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!