Alrighty- this is my attempt to wrap up the past week of traveling in a brief summary.

I left Monday morning after a Central Florida Presbytery meeting at my church. Wasn't quite what I expected, but whatever. I made it to Tallahassee, Florida about 4 hours later. Lindsay and I went out to have a ridiculous amount of food and rent a movie. It was a nice night with David and Lindsay, but I had to leave early the next morning. Funny story about waving goodbye, but I won't post it on here for her sake. :D It made me laugh for a few minutes though.

Let me just say that people suck at driving in Georgia, Tennessee and Kentucky. Really. There's an unspoken rule in American driving: the more left you're driving on the highway, the faster you're going. You pass on the left, and drive slow on the right. Well people there, in general and especially stupid truckers, did NOT accept this rule. My blood pressure (OH I learned this word in Slovak.. ummm krv tlak I think?) was rising the more I drove.

Speaking of Slovak, I'm learning words with these sweet flash cards I made. My problem is that I can't take too much at one time with language study- so I'll spend a good 20 minutes or so learning and have to take a break for a while. I noticed that after going through the flash cards like 4 or 5 times on the way up I was able to memorize quite a bit. Sooo YAY!

Oh... and the best road trip food ever? Gas station chili dogs and Mountain Dew! I know, I know, that is SOOO bad for me but how often do I go on road trips by myself?

Six hours later I arrived at MTW headquarters. Atlanta is a huge city and some of the worst traffic in the U.S.! They had 6 lanes of traffic going and still they were backed up. I definitely ran into some of that, by the way. I went to meet my coach there and we went out for Starbucks and talked for a while.

After that, I drove another few hours to Chattanooga. By this point I hadn't run into any close calls with accidents or too much traffic. However, it was dark and rainy by the time I got there and the roads weren't marked well so that was really frustrating. Right before I got off the highway I noticed a huuuge water puddle thing across the entire span of the highway. I held on to the steering wheel extra tight and braced myself. That definitely scared me cause there ware cars all around me and I couldn't see a thing for 4 or 5 seconds. Not cool.

I got to Abby's house in Chatty but her roommate answered the door and said she was out for the evening. Long story short, I ended up coming in anyway and spent a few hours with her roommate whom I had never met. She was awesome! She works at a store similar to the one I worked at for 2 years (camping, backpacking, etc) so we talked gear for a while. She also loves Sigur Ros so we sat there and watched an incredible Sigur Ros documentary/concert dvd.

Eventually Abby got there and Laura came over. We all talked till late. The next day I was planning on leaving after lunch, but the girls talked me into staying another night - and realizing I was only going to be able to spend a few hours with my good friend Laurel in Asheville, I decided to postpone my trip to see her for a better weekend with more time together.

Abby took me around town showing me the sites. She also took me up to Covenant College- but after spending 4 years in flat-as-a-pancake-Florida, I got reeeeally carsick. This never happens. I felt terrible for a good 2 hours or so.

The next morning I got up early and started on my way to Ohio. This took about 10 hours or so. Actually, let me restate that: it took about 9.5 hours to get to NOWHERE, Ohio and my car decided to die a smoky death. ::sigh:: I stopped for instructions because Google maps told me to get off the highway and try my luck with random country roads. Yay, not!


So anyway, after I stopped and started my car again I knew something was wrong with the car. I stopped about a mile later and looked under the hood. I saw that antifreeze liquid was leaking. To be honest with you, I knew it was stupid to keep driving but I did anyway. It's $3.75 a mile to get towed and I was probably 40-45 minutes away from Miska's house. So I stupidly kept driving, hoping I would get just a little closer and spend a lot less money.

I saw an intersection I needed, slowed down, and my car just stalled out in the middle of the road. There was smoke, there was death, there was cold, there was dark. It wasn't fun. After about 50 phonecalls, AAA service came and picked me up. They asked a cop to come sit with me cause it was kinda unsafe. So this copper came by and I spent a few minutes warming up in the back of his car.

This big hairy biker-type tow truck guy came and picked up the car. We sat with eachother for like 45 minutes on the way to Miska's town of Lakeside. First I thought it was going to be silent, and I was happy for that because I was on the verge of tears thinking of all the money I was spending getting my dang car towed (and cause I had just done this one week ago, spending $500 on getting something else fixed). Okay, but no, it wasn't silence, it was a lot of talking.

This hard looking dude starts talking about his personal life like I haven't seen before. Like, "Oh yeah, my mom keeps asking me when I'm gonna settle down but why should I?... She died a few years back... I'm the black sheep of the family... my old lady works at that gas station for $12 an hour..., etc." It was a very interesting night.

We got to Lakeside and I had to empty out the stuff I needed from my car into Miska's friend's car. Believe me when I say it was SO COLD!! It was at least 25*F but soooo windy. So yeah, we got back to their house and Miska's friends were headed right out the door behind me to get a hotel by the airport.

The next evening we started off to Cleveland. Oh, and her friends let us use their old Volvo station wagon. That thing is a tank! First we got a hotel about 15 minutes from downtown - and it's always nice to get hotels. So fun! We went out to get food and coffee- ahhh, Chipotle and Starbucks, a perfect combination!

Saturday morning we got up and went on our way. I had no idea what was in Cleveland, but found a few cool places like this market. We went downtown, spent $10 on parking, walked around freezing our butts off, drove through the ghetto, went to a crappy mall, and left. Honestly, we didn't like Cleveland very much. It's kind of a sad city- really old, decrepit, lots of poverty, and just not that nice. In fact, driving through Cincinnati and Dayton, Ohio, I could say the same about them. Cincy was at least cool cause it had some character but in general I don't like the cities here very much.

Well, no, if I could just walk around and take pictures of the grunge, it would be AWESOME, but I wouldn't want to live there. Maybe I just saw the bad parts..

Then we went down to Amish country about an hour and a half away. Google maps took me off the highway again to some silly back roads though and we got a little lost-ish. However, I stopped at this little restaurant and met an incredibly gorgeous guy that I'm going to run away with someday. So I guess it was worth getting lost.

We finally got to the city and it was pretty cool. Not as cool as I thought, but we came off season so all the touristy stuff wasn't open. Ate some fantastic food, took some pictures, saw some beautiful country. All in all, I think it was worth the annoying drive.

The funniest part of the entire trip was the fact that you can't open the driver's side door from the inside. So whenever I needed to get out, Miska had to get out and walk around and open it for me. Not just open it though, she has to push her knee on the door while pulling up on the handle just perfectly. It is hysterical. I don't think anyone could break into the car even if they wanted to.

Lakeside is cute- it's small and quaint and FREEZING. I have 2 shirts on and I'm still freezing inside the house. I have big fuzzy moccasins on and my toes are almost numb! Heating isn't very popular up here I guess! :D It's all good- better than sweating in Florida. When I go outside though, I have like 5 layers of clothes on...kinda like the kid on A Christmas Story, ya know, Ralphie's little brother? ha! Oh, and it's all snowy outside. Very cool.

I'll be here a few days at least. Judging from the amount of money I have in my bank account right now, I probably will not go to Pennsylvania and New York as planned. I really can't go broke just yet.