Dawn's Blog

Yesterday was an amazingly beautiful day here, so a few of us took a day trip up to a place called Helen. It's a little town in North Georgia that has been made to look like a German Alpine Village. Needless to say, it was pretty awesome. Highlights of the day included:

• Eating Schnitzel
• Eating the most amazing funnel cake (see below)
• Using German phrases all day
• Seeing the largest pitch pine in the state of Georgia
• Taking pictures of all of these random activities
• Getting a sunburn in February (don't worry, I'm just a bit pink)

The really interesting thing was that it is basically just a big tourist attraction of Georgia, so alongside the Alpine village theme, they also have just about anything else touristy you could want, like redneck T-shirts and a haunted house. One of my favorite places was a Mexican restaurant right in the middle of the "authentic" Bavarian village.

Oh, and there was also this place:
which I think might be trying to be a knockoff of Giordano's.

Last night I began my first ever Dungeons and Dragons campaign. For those of you who are not familiar with this game (most of you, I hope), it is a role playing fantasy game where several people create characters for themselves and these characters become part of a narrative told by the Dungeon Master. Basically we sit around a table and role dice to see whether or not we get eaten by a six-headed horse. This game is also ranked somewhere around Star Trek conventions on the nerdiness scale.

In other news, the Colts lost the Super Bowl.  I was feeling pretty proud to be from Indiana (and still am) and glad that they made it that far, even though it was the only football game I had the chance to see this season. I did have to suffer a little ridicule when they lost; my favorite quote was, "Why is Indiana so bad at everything?" (This coming from an Iowa native, not really sure what she had to brag about).

In more positive news, our Americorps team is currently playing Assassin (aka Ambush, aka the best game ever). In this game, each player receives the name of another player and tries to assassinate that person, while avoiding being assassinated by the person who is coming after them. In our version, you assassinate a person by clipping a clothespin onto them (it can also be played with water guns). It creates a lot of excitement and paranoia in the community. Highly recommended.

 (This was written last night)
I’ve been getting a lot of criticism lately for not updating my blog. And I guess it has been a while.
So, to make up for it, I’ve decided to give you not only an update on what’s going on with me, but a story about an awkward situation I was put in today. First, for the update:

I went home to Indiana for Christmas. It was awesome. My family is great. I spent the night in 5 different cities (and 2 states), including a night at camp during which I hid in the bottom of an industrial refrigerator and someone (won’t mention names) broke a hole in a wall. We also went sledding, and coined the term “snowy face”. I built a snowman on Kevin’s car, participated in the 3rd Annual Over the River and Through the Woods to Grandmother’s House After Christmas Run (3rd place, by the way), ate a lot of unhealthy food, and got to spend some time with Taylor.

The day after I got back to Georgia a few of us decided to use our day off to do a little exploring in Atlanta. It was a great day, except that it was about the coldest day that Atlanta has ever had, and we spent most of it walking around outside. But we saw some cool stuff like this:

Last week it snowed here. We got about a half inch. They closed school the night before just to be safe. Which I thought was a little ridiculous, until I went for a drive the next day and saw that the roads really are pretty icy when you don’t have any trucks to put salt out. Anyway, since my students had the day off, I just got to hang out with them for the day. We ended up watching the first two Harry Potters and then had a snowball fight. Sooooo, pretty good day.

But my job is definitely not all fun and games. With the upcoming MLK Day, we have been assigned to do a 3 hour activity/lesson/etc. with our students tomorrow morning. All of us have been working pretty hard on getting this ready, and right now most of us are getting together last minute stuff. Which is what I should be doing right now. Hopefully I’ll let you know how that all goes in my next post.

Oh, and the awkward situation.

So one of the teachers here is known for her, well, outgoing personality and uniqueness. I don’t really know her that well, but she reminds me a lot of Ms. Frizzle.  Anyway, I was walking out of the cafeteria today when I saw her alone talking on her phone behind the building. In the midst of her animated phone conversation, I heard her say, “How are you doing?” and turned to see if she was talking to me. Turns out she was, so replied that I was doing well. As I kept walking I heard her say, “Oh, William, now there’s a nice girl for you.”  Slightly confused, I turned around again with a puzzled look on my face, to which she replied, quite matter-of-factly, “Oh, I was just recommending you to a wonderful, good-looking, wealthy young man,” as if this is something she does on a regular basis.

I mean, I appreciate the gesture, but I’m just not sure if I should trust her judgment.

 It's been a little while since I've posted on my blog, so I hope this is a good one. In fact, I've decided that my vocabulary is a bit lacking, so I'm going to make use of my favorite dinosaur, the Thesaurus.  I stole this idea from an episode of Friends where Joey uses a thesaurus to beef up a recommendation he is writing, just to give credit where it is due. So, as my Christmas Eve special, here is my version of  'Twas the Night Before Christmas.


