Dawn's Blog

So this past weekend I went on my first-ever overnight backpacking trip. It turned out to be one of the most  in-tents (haha) things I've ever experienced. I went with a group of people from the church I've been going to here, which consisted of about 8 middle-aged men, two younger men, a dog, and four of us young ladies.  Saturday morning we drove a couple of hours to Amicalola State Park, where our trek began. The weather was awesome all day and it was a pretty nice hike. I saw a lot of this:

When we reached the top of Springer mountain, there was a pretty incredible vista, which looked like this:

This spot was also the official end (or beginning) of the Appalachian Trail. There were some plaques there that looked like this:

We had the really cool experience of meeting a man there who had just finished his 5-month-long hike of the entire trail, starting in Maine. His family was there celebrating with him. He ate an entire half gallon of ice cream.

Anyway, we made it to our campsite, set up tents, and had dinner around the fire. As you know, it gets dark around 6, and there wasn't a whole lot to do out there in the dark, so a lot of people went to bed early. Turns out, it's really cold and windy on top of mountains at night, even in Georgia. I had a little trouble sleeping, what with the cold and loud wind and being afraid that I was going to be attacked by a bear at any moment and all.

In the morning the cold and wind turned into rain, not too long after we woke up. We had a very wet day of hiking, but we took a slightly different trail on the way down that was really pretty and went past an inn where we stopped and warmed up.

So, overall a great trip. One of my favorite parts was the hot shower at the end.

This past week turned out to be a very eventful one.  I've been working with the youth group at the church I've been going to, and it turns out that this has some unexpected perks. Wednesday was the annual Douglasville Veteran's Day parade, and I got to ride in the parade with the youth group in what they called a "deuce-and-a-half" (big green army truck), and afterward we had a bonfire. Douglasville doesn't do parades quite as well as Macy's (most of the people I talked to who live here didn't even know about it), but I did get to meet the mayor before the parade, so I felt pretty important. 

It may not be Korea, but I’ve been really fortunate to have some cool cultural experiences here in the South.

I’m a big fan of grits. We have them for breakfast here about 3 times a week in the cafeteria. But that just wasn’t enough, so I bought some quick grits to eat on the weekends, and some syrup to go with it.  I also got to eat some delicious boiled peanuts for the first time that one of the girls bought from a stand down the road. Oh, and black-eyed peas.

I’ve also been studying the local dialects of the native (or not-so-native) people. Interestingly, the degree of people’s “southern drawl” varies a lot from person to person, even among people who grew up in the same town. I will keep researching the various factors that go into this phenomena.

My greatest cultural accomplishment has been being able to determine the correct use of the terms “y’all” versus “all y’all”. At first glance, both seem to mean the same thing, and at first I didn’t understand  why an extra “all” had to be added to a word that was already plural. But I can now pick out the subtle differences in connotation and, in an effort to immerse myself in the culture and language, use these phrases whenever applicable.

If you didn't already know this, every Friday is a service day for our Americorps team. This means that we leave campus and basically do a day of community service at a location picked by our team leaders. On Friday, we went to a nature preserve just outside Atlanta, where we spent the day waging war on the evil Wisteria vines that are taking over the other plants at the park.

Yesterday morning a few of us set out for Sweetwater Creek State Park for a day of hiking and general merriment. It turned out to be a gorgeous day with some great weather and beautiful fall foliage. We ate our lunch overlooking the creek (seemed more like a river to me) and later did some wading in the water across some slippery rocks (not real safe, I know, but only one person fell in). We even saw the ruins of an old grain mill, but I must say this was really disappointing after seeing the mill at Spring Mill State Park that was still in operation. Here's some pictures: