I don't live here anymore.

New posts will be at roadtripfanatic.blogspot.com

itinerary...

(none of the pictures in the post belong to me, sadly... thank you Google Image search!)

OK. So as I posted yesterday... uh... I'm getting ready to graduate soon. Really soon. 17 days now. Holy wow. Yeah.

So... after I graduate, I'm taking a mondo-epic-solo-introspective-"you've graduated what now"-road trip. I'm spent probably entirely too much time planning this road trip. BUT. It's my graduation present to myself, so I don't feel too bad... I'm so excited for it!!!!

I love road trips.

Here's the (incredibly) tentative plan...

DAY ONE (3/27)
Drive from Akron OH to Virginia Beach VA (pictured below)... it's about a 9 hour drive, which will be broken up by a stop in Washington CD for coffee with an old friend (Tabie) who I haven't seen in a few years.

DAY 2 (3/28)
Virginia Beach VA to Wrightsville Beach NC, with stops at Atlantic Beach, Emerald Isle (pictured below), and possibly Harkers Island... I'm so looking forward to this day because it's mostly gonna be coastal highway :) I love the ocean.

DAY 3 (3/29)
Wrightsville Beach NC to Savannah GA. Again... Coastal highway :). I'm gonna stop and spend a good chunk of time in historic Charleston (below), because I remember it from my childhood (when we took a roadtrip as a family to Florida and stopped at a bunch of places on the way back... can you feel my happiness?

DAY 4 (3/30)
Savannah GA to St. Augustine FL. I'm spending most of the day at Jekyll Island, GA (below)... And at St. Augustine I'm staying at a youth hostel called the Pirate Haus. yes. A pirate themed youth hostel. Complete with the owner who dresses in pirate garb all day and the morning serving of pirate themed pancakes (not quite sure what that means... are they in pirate shapes?! how does that work?!)... oh yeah... I'm pumpedddd!



DAY 5 (3/31)
St Augustine FL to Melbourne FL. I'm taking A1A as far as I can down to Melbourne... then meeting up with Aunt Sue and Trish, and hopefully with the LaVella clan. Woo! I have NO IDEA what the plan is... Aunt Sue won't tell me!

DAYS 6, 7 (4/1-4/2)
Melbourne FL. Hanging out with the fam :)

DAY 8 (4/3)
Melbourne FL to Atlanta GA. Somehow... and I'm truly not sure how... I've never been to Atlanta before. No time like the present, right? Woo! There's a possibility that I'm gonna get sidetracked on the way, though, by some country roads. I have an urge to explore.

DAY 9 (4/4)
Atlanta GA to Knoxville TN. The Smoky Mountains. Never been. Once again... no time like the present. I'm only young once. Etc etc etc. It's going to be a beautiful drive, I'm sure :) I cannot CANNOT wait!

DAY 10 (4/5)
Smokey Mountains. Yeah. I'm stickin around for another day :) There's too much to explore! Maybe I'll run into a bear! YEAH! But if nothing else the amateur photographer in me would kill himself if he didn't get a shot (get the pun?) at some of the landscapes here!

DAY 11( 4/6)
A sad day... the end. Knoxville, TN to Dayton OH. Sigh. Every good thing has to come to an end, right? Still, it's gonna be a gorgeous drive through bluegrass country... and that's something I can't complain about.

4/7/09
Back to work at Pablo's... sigh. Just one month more... just one month more... just one month more till I begin my full time missionary work. :)

oh man!

I GRADUATE IN 18 DAYS!!!!!


Also... I'm a stinkin missionary now! I get to start raising my support team next month!

YEAHHHHHH!



(I love my life!)

Venice

Uncle Brian called me out and yelled at me a little because I have not yet followed through on posting more of the pictures I took during my European adventures. Here's to you, Uncle Brian!

This post is all about Venice, Italy. I went there at the beginning of December 2007, when two friends of mine pitched in and bought me plane tickets to go with them (Merry Christmas to me!).



So without further ado... I give you... Venice!
To the French, Venice is the epitome of romance. In the same way that we Americans look at Paris and swoon (generally... I'm sure there are those of you reading who disagree), the French look at Venice and hear nothing but the birds and the bees. I was not aware of this, though, until I informed my host family that I was going to Venice for the weekend. "Oh la la!!! Mais avec qui?!" (oh my! who with?!). They were understandably confused, having heard me time and again explain the whole "I'm not interested in dating until I know it's who I'm gonna marry" thing... and then when I told them that I was going with not one, but TWO lovely young ladies they were shocked! After carefully explaining that Katie and Erin were just friends, they let it go... but I totally understood why they were freaking out once we got to Venice.