Twas the hours of darkness before Yuletide, when all through the abode
Not a varmint was stirring, not even a mouse.
The pantyhose were suspended by the flue with care,
In expectation that St Nicholas would be at that location in a jiffy.

The offspring were burrowed all skintight in their futons,
While hallucinations of sugar-plums moshed in their noggins.
And the female parent in her hanky, and I in my turban,
Had just settled our cerebrums for a seemingly endless winter’s siesta.

When out on the front yard there arose such a rattle,
I vaulted from the futon to observe what was the matter.
Away to the window I traveled through the air like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and chucked up the sash.
 
 Earth's natural satellite on the breast of the new-fallen white stuff
Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below.
When, what to my wondering peepers should become visible,
But a wee sleigh, and eight diminutive reindeer.

"Now Runner! now, Prima Ballarina! now, Skipper and Ill-tempered Woman!
On, Ball of Dust and Gas! On, God of Love! on, on Thunder and Lightening!
To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
Now dash away! Dash away! Dash away all!"

And then, in a twinkling, I perceived with my ears on the roof
The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.
As I drew in my head, and was turning around,
Down the smokestack St Nicholas came with a bound.

He was dressed all in pelage, from his head to his foot,
And his threads were all tarnished with ashes and soot.
A bundle of Toys he had flung on his vertebral column,
And he looked like a door-to-door salesman, just opening his pack.

He was big-boned and full-figured, a right jolly old elf,
And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself!
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.

He spoke not an utterance, but went straight to his work,
And filled all the hosiery, then turned with a jerk.
And laying his digit aside of his proboscis,
And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose!

He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all traveled through the air like the down of a thistle.
But I heard him exclaim, ‘ere he drove out of sight,
"Happy Yuletide to all, and to all y'all a good-night!"

First, I'd like to apologize for not writing for so long. I've been busy. How this happened, I'm not sure. I started getting involved in things because I was bored, and I may have overdone it. Or maybe its just the Christmas season. Anyway, to the interesting stuff.

I participated in my first triathlon today. Well, not really. Well, it did fit the definition of triathlon, and it was my first. So that is a true statement. But it wasn't exactly official. A few weeks ago a few of us got a family  pass to a rec center nearby to use their machines and pool. The employees were a little skeptical at first about 5 young adults (of various races, I might add) claiming to be a family, but they said if we had the same address, it was ok.

Anyway, my friend Jay decided we needed a little competition and organized a triathlon for us. We biked 5 miles on the stationary bikes, ran a mile on the treadmill, and then swam 200 yds. in the pool. I think I got third place. Out of three. But that's ok. We didn't really have accurate results because between the biking and the running a couple of us had to wait for a free treadmill.

All in all, it was pretty fantastic. We even got sports drinks at the end. And I'm pretty sure that's what makes a race official.

Since today (or yesterday, because this won’t get posted until tomorrow) is World AIDS Day, I’d like to take advantage of my blog to raise some awareness. I don’t know how much you know about the AIDS pandemic in Africa, or how you feel about it, but I’ve recently realized that it’s a pretty big deal. Like a lot of Americans, I guess I always thought it was a terrible thing, but it seemed pretty far away, and there wasn’t really much I could do about it anyway. And then I learned about stuff like this:

•    The population of South Africa is about 50,000,000. More than 5 million of those people have AIDS. 1.2 million children there have been orphaned by AIDS.
•    A total of 3 million people die every year from AIDS. That is approximately the same as 20 fully loaded Boeing 747 airplanes crashing every day for a year. 
•    In South Africa, environmentalists fear a disaster caused by the predicted 3 million bodies that will have to be buried there in the next 10 years.
•    In Zambia, almost half the population is under the age of 15.
•    In Rwanda, 42,000 households are headed by children. *

But numbers and statistics don’t really mean a whole lot to me, and I’m guessing they don’t to you either. The thing is, each one of those children has a story. They’re actual people. Some of them watched their parents die. Some of them live on the streets. Many of them can’t get an education. If we saw children living in these conditions in our own community, there is no way we would let it keep happening. So why does it matter so much that a kid is in Uganda instead of Indiana? Just a thought to ponder. And I’m sure most of you have heard this before. And the question of what we do about it is still a hard one. But there really are starving kids in Africa that would give anything to eat that spinach you just threw away.

I don’t really even know what my goal with this spiel is, but I just really hope we take it a little more seriously.   So what can we do? There are organizations like Compassion and World Help and probably hundreds of others that are providing food and education to some of these kids, and we can share a little of our wealth with them. We can learn more about it.

*All of my stats I got from a book called Children of Hope, and it also includes the real-life stories of several children who are dealing with the AIDS crisis every day. You can get this book for free. 
I will now step down from my soap box.

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.