Coolers and Capital Cities
- Lydia Taylor
- May 13, 2016
- 4 min read
Another bus journey, another blog. This time I'm headed to DC for a couple of days to check out all the top attractions, and be the ultimate tourist for my last time in the States. But more on that later, let's backtrack a little...
Classes ended, finals came and went and before I knew it I was packing my things and saying my goodbyes. Saying goodbye was harder than I thought, but it was also quite exciting because I know that next time I see these people it will be on my home turf- England. Straight after my last final ended I jumped in the car along with 4 other friends and we drove down to Kentucky Lake for a few days. We were headed down to join a bunch of other brothers and their dates for the Sigep formal to celebrate the end of another school year. (If that sentance didn't make any sense to you that's ok, it probably just means you're too british. I'll explain.) Every fraternity has this thing at the end of the year known as 'Formal', and each brother in the house gets to invite one (or two) dates to join them. Pretty much it's just a two day party with a formal dinner on the second night where everyone dresses up and then stuffs their faces with mashed potato and fried chicken. Sounds pretty good, right?! It was a completely new experience for me and oh boy, was it fun.
It's also tradition for the date to make the guy who invited them a cooler (aka a cool box) which the guy then uses for the weekend. At first this sounded like a great idea- I would get to put my artistic skills to the test and paint the most elaborate, awesome cooler there was. What I failed to realise was just how much time this was going to take... Finals quickly became my second priority (sorry mum, but this cooler HAD to be good.) and every day I sat and painted this box for hours with the help of my friend Jen, who was also going. After countless episodes of the 'Office' to keep us sane and thousands of pinterest ideas later, we were finished. And I've gotta say, I'm pretty proud of the result.
I wish I'd taken more photos of the weekend but to be honest I was having too much fun to really think about it. Nevertheless, here's what i do have: (Click on them to make them full size)
Next up on the agenda- New York! After spending christmas here, I HAD to come back. There's too much to do here to only go once, and I missed the buzz of the city. This time, I dragged Jen along with me. (The same Jen who I also forced to help me make the cooler. I know, I'm a great friend.) She was only there for 4 days so we aimed to do as MUCH as possible in the time we had... We saw 'Waitress'' the new broadway show starring Jesse Mueller who Jen just so happened to know (WHAT), so we got a backstage tour of the set afterwards by Jesse herself (WHAT), we ate multicoloured bagels for breakfast, tried and failed to climb trees in central park and nearly got trampled crossing the Brooklyn bridge. Success! After Jen left I still had a couple of days in the city, and my aim was to somehow get hold of a viola and busk in the New York subway. I figured if I could do it at home then I could definitely do it here. I managed to get hold of a brilliant little viola within a few hours and set out that evening. I wouldn't say the pay is quite as good as at home, but the experience certainly made up for it. Within an hour I was asked to join someones band and play in their recordings, and I had some lovely conversations with interested listeners. A scary New York police man stopped near me at one point and started writing up something on his notepad while giving me a bit of an eye. I thought I was in for it so I just started playing extra nicely and shot a sweet smile in his direction in the hopes to get out of whatever ticket he might be writing up for me. When I finished the piece he came up to me and proceeded to ask me if it was Bach that I was playing and how nice it sounded. I informed him that yes, it was indeed Bach, and I was glad he enjoyed it. He nodded and smiled and as he left told me to 'keep up the good work.' Now if you know anything about police men and buskers in New York, you'd realised why I was so chuffed to recieve such a compliment!
And now, present day. In 3 hours I'll be in America's capital city ready to tick off all the hot spots off my bucket list. (Stay tuned because tomorrow I'll post some photos from DC on the blog) This is my final adventure in the States which makes it very bittersweet, but I'm definitely ready to go home and start annoying all my friends by never EVER shutting up about America and everything that's happened this year.
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