SheNaniGans!!!

So, this weekend, three of my nearest and dearest friends, CR, RT, and CK came up to the mountains to visit for a weekend that would prove to be as epic as it was movie-filled. It was a rather memorable few days and now I am (according to RT) now officially an American, though my passport has confirmed this fact for some time now.

See, the real issue with my American-ness was the fact that I had never seen Star Wars (the original ones with Luke, Vader, Leia, Han, and Chewy). This was clearly unacceptable and I spent much time trying to defend my citizenship, but finally I broke to peer pressure and arranged for a weekend to watch the three original movies. I must say, they are not my favorite of films, but I can now understand why people love them and now I feel like I have a better foundation for understanding many pop culture allusions that before went over my head. Okay, I knew a lot about them to begin with, I'm not an idiot- I understood the concept of the Force, I knew Vader was Luke's father, and I knew who Yoda was, etc, but that clearly wasn't enough for some people in my life (RT!).

But the real fun of the weekend wasn't watching the movies, but it was being with my friends (and the hilarity they bring to most situations). Friday, CK was able to find the place relatively easily, while RT and CR who came together seemed to have more difficulties than necessary. I must apologize to them because I was unaware that they had removed the sign marking my street due to construction, which make it much more challenging fo find. Eventually, after several phone calls which all had the general theme of RING RING "Hello?" "Where the HELL do you live?!?!" everyone arrived and the fun was ready to begin. After some brief socializing/ telling stories of our summer adventures respectively, we popped in the first Star Wars disk and began the marathon.

After the movie, we all went to dinner at the incredible two-story Wendy's that is in the adjacent town and enjoyed some of fast food's finest. Of course, we sat in the upstairs portion of the building. We then headed back to Blowing Rock and hit up Kilwins for some home made ice cream, and then headed back down to the car, parked at BR School. Because we were not yet finished with our ice cream and there were no people there, we decided to play on the BR School playground, which turned into an impromptu musical review of all our favorites- Phantom, Les Mis, Sweeney Todd, etc...

We went home again after spending about an hour frolicking through the slides and see-saws and put the second Star Wars DVD in and began watching. But, this time, though most of us agreed that this movie was better than the first, we continued to have ADD breaks, including one which led us downstairs to listen to my Dad's records, which in turn became another impromptu Michael Jackson dance party.

We did not finish The Empire Strikes Back Friday night.

Saturday morning, there was much sleeping in, with the occasional tidying up of the living room, etc. In our Michael Jackson-induced joy, I forgot to put the pretzels back in their bag, so they were pretty stale and gross...whoops. Once everyone got up and were ready, we finished The Empire Strikes Back and then immediately went into Return of the Jedi. After the movies, we had to say goodbye to CK as he had to work Sunday, so he could not stay for the rest of the weekend.

RT, CR, and I, however, still needed to get dinner so that we could enjoy the rest of the weekend, so we went back to Blowing Rock and went to Mellow Mushroom, which was good as usual. We wandered around the town for a time and sat in the town park and watched little kids run around before getting back in the car and driving over to Boone to pick up another movie to watch (we're really big movie people...): Disney's Pocahontas. Oh, and we're kids at heart.

Before the movie started, RT tried his best to play on a piano which hasn't been tuned since before 1986. It wasn't too bad, though there was a definite difference between that piano and the tuned piano we're used to hearing him play. We then tried to start a fire in the fireplace, but since it had rained a bit earlier in the day, the wood was fairly wet, so we decided to just burn some personal failure (aka my Russian and Latin note cards). It really felt good to read off the note cards and then watch them go up in smoke... ;-) Unfortunately, personal failure fire is not very good for making s'mores, but we tried anyways, though quickly gave up. Time for the movie!

I think we had forgotten how nice Pocahontas really is...

Anyways, Sunday, we woke up early and went to Mass, then headed over to Grandfather Mountain. When we first go there, the bridge was closed, so we decided to not go, but then a few minutes later it re-opened, so we got to go! Hooray! The bridge is really pretty neat. A mile high and it is very windy when you get over the center of it. The three of us then went on a ".4" mile trail through the woods to a lower parking lot, and then back up.

Sadly, the Mountain Adventure Weekend had to come to an end, so when RT, CR, and I returned home, they gathered their things together and went back to Raleigh. Overall, it was a pretty fun and memorable weekend, and now I'm antsy for getting back to school so that I can hang out with everyone on a regular basis! 22 Days!