Spring Break Part III-World of Coke

During the final weekend of my spring break, I flew down to Atlanta, Georgia and met up with Luke for a weekend of sight-seeing prior to my visit at Emory University.

On Friday, I arrived mid-afternoon, so we grabbed some food and explored downtown. The downtown area of Atlanta was really nice, and it was neat to see Underground Atlanta, a now shopping mall/dining district that was previously an underground railroad. Unfortunately, my camera was dead!

On Saturday, we did the big touristy things in Atlanta--World of Coke and the Georgia Aquarium.

World of Coca-Cola

Here's a picture from the outside of the World of Coke.


A few years ago, Coco-Cola had a competition for artists to create Coco-Cola bottles representing different cultures around the world. Here are a few of the bottles!


Lots of different Coco-Cola advertisements and products in the Museum.


Santa Claus loves Coco-Cola.


Near the very end of the tour, tourists have the opportunity to sample different Coke products from all over the world. Here's a picture of Luke and I in the traditional Coke sampling room.

Spring Break Part II

My Spring break consisted of two days in Chicago, five days at home, and two days in Atlanta. Chicago was awesome! Atlanta was awesome! The home part in between was really, really terrible.

When I got home on Sunday evening, my family had all come together to celebrate my birthday (over two weeks early). Patrick was home for Spring Break too though, and it was fun to have everyone home at the same time.

My birthday cake below.

Me: I'm not turning five.
Mom: I thought you were smart enough to figure it out. Look again.
Me: Ooooh. 2 pink candles and 3 blue candles... 23


No surprise, I was able to blow out all five candles at once!


Here starts the crappy part of my Spring Break. Feel free to fast forward.

On Monday morning, I woke up feeling miserable. Sore throat, cough, tired, just miserable.

Whiskers, our 17 year old cat, also woke up feeling miserable. He had been getting progressively sicker over the last few months, and on Monday morning, we knew he was not doing well. He was not eating. He was not drinking. He was not really doing much of anything. Later that day, we had him put to sleep.

It was a difficult time for our family, but it was nice that both Patrick and I were home to say goodbye.

Here are a couple of pictures of Whiskers.

Whiskers at Christmas!


Whiskers and Brownie, our two cats. They are from the same litter, believe it or not!


I spent the rest of the week in bed and ended up getting better in time for my trip to Atlanta on Friday.

I told you my week was depressing.

Spring Break Part I

After a very cold week at Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa, I headed to Chicago for a weekend with Amanda, my college roommate. Little did I know, the dying of the river was happening that weekend, along with other St. Patrick's Day festivities.

On Saturday morning, Amanda and I met up with some of her friends to walk down to the green river. We were a little late and didn't actually get to see them dye it, but we did get to see the end result, a very green river!


Amanda and I at the river!


Me, Amanda, and a few of her medical school friends!

My Birthday Month

Although my birthday is not until the end of this month, there has been a lot of birthday talk in the last few days. This past weekend, I was at home for the first time since January. On Friday afternoon I was goofing around, looking at furniture online or watching Modern Family on Hulu or something when I got a text message from my friend Doug.

Doug: Is today your birthday?
Me: No haha. It is March 28
Doug: I'm kind of impressed I even got the right month!
Me: Oh Doug
Doug: My computer doesn't work so I can't really see fbook...and I swear I woke up with a premonition that today was for sure your bday.

Later that evening my parents asked me when I would prefer to celebrate my birthday. I will be home for March 13-17 for part of my Spring Break and then again April 1-3 for a weekend prior to my visit at Knox College. Although the second weekend is closer to my actual birthday, my brother Patrick will be home for Spring Break for the same time as my Spring Break.

My response: How about both times?

I'm not kidding. I really like my birthday.

And for anyone who wants to celebrate my birthday on the actual day, I will be in Norman, Oklahoma with the Beta Theta KKG chapter at Oklahoma University. See you there?

These are a Few of my Favorite Things

I'm sitting here eating strawberries and thinking about what a good day I'm having.

As usual, I started my day by sneaking into Carnegie Mellon's gym. After showering and getting ready, I had two officer meetings, followed by a two and a half hour break. I used my break to go to Starbucks to do some reporting. While I was at Starbucks I remembered a gift card I had in my wallet (hello, free coffee.), then proceeded to hammer out an entire report start to finish. Whew! As much as I love love love coffee, I try not to drink it too often. I'm very sensitive to caffeine, and when I drink it, I have more energy than a three year old child...hence the super-reporting.

After my "break," I headed back towards campus for a meeting with the campus Greek Adviser, who gave me the largest consultant packet I have ever seen. It is a thick folder complete with anything I could ever dream of asking. I hate to admit it, but I will probably just skim the thing....its like 50 pages! Still though, I'm impressed.

