Summertime, sweet summertime

Alright, well it looks like I'm going to be the first to double-post, so no judgement. Life at the Plantation is going splendidly. I used my MCAT registration refund to buy a hammock and I lay in the back yard all of the time...isn't that just ironic? We have family dinners about 4 times a week...I'm having a lot of fun cooking for the boys! Real life quote from Brion Lee: "Ally, it's not fair that you're better at cooking meat than I am, you can't even eat it!" :) Other than that, we've been taking advantage of Nashville in the summer...it's a lot like Vanderbilt, just minus the homework and exams and such! Last night we went to Centennial and brought blankets and watched The Blind Side...I made peach cobbler - so good! Last weekend, Brandon, Brion, Caroline Martin and I roadtripped down to New Orleans for Rachel Hodge's deb party. It was a great reunion! Rachel looked gorgeous, Bourbon St was debaucherous, the beignets at Cafe du Monde were incredible, and Katie Condrey jumped into the Mississippi. It was an awesome weekend. At work, my PI finished writing his latest grant and has started running around the lab like a chicken with his head cut off, so I've been working really hard. Hopefully it all pays off with a bi-line on a paper! Let's see what else....I've been spending a lot of time with my Young Life girls....still trying to convince them that everyone does NOT use pot, but it's falling on deaf ears at this point. Alright, back to work. Just so y'all know, I get SO excited whenever I see that someone has posted on this blog...I miss y'all so much!

Love,

Ally

CMA Music Festival

Four days of thick, humid Nashville heat + Greasy faces + Incredible performances + Plenty of rednecks = Amazing weekend!!

AFRICA!!

Okay, so I don't have much time to write, but here is a quick update for me!

I am wrapping up my time in Dakar, Senegal. I'm here on Summer Project with CRU, and I spend all my time each day sharing my faith with students at UCAD (Cheikh Anta Diop University. Don't ask me how you say that). It is so awesome here! Really hot, and a little smelly, but legit all the same. Our team has seen three students come to Christ, I personally walked one of them through the gospel. Let me tell you, there is nothing more amazing than seeing someone realize that God actually died for them. It is amazing. And, nothing strengthens and challenges your faith more than telling people about it for 6 hours every day. I only have days left on campus to talk to students before we leave Dakar to go out into a village and do some work there. As sad as I am to leave the campus, I am very excited to see what life is like in an African village. It should be incredibly interesting.

My team here is awesome. I am the only one from Vanderbilt, but its okay. I love them all. We have had tons of adventures around Dakar. Imagine an African amusement park. Legit.

Okay, they are taking the computer away from me now, so that's all I can write tonight!

I miss you all! See you when I get back to Nashville in July!!! :)

Hey Everyone!

I just read through the posts so far and it sounds like everyone is having exciting summers! I've been in Chicago thus far teaching dance and hanging out at home, but next week I start my real summer adventure in the Dominican Republic. I'll be there for 6 weeks teaching math (in spanish, yikes, or should I say, ¡Ay!) to 1st-7th graders! I'm also going to be teaching an after school dance program, which should be hilarious, since Irish dancing will be completely foreign to these kids! I'll be sure to take videos. So I hate to be a blog-snob (I think I just invented a new term?) but I'll also be blogging this summer to keep family/friends updated on what I'm doing in the DR. If you want to check in on what I'm doing its http://jilliandr2010.blogspot.com/. Anyways, hope everyone's doing well, and keep updating on your summers!

Lets Go Cards!!

So I have officially gone to my first Cardinals game of the season and it was wonderful. I went home Friday after work and got home and mother had an incredible amount of food for me to eat - we were celebrating my birthday. We had tons of boneless honey bbq wings from bww and then ted drewes for after, and we ate it while watching the Cardinals game. I miss being able to watch the Cardinals!! After that we re-watched the season finale of Lost, which was just as amazing as the first time. On Saturday I went to my sisters dance recital in the morning with Kristin and then Jon (Getz) met me at my house. He is like 3 hours away so it was a quick enough drive for him to be able to come to the game. We went to the Cardinals game Saturday night and it was SO hot. I was dripping with sweat until about the 8th inning. The game went 11 innings and ended with a walk-off single. Great game and awesome to be able to see Jon. Then I just hung out with the fam and Kristin on Sunday and drove back to Nashvegas this morning! Orgo starts tomorrow. Woof.

