clean the common room before I came back. Well, we walked back in the dorm...the common room was clean...but they were all rushing me to my room. I figured they were trying to pull a prank on me. So, I went to my room and there was a sign on the door that read, "Go to the right stall in the bathroom." So, I went to the stall and there was a sign that said, "Go to the common room." So, I went to the common room and on the table there was a paper that said, "Check both microwaves." So, I went to the first microwave and opened it up. I found a card that all my guys had bought me and signed just saying how much they missed me on my day off. There was also a sign that said, "don't forget to check the other microwave." So, I go to the other microwave and inside I find a giant stuffed Banana Slug, which is the mascot for the University here.

So, my day off was great. I needed it. Now I'm off to Monterey Bay Aquarium in Monterey on a field trip. I guess I'll have even more pics to post after this.

Day Off!

Hey everyone. Tomorrow is my day off so I am getting ready to leave in about 30 minutes. Be expecting pictures tomorrow night or Tuesday morning. Only 6 days 'til I'm back on the east coast!

Until next time, Zach will leave it at that.