My Winter Odyssey

Can you believe it’s actually 2012?

My winter break has been filled with nothing but travel. First I took a visit to Charlottesville/Keswick to visit a good friend and her family. Now, if you’re as much of a reality-television buff as I am, you know that upon meeting new people some of them just deserve their own television series. I need the Bravo Network to fly over the Appalachians and start filming. Two words: good times.

Anyway, I had never been to Charlottesville. It feels and looks a lot like Hagerstown and Funkstown Maryland (where some of my extended family live). There’s this bagel place called Bodos that would obliterate the College’s measly Einstein Bros. We need one here—in Williamsburg—now. And in the Downtown Mall area, there’s this place called Daedalus Books. Calling all English majors: road trip! This place made me feel like I was in Daedalus’ legendary labyrinth. I only found one out of three books I was looking for, but an old copy of Dante’s Purgatorio made the adventure all worthwhile.

I took a trip up to Herndon next, where the majority of my time was spent dropping dollars on clothes, movies, and exotic Thai and Korean foods. My last night in NoVa, a group of friends and I went out to this club called Fur, which did not have fierce animals, but an intense European DJ instead. The dance floor was more tightly packed than one of Lambo’s eurotrash parties, and though our first attempt to ascend to the second floor balconies was barred, our second attempt put us in the upstairs VIP lounge. Yeah. There were leather couches, with tall, thin glasses, buckets of ice and champagne and servers pushing through the dancers to run to and from the bar. Confused, yet excited, we tossed the ice around and had a thrilling night indeed.

me enjoying a peppermint cookie after making pizzas

For new years I went back to Keswick. There were about nine of us total, and we all celebrated clumsily, but blissfully. We made pizzas, which included two Italian pizzas (made by yours truly), two Thai, a Mexican, and a Pear/Gorgonzola pizza; played Apples to Apples and this game called Bodies to Bodies, which involves turning off all of the lights and running from a killer until you either stumble upon a dead body or die yourself; bellowed the Alma Mater after the ball dropped; and then shot off fireworks from the nearby helipad, while continuing to swing the champagne and sing tunes from Adele, Queen, Kanye West, and Gaga. Probably the best new years celebration I’ve ever had.

There’s nothing more magical I have learned in College than how momentous it is carving memories and adventures with friends. That’s exactly how I wanted to spend this break; so, now I’m off to Alabama before continued RA training begins!