Such beauty! It's absolutely breathtaking, and old, and classic, and solemn, and whimsical, and everything else you could imagine all at the same time!

Our youth hostel was... interesting. It was more of a community room, with four bedrooms and a common area, with four beds per room. Also, it was nearly IMPOSSIBLE to find! After wandering around Venice for two and a half hours, completely confused by the ridiculous numbering system (one "block" would be 200s, and then the next would be 1300s, for example), we somehow just stumbled upon it while walking down a back alley that we could barely fit in because it was so thin. Oy. But, it was cheap and suited our needs. And from the balcony, we could catch a glimpse of the Grand Canal, so all in all it wasn't too bad.

Mind you, it was only the slightest glimpse of the Grand Canal... but speaking of the GC...

Those are all taken from the Rialto Bridge, one of the three bridges in the city that cross the Grand Canal -- also one of the big touristy areas and the site of my late night singing for money adventures (which I wrote about in a previous post)... but just to rehash:

So at some point in the weekend, we ended up having zero euros between the three of us. What was the solution? I put a beret down in front of me and started singing Christmas carols in hopes that we might be able to get at least a little bit of money so we could eat and get back to the airport. It worked! I made about 200 dollars (130 euros) :)

The rest of this post is gonna be pictures without captions. Venice was... a life experience. One of my favorites :)



Thanks for visiting, faithful readers. My goal is to get the rest of my Europe pictures published here in the next week or so. I'll try to put more up tomorrow evening, so keep on checking in!

the call

It's started out as a feeling
Which then grew into a hope
Which then turned into a quiet thought
Which then turned into a quiet word

And then that word grew louder and louder
Till it was a battle cry
I'll come back when you call me
No need to say goodbye.

Just because everything's changing
Doesn't mean it's never been this way before
All you can do is try to know who your friends are
As you head off to the war

Pick a star on the dark horizon
And follow the light
You'll come back when it's over
No need to say goodbye

Now we're back to the beginning
It's just a feeling and no one knows yet
But just because they can't feel it too
Doesn't mean that you have to forget

Let your memories grow stronger and stronger
Till they're before your eyes
You'll come back when they call you
No need to say goodbye.

-=Regina Spektor=-

THREE MONTHS!

Oy! It's been three months. So sorry... soooo soooo sorry!

So much has been going on, and this whole being a senior in college thing is kinda rough... and I don't even get to graduate till next year! (stupid gen-eds!!!!)

Two of my best friends got engaged... Jason and Ashley (you can see them in the below post)... happiness abounds :)

Lots going on in my life... and probably more pictures than I can ever begin to upload... oy!

Soon, my friends and family... sooon...

my life here

It's hard to believe that it's now been well over a month since I was overseas. The culture shock has worn off, and certainly the jetlag as well... and I'm quite settled into my life back in Fairborn, Ohio.

I recently realized that not many of you guys know much about my life here. Well, I'm happy to tell you all about it.

I live in a house that has been divided into 5 two bedroom apartments... I live in one of those apartments with two other guys (Kyle and Josh). The house is right off of campus (about a 4 minute walk to most of my classes), and only a 5-10 minute drive from the restaurant I work at. The house is owned by Chi Alpha Christian Ministries, a campus group that I've been a part of for the past three years, and everyone who lives in it is on the upper leadership team of the group.

I love my apartment. A lot. It is truly the place that I feel most at-home in the world. It's not huge, but it's nice. We have some art hung up in the living room (which, I admit, is a bit of a mess at the moment), a moderately large kitchen and dining room, a bathroom (of course!) that is painted bright blue. All three of us share one bedroom (I know it sounds crazy, but it works out great!), that happens to be painted BRIGHT ORANGE. Like... safety hazard warning orange. We chose the color. It makes it easy to wake up in the mornings :). The other bedroom, we have converted into a den/study room/prayer room. The walls are a dark mahogany, with some tan accents, and we hand-painted a map of the world on one of the walls... pictures of my apartment will be up with the next update (which will NOT take me another month to write... i promise!)