Life at DY in NY

Hey! So I have to applaud you, Andrew, for starting this whole blog. It is such a great idea and I'm very impressed! So I'm back in the big apple this summer once again doing PR, but this time around I'm interning for David Yurman ("luxury brand jewelry" to all of you guys). This is only my fourth day, so I can't offer a wholistic opinion but so far it has its ups and downs.

The first couple days I was here I was really busy, which was great because it made the time past by very quickly. Also, on Wednesday night I got to help work at a David Yurman event with Justin Tuck (NY Giants fullback) who was hosting a fundraising for his charity called Rush for Literacy. It was pretty cool, actually, and I got to feel really important by doing check in. Haha, not really, but we did have a few characters try to get in that were not on the guest list. Having said that, yesterday was really slow which makes the day seem really long. Plus, nearly everyone at the office seems perpetually stressed out and every issue that comes up seems to cause an extremely over-dramatic panic attack. When this happens I kind of have to stifle a laugh, because these so called "panic attacks" seem to occur all the time and tend to be over in about 30 min, at which point life resumes as usual.

Also, people aren't the friendliest in this office (more on the intimidating and a bit cold side, actually) but I've started to meet a few of the other interns that are nice. One of them is from Ireland! I like her a lot. Having said that, the woman I'm about to start interning for (VP of Global Marketing and Communications) apparently used to be extremely The Devil Wears Prada esque and the Irish girl, Kim, had to intern for her for 6 months. She said that one day she made her go stand in line at a sample sale for 2 hrs and then call her when she was at the front of the line. Another day this Meryl Streep figure (Shauna) liked Kims boots when she walked in and told her to go find her a pair despire the fact that they were sold out nearly everywhere and upon finding them told Kim to never wear hers again. Hmmm... BUT Shauna does not have an assistant who tend to run around like a chicken with its head cut off, so rumor has it that she doesn't treat her interns quite so badly anymore.

Greatest excitment of the week however is that Abby and Sarah Estopinal are coming in from DC and CT today to stay for the weekend! I can't tell you how exciting that is to have fellow-vandyers coming to stay. They will be a delightful break from my hard-partying roommates who love to invite people over to pregame and then come back from bar hopping around 4 AM. Not complaining, however, they do make life more interesting.

Ok well this is probably getting very long and I actually am at work (oops!) so I should probably go. Love the updates, keep them coming!

Living the Dream

I'm a big of this idea, although I'm still trying to figure out how the whole things works...

I'm living in 'The Loft' with KJ and Brandon, which means that life is always an adventure. We've had several so far, including a trip to Percy Priest, weekly Nashville dinners, and most recently a camping trip to Florida. The only rule? No complaining. Both Brandon and KJ are copious documentarians of said adventures, and the pictures are all over the facebooks.

I spend about 2o hours a week at Lwala Community Alliance, this sweet non-profit that works with a health clinic started in Kenya by two brothers from the village of Lwala who went to med school at Vandy. So far I'm doing mainly office work, but I love it. I'm also looking for some kind of paying job here in the Nash, so far no luck, but I will not complain about 20 hour work weeks.

One of my summer goals is to read a lot, and with only 20 hours of work, that has not been difficult. Right now I'm in the middle of Pillars of the Earth, an Oprah Book Club novel about the building of a cathedral during the reign of King Stephen in medieval Britain. Love it - great easy fiction. In case you have any doubts, Brian is reading it too. To balance that I'm also reading Desiring God, by John Piper. It's challenging me to personalize what it means to be consumed by a search for joy in God. I have a feeling it's going to be life changing.

