All Roads Point North

Renee

I left my home in warm sunny Coconut Grove in search of family, friends, adventure, and unfortunately cold. Spirits were high as I was looking forward to being rewarded by Kristin's welcoming smile and hospitality in Atlanta. I heard rumors the night before that Renee, one of my best friends from my semester in South Africa was possibly in Atlanta at the same time. Up to this point, I have only seen one of my 18 other housemates from that semester.

Kristin

On the 12^th Since Renee is doing grad school in Cape Town, it was a shock that we were not only going to be in the same hemisphere, not only in the same country, not only in the same state, but in the same CITY at the same time. A phone call confirmed the rumor and I decided that I would figure out how to see both Renee and Kristin during my time there. Without disregard to my long-planned rendez-vous with Kristin, I talked to both of them and found it appropriate to hang out with Renee for dinner before going to stay with Kristin. Being able to see both of them was so great that I'm still happy about it a week and a half later.

From Atlanta I traveled northeast to Charlotte where I stayed with Mike's family (Mike is my sister Liza's fiance). While there, Liza and I took care of some shopping and all of us went out for a fantastic Vietnamese dinner. After a few nights I packed up and rolled on through the mountains up to Lynchburg, VA where I met up with family. I saw cousins, aunts, and uncles during my wonderful stay there and for the first time saw some stunning mountainscapes. Living in Miami has some disadvantages one of which is elevation. Let's just say if you draw Florida on a piece of paper, you instantly have a 3-D model of the lovely sunshine state. Anyway from VA I packed up and picked up Nathan from Charleston.

Typical scene when hanging out with Nathan.

Nathan is one of my college roommates and good friend from Denison. He lives only blocks from where I grew up and we most certainly would have crossed paths if I hadn't moved to Ohio. We headed up to his apartment together in Morgantown where he goes to school at WVU. That night was filled with hot chocolate, movies, reminiscing, and shooting each other with his extensive artillery of nerf guns. The fun finally ended when the clouds blocked our view of the mesmerizing lunar eclipse. Together we went out to Wisp Resort the next day in MD to ski. It ended up being a brilliant decision because there were hardly a hundred people on the entire mountain spread among 30 runs.

I was worried it would take me a while to warm up and that I would probably end up breaking a leg, but after the 2^nd run I felt as if the 8+ years of non-skiing completely disappeared and I was swooping, gliding, turning, cutting, jumping, and carving like a champ. The entire day was nothing short of invigorating.

My final drive home yesterday marked the conclusion of 1800 miles of driving, 60+ gallons of gas, 11 family members, 3 college friends, 9 states, and (only) 4 months of being away from home.