All Around Athens

Athens offers lots and lots of free and almost free things to do...almost every weekend.  Here are some of the highlights from the last few months.

Gym Dawgs Meet with Mallory (and others not listed & free t-shirts) 

During the Gym Dawgs meet, we create our own score sheet and attempt to guess the score for each of the gymnastics events.  If you guess closest, you win that round.  I smoked the competition!  Call it beginners luck, but I had about 11 wins and each of the rest of the group had about 4 each. :) 

Another Gym Dawgs Meet: Mallory & Jeremy (and another free t-shirt)

 Danny & me (Danny is a 2nd year in my program)

Megan (another cohortee) & me at a baseball game.  Georgia almost won, but it was a good game!  Oh, and they gave out free t-shirts too (the best of the bunch thus far!)

Intercultural affairs (ICA) sponsored an Indian cultural extravaganza (food, fashion, music...).  It was a wonderful experience and the Indian food was amazing!  Below is me, Tiffany, and Ashley.  Ashley works for ICA and Tiffany is in my cohort.

So there is a much longer story associated with the next two pictures, but I'll try to keep it succinct.  Ginny (below) is training for a 1/2 marathon in the fall.  Thinking that I may be training for one in October as well (another long story) I thought I'd start by running a 5k.  Having trained and feeling comfortable running 3-4 miles, I decided to give it a go.  This run was through the junkyard.  It was actually beautiful, but more like trail running.  I was more concerned about my feet and tripping than focusing on running and breathing.  Speaking of, that's been hard for me recently, breathing.  I'm not sure if it's the pollen or asthma.  Anyway, I didn't run it in the time I had hoped, but I did get a wonderful opportunity to run/talk with a woman for about a mile.

Additionally, my friend Suzie does geocaching (sp?). And her most recent trinket was this tortoise.  Apparently it's in a race with a hare, and it runs races.  You take a picture with your bib, she enters the miles and it attempts to beat the hare.  Kind of a fun idea, maybe something to try in the future. 

ICA hosted an international street festival where five thousand people line the streets of downtown Athens to visit the various booths and stations...and all free to anyone and everyone.

Zoe and I work together and I thoroughly enjoy her company.  We roamed the festival, got snow cones, she got a Germany flag on her cheek, and participated in other international street festival activities.

Zoe was born and raised in Germany.  Apparently, this toy brought back found memories.  

She made me try.  I at least got it off the ground, but failed in comparison to her skills!

And who doesn't love icecream, not free, but from Dryers.  We couldn't resist, it was on the same street as the street fesitival.  Yummmy coffee chocolate chunk!

This last weekend was Twilight Criterion (sp?).  Basically, it's a big bike race and it's a qualifying race for the Tour de France.  Lance Armstrong has apparently competed in this race in previous years.  Downtown shuts down, and the streets are roped off for these hundreds of bikers.  Tons of people come out to watch.  It was a very interesting experience.  I was cheering for #14.  He took 5th.  

The women go first, then the men.  It's crazy fast and when you're watching from a corner, such as we were, things can get a little harry (not for us of course)...notice the hay bails?!

The pace car.  The man in the passengers seat was hilarious.  Every time, I mean every time he went around it looked as though he was holding on for dear life!

 

Pour number 104, his chain came off with one lap to go.

So there are some long awaited updates on my happenings.  Obviously, I've been studying and doing other school sorts of things, but these were some of the things that were fun all around Athens!

February & March

Although February is the shortest month of the calendar year, it felt like a small eternity.  Unfortunately, March felt like a ground hogs day movie to February.  They were rough months, and although I'm glad they're behind me, the reminiscence of the months will linger with me.

Recent Update

Well friends, I cannot believe it's already the middle of March. Where did January go? Where did February go? For me, I spent a week in 'training' with my community leaders (who are amazing!), a week opening up the building again, teaching a class, and other job related activities. Although January seemed to fly by, February did so just as quickly.

For those of you who don't know, I submitted my letter or resignation at the end of January (effective in July sometime). This was harder than I thought it was going to be. I cried, and contrary to my sister's belief, it takes a lot to make me cry. I anticipate, however, that there will be more tears ahead in the months to come.

So although I'm trying to cherish every moment of my final days at Baylor, the time continues to fly by.

With all that said, I applied for PhD programs back in December and have been waiting patiently (truly) to hear something. Surprisingly, I've had a peace about the experience. I'm not confident that I will get into a program, but I am confident that God is in control of my life and my circumstances.

And...a couple weeks ago, I received both some exciting and disappointing news. The University of Georgia emailed me to offer me an interview for their program. This email was followed the next day by one from UCLA politely denying me a spot in their program.

So last week, I went out to Georgia. The interview went well and I should hear something in the next couple of weeks (hopefully).

Exciting times! Additionally, after Georgia I went to Chicago for a national conference and then to St. Louis for some fun with friends.

I will blog later about those trips, including pictures! :)

It's been a whirlwind week and a half, but full of great memories and I checked two more states off the list! Woohoo!

Until the next update...