But that's enough on me, I want to know what the rest of you are up to!

Freakin' Florida!

Brant, Brandon, and I had been thinking for a really long time that we wanted go camping over Memorial Day weekend just to get away and be manly. First idea was the Smokey Mountains, then the Grand Canyon was thrown out there but that is way too far and too much money for gas. In the end we decided on Florida! Pensacola, FL is only 7 hours from Nashville and has all the beautiful white sand beaches and clear water that Florida has to offer. The trip was awesome and we pretty much had the beaches to ourselves both days (Sunday especially because a storm hit). Go ahead and take a look at our incredibly heterosexual pictures from the weekend on facebook! Another fun fact about our trip is that over the weekend, 6 of our 7 meals were either peanut butter and bread or PB&J. It was fantastic!

All three of us are leaving Nashville this weekend to see our families. I'm leaving to go home after work on Friday, so I'll probably get home around 10 or so. Saturday I'm hanging out with Kristin and Jon all day (Jon is driving down from IL to go to the Cards game with us) and I think it will be a super fun time. I also plan on re-planning my life this weekend which is always fun! Then next week I have to bunker down for the start of Orgo, but once the weekend hits again we will be living it up Nashville style at the CMA music festival downtown. Its going to be epic. I have now been at work for an hour and done absolutely nothing, so I am going to go read a scientific paper or something. Bye!

Life in the Nash

Ok, for one, Andrew I am so glad you had this idea! I think this is really great. So as for life in Nashville...I'm working in cancer biology research, which means a lot of antisocial people with iPods. My work is redundant and often unsuccessful. We still eat at the BYX table in Rand! My day is 30% actual work, 70% Facebook. I'm living in a converted single car garage attached to a 3 bedroom house. The main house is called "The Plantation", and Brion, Jay, and Brandon (Goodman) live there, and I'm in the, "Slave Quarters". :) The boys just moved in last week, so life is just getting rolling. Tomorrow we're having a Memorial Day BBQ with burgers and brats and wiffle ball. :) Today we went to church, had lunch at The Local Taco, and then laid around and watched the Braves game all afternoon. I am SO grateful to be free of the stress of school and just slow down and relax and enjoy life. It is an incredible feeling!

First Post

So, this blog was created in an attempt to keep everyone connected over this really long and arduous separation Vanderbilt masks as summer break. I want to know what's going on in everyone's lives in full gory detail and I'm clearly not the only one. Slash I love all the tools Google has to offer and Blogger is the new frontier. Slash you can have up to 100 authors on one blog so why wouldn't we take advantage of that? So add a little (or a lot) to the blog whenever you get the chance and feel free to add pictures and video. And go ahead and invite more people, because I def did not go through my entire list of contacts.

I'll start things off by saying that...I'M WORKING FOR A CERTIFIED COUGAR. A full on "I tan every week," legit leopard print wearing, mother of two, cougar. After our first meeting, she asked if it was inappropriate to meet at her house. "Of course not." I think at one point while I was there, as I was showing her something on my computer, she might have tried to share a seat with me. Stay tuned...(p.s. it really is a legit internship despite the cougarness of the whole situation)

In more important news. I've been able to spend lots of time with my lovely girlfriend (Ana) after 4 months apart. It's been amazing just enjoying the little things in life like trying a new froyo place tonight or reading together at a cafe on a rainy afternoon. She's really into cooking these days, which I'm not upset about at all. She recently acquired a homemade carrot cake recipe from this really old, little mexican lady that we know (so it has to be amazing, right?). This is the first time that recipe has been shared with someone outside that woman's family so it's kinda a big deal. In any case, I'm really hoping to try it out soon. Ana's little sister says it's amazing.

Well guys, I'll let y'all do some of the talking to, but I'll share this quote that I read the other day:

"The most beautiful discovery true friends make is that they can grow separately without growing apart."

Hope to here from y'all soon! Be safe everyone.