no peaches in georgia

My 4-day trip to my beloved South was mega-tiring, but still awesome. As soon as I saw the ATL and all the Peachtree-named roads surrounding it pop up in the airplane window diagonally across from me, I got this irrepressible surge of happiness boil up inside. 

The weather kind of sucked, I admit, but it was definitely warm - I walked around without a coat/jacket every day - highs being like 56-59 degrees F. 

So, here's the layout of my 4-day weekend: (feel free to skip)

- Kristin picked me up at the airport, the only airport of which I actually know the layout (even though people say it's the most complicated one, ha)

- We went back to her place, settled in, played Rock Band 2 a bit.

- Headed out to the Avenues, which is sort of like one of those huge street mall-y types (like the Forum, for those who live in GA).

- Had lunch at Red Robin; I saw someone I knew there, but I couldn't figure out if she knew me. Awkward.

- Looked around and ended up at B&N where we looked at the "What Your Birthday Means" book. 

- Went back to Jillian's place, watched our friends-graduation DVD, watched "A Walk to Remember" because it's possibly the best chick flick ever.

- Went back to Kristin's place for dinner, played Rock Band 2 while waiting for pizza, but then all my other friends snuck into the basement while I was belting out a song and surprised me (first surprise of my life)

- Ate and played Cranium. Of course, Kristin/Jillian won because they have a psychic connection.

- Went to Chipotle (AH I missed Chipotle. Thank goodness they're making one at Penn.) with the Adloos/Jeff.

- Visited Dylan at the hospital and chatted with him/his parents. I haven't been in a hospital since my brother was born; it was a bit odd.

- Had coffee with Eric.

- Dinner with Kristin; watched "The Dark Knight" with Kristin/Jillian while keeping my face covered with a pillow for the parts involving knives...ha. I'll probably have to re-watch it later on.

- Church in the morning - it was my first experience at a megachurch. The kids' section (K-5) was like a freaking Christian Chuck E. Cheese's. And the older kids' section looked like a jazz club, with a full-out rockin' stage for the praise band and everything. And for the adults, 10 minutes before service, they had like an Entertainment Weekly/rollercoaster ride introduction video-like presentation to cover what's going on at the church and the different ministries. Crazy. But yet, despite the hugeness, it didn't feel all that commercialized or anything. I could see why people would be drawn to such churches. It was definitely a good experience.

- Toodles to Kristin, who headed off to Tech because their school started yesterday. Lame.

- Ice-skating with the GHPers. We were missing quite a fair amount of regular attenders. But it was still very nice! I had really old, smelly skates though...

- Coffee with Catiko. We ran into two of my high school acquaintances and that was mad awkward, so we had to sit outside.

- Dinner with a family friend. Kani House has changed! 

- Back to Shubhi's house. We took like a full hour trying to decide/find a movie to watch, and we finally settled on "Step Brothers." It was inappropriate, but still funny in some spots.

- Trip to Northview to visit teachers - we barely had enough time to talk to everyone because they all had to be rushed off to a faculty meeting. Lame. And Shubhi's car couldn't start for like 7 minutes; was quite funny.

- Lunch at Panera (Panera!) with orch dorks. My little kiddos have grown up so much! Crazy.

- Mall of GA with Shubhi - there wasn't much to find, so we literally were in there for an hour before coming out. And we covered the ENTIRE mall too. haha Financial crisis, indeed.

- "Little Miss Sunshine" in our sleepy afternoon state. Cute movie.

- Dad came to pick me up to head off to the airport, but before that, we went to Chick-Fil-A to pick up my dinner. YES. 

- Airport to airplane. The people next to me REALLY hit it off and talked the entire flight about everything, namely politics and religion. I couldn't help eavesdrop on their conversation about religion, because the man was not-too-religious and made fun of evangelists on the plane; he was talking about his 2-year-old daughter and how he had to choose between letting her follow Buddhism (his wife's religion) and Christianity (his kind-of-not-so-much adopted religion.) The woman was a Unitarian reverend(?I think) but she was also pretty liberal in the sense that she respected all religions and thought everything should be taught in schools (the Bible, Koran, etc. etc.) But yeah. That's for another day.

- Back home in Jersey to the biting cold.

SO. If you skipped all that:

People I Saw: best girl friends, best guy friends, GHP camp friends, school orchestra friends, family friends, high school teachers.

Places I Visited: Hartsfield-Jackson Airport, the Avenues, Emory Crawford Long Hospital, the Forum, Atlanta Ice Forum, Northview High School, Mall of Georgia.

Cars I Rode: Kristin's, Jillian's, Milad's, Eric's, Spark's, Catiko's, Catherine's, Shubhi's, Dad's rental car. (Thanks, everyone!) 

Food: Red Robin burger, Hawaiian pizza, cupcakes, Belgian waffles, Chipotle, pulled-pork sandwiches, chocolate-chip muffins, homemade Indian food, Kani House, Panera, Chick-Fil-A.

Sweet Tea Count: 2 (sad.)

Games of Choice: Rock Band 2 and Cranium

Movies: A Walk to Remember, The Dark Knight, Step Brothers, Little Miss Sunshine

Airplane Buddies: A sleeping couple on the way there; an eccentric pair of talkative, white-wine-inhaling New Yorkers on the way back.

Firsts: Airplane trip totally by myself, surprise gathering, megachurch experience, heading back to high school as a graduate.

Georgia on my mind.