Now I'm hanging out, eating strawberries, and feeling good. The chapter bought me a million different snacks, including everything I asked for plus more. In a document that outlines how to plan an LC visit, chapters are instructed to ask us what our favorite snack and breakfast foods are. Every week my list varies a little depending on how hungry I was when I responded to the email. (It's like grocery shopping on an empty stomach.) I don't remember what I requested...but it wasn't all of this and very few things make me happier than good food and lots of it.

For all my chapter women friends out there, just remember:

Happy LCs write nice reports about your chapter.

A Weekend in NOLA

This past weekend I flew down to New Orleans for a fun weekend in between my University of Kentucky and Carnegie Mellon visits. I had never even been to Louisiana before, let alone New Orleans, so when my friend Luke mentioned meeting up there, I didn't hesitate to make travel arrangements!

On Friday, we didn't do too much. When we both got into town, we went out for dinner and caught a night parade in Metairie, a New Orleans suburb. Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera with me to take any pictures!

Saturday was the day where I really got to see New Orleans. Luke's cousins live in Algiers Point on the West Bank, across the river from downtown. We went over to their house, then took the ferry to downtown New Orleans. Here's a picture of downtown from the ferry.


Exploring the city was so much fun, and the weather was perfect. Here's a picture of Royal Street on a gorgeous 75 degree afternoon.


Of course we had to check out Pat O'Brien's, a New Orleans bar that can brag about selling eight million dollars worth of Hurricane mixed drinks each year.


Here is a picture of the beautiful St. Louis Cathedral.


I was amazed by how many street performers there were. We saw magicians, a transformer, jugglers, bands, everything. This dancing group, shown below, has become so popular that this location is their territory. They had the most wild moves, including flipping over 7 volunteers from the crowd.


Here is another street performer, who actually does not perform at all. He just sits. And sits. And sits. And eventually he gets up and moves to another location where he sits. And sits. And sits. He won't even move when people disturb him or do inappropriate things to him. The photo below is a bit R-rated because of a generous gift from a likely intoxicated tourist.


Here's a picture of Bourbon Street, taken mid-afternoon. I was amazed by how many people managed to be drunk at that hour of the day!


After exploring downtown for a bit, we caught a cab out to the Garden District, a beautiful neighborhood in New Orleans. The houses in the Garden District are old, refurbished, and amazingly beautiful. I also got to see a traditional New Orleans cemetery, shown below.


Here's a picture of Luke and I in the Garden District.


After a delicious French dinner at Coquette, followed by gelatti, Luke and I headed back downtown to catch one of the evening parades. We ended up seeing three parades while we were in New Orleans, and I don't know why I didn't think of taking pictures during the day parade we saw. I think I was too busy trying to catch beads! Since my camera doesn't do well with bright, moving objects at night, I didn't get the best picture, but here is a picture of one of the floats.


Here's an even lower quality photo of an Elvis-themed float in the parade.


All in all, I'd say it was the perfect weekend. I had so much fun experiencing New Orleans in its early stages of Mardi Gras madness.

This week I am in Pittsburgh for a second visit to Carnegie Mellon University. My week started off pretty rough, with flight delays that caused me to miss Standards, CC, and chapter meeting. Then, I lost my luggage for the first time all year. Luckily enough, it was found and delivered to the CMU Kappa house at 8 o'clock this morning.

My Fake IDs

Being the goody two shoes that I am, I never had much experience with fake IDs. I'm not sure how I managed to get through my underclass years without a fake, but I must have been too busy hanging out in the library with my chemistry friends to really care about the bar scene.

This year however, I have a new fake ID every week. Let me explain.

Prior to going on a LC visit, I send an introduction letter to the chapter. It includes a brief biography, what forms the chapter needs to complete, and a list of very general requests. My three requests are:

1) Start meetings at 10 AM (if possible) to allow working out in the morning
2) A guest pass to the campus gym and a chapter member to escort me there every morning
3) A t-shirt or other fun Kappa item to add to my collection

First semester I had some additional requests and the current #2 was not in there. Believe it or not, "allow working out in the morning" was not a big enough hint that I wanted to workout in the morning. Adding the second request has made things much more clear.

I have learned throughout this year that many university gyms either a) do not have guest passes or b) their student workers have no idea if they do have guest passes. As a result, nine times out of ten, I am given some random chapter member's student ID to use for gym admission.

More often than not, I can get a hold of the ID of someone who I could pass as. While I rarely look like the person, I try to remind myself that if I was a senior in college, I probably wouldn't look that much like freshman "me" anyway.

Sometimes I get a girl's ID who has stick straight hair. Fine, I'll wear it straight that week.

Sometimes I get a girl's ID who has really blonde or really dark brown hair. Fine, people dye their hair.

Sometimes I get a girl's ID who is a little chubbier than I am. Fine, I'll puff out my cheeks a bit while I give a closed mouth smile.

Once I got the ID of an Indian chapter woman. WHOA. That is where I draw the line. I realize that student workers at the gym don't look closely, but no one is THAT stupid.

I'm not sure if the bar scene is so easy, but I have become a pro at sneaking into university gyms.