Going "home" to Atlanta

All in all, Atlanta was TONS of fun. The whole reason for my trip was to go to the beach in North Carolina but I missed everyone in Atlanta so much that I had to tack on a couple days days to my trip so I could spend some time at home.

The first night I got back Lisa (her knee is pictured in the left corner), Rebekah, Rachel, my brother Walter, and his girlfriend Lauren came over for games and fun. Here we're playing scategories which was absolutely hilarious. Even though Rachel totally missed the mark on when Wendy's was founded, she still pulled of the win!

Even though we stayed up late playing games the night before, I made Rach wake up before 6:30 am Sunday morning to go to the soup kitchen with me. She was a little reluctant to get out of bed and definitely regretting that she chose to spend the night at my house!

Us girls had a photo shoot with Walter after church on sunday and it turned out some hilarious and ugly pictures that I will not post here. We're not sure why Rebekah looks so weird but we voted Belen "most fierce."

And here is our take at a normal picture. L to R: Rebekah, Lauren, Belen, me, and Rachel

This is a picture of my longtime friend Valentine. She moved to Atlanta from France in the middle of 3rd grade and had no friends and didn't know a single bit of English. I thought she looked nice and so I went home and had my dad (who went to France and Belgium on his mission) help me write down a few things in French. I remember I told her that I had a brown dog named Sandy and I asked her when her birthday was. She was thrilled to have a classmate that she could semi talk to and we became fast friends. Sadly, I switched to a private school next year and didn't see her much after that, but now we keep in touch on facebook and we were able to get ice cream together and catch up. Crazy how that all played out!

During my days in Atlanta I came to the harsh realization that even though Atlanta will always be my home in the sense that I lived there for the first 18 years of my life, it's really only just that. When I say harsh realization, I mean it. I got out of my neighborhood and didn't know how to get to the nearest Target. I got confused when I was buying my breeze ticket on marta. I had to ask my mom for directions to get to places within ten minutes of my home. I still love Atlanta like crazy but when I'm there I just feel like a visitor. When I'm not there, I call it home but really, my home is just wherever my Christopher is. And boy, does it sure feel good to be home!