I serve tables at Don Pablos... I used to work full time 40+ hours a week bartending, but I have given up a lot of that and now only work 10-15 hours a week, and never bartending. I love my job, and I love the flexibility that it gives me. Management lets me set my own schedule, even to the point of just showing up whenever I want to work and they find a place for me to work. It's truly a huge blessing from the LORD. I'm also a full-time student, studying French (language, history, commerce, literature).

My friends comprise most of my life.

This is Kyle. Kyle is my best friend, roommate for two years now... he is the person that I can talk to when things are good or bad, and one of the few people in the world that I think I can say honestly knows me better than I know myself. I'm looking forward to another year and a half of being blessed by sharing this apartment with him. Incidentally, he's the president of the Ministry here...





It's a shame that my eyes are closed and that we look so goofy here, but this is me Kyle and Josh (my other roommate). Josh is an amazing friend of mine who moved in just this past fall. The three of us live together very well (there's surprisingly no drama considering the close quarters and all). It was Josh's idea to paint the map on the wall (man, I can't wait till I get a picture of that uploaded!)

Jason... there are very few words to describe Jason. He is brilliant, funny, incredibly talented, and nearly fluent in French as well. Jason's a senior biomedical-engineering major, and I'm proud to call him one of my best friends. Very few people in the world can combine engineering, jazz, coffee, squirrel hunting (yes... he hunts squirrels in our back yard), and French into their personality. Jason lives in the apartment just above mine. He and I lead worship together here at Wright State (he is an incredible guitarist... I stick to the piano.)

Dan. My authentic Indian friend. Once again, he just plain rocks my world. He is chill and relaxed and knows how to have a good time. He's graduating this year too (mechanical engineering... what is it with me and my engineer friends!)... I'm sad to see him go. He was the friend that I went to Paris to visit at the very beginning of December (he was there with a class trip... yes, he also speaks French). Dan has been a constant presence in my life over the past 3 years. He lives with Jason, just above my apartment.

Bethany lives in Texas. Bizarre, I know. A list of my best friends could not be complete without her though. There are just no words for how much she has affected my life, all of the things that she has taught me about friendship and how to give and receive love, and all of the countless hours that we have spent geeking out over ridiculous things that nobody else seems to ever understand. She's also quite the singer. Somewhere in the world, there is a DVD of the two of us singing "Mr. Jones" by Counting Crows... it will go down in history as one of the best performances of the song EVER (perhaps, I'll upload it to youtube?) Like I said, she lives in Texas now, where she is doing an internship learning how to be a campus pastor so that she can work with Chi Alpha Ministries for the rest of her life. Her passion is inexplainable. I miss her dearly, but thank the LORD often for the miracle of cell phones.

Brittany lives in Costa Rica now. She works with Book of Hope Ministries, and just spent 6 months working in indigenous tribes in South Africa (yes, I did mean to say South Africa). Now she's in language school in Costa Rica, followed by two years of touring various countries in South America. She was here in Dayton on leave when I got home from France, so I was very thankful to get to spend some time with her to reconnect. She and I have been through a lot together in the past three years. I love her dearly. (And hey! She was the one who got me the job at Don Pablo's!)

Ashley. again, there are no words. Only lots of music. She and I sing together and record together a lot. That's all I can really say... because there really are just no words for her. She's truly like a second sister to me. (This is a picture from her 21st birthday party that I "bar-tended").











My life is pretty much perfect right now. I can't think of a single thing that I would change! And, just to make the update complete, I feel that I should tell you all that since the last time I've seen most of you (which is, regrettably, a long long time ago), I have fallen 100% head-over-heels in love with Jesus. He has changed my life in so many ways, and it is only through Him that I can say I even have a life now.

For now, it's 3:00 AM and I must go to bed. I love you all very much!

Yes I did make it back to the States.

Yes I will make a substantial post soon.

(With Pictures!)

hooboy!

Bags packed. Room cleaned. Breakfast eaten. Goodbyes said. Pictures taken. Email checked. Thoughts evaluated. Journal entries written. Christmas presents bought. Cheese enjoyed.

Yep. I think I'm all set to go. Now I just need to wait patiently for the next 12 hours.

hmm... maybe I'll go take a bike ride and look at the mountains.

The next time I post, I'll be in the States!!!!!