Making the Rounds

Day 8: Phoenix.

There's 3 main things that I have to get used to by being here: 1, everything's grown- trees, people, buildings... 2, there's more than 2 movie theaters and they're not all the same company, and 3, the radio stations have more variety and there's more of them.

Also, is it more unusual to pick up substantial amounts of balloon pieces or to talk with a lot of Arizona friends in one day? That's a head scratcher for me.

We started the day with me being forced up at 8:30. I'm still not ready to wake up that early willingly.

After a quick breakfast we headed over to visit another family that we had been very close to. The youngest kids all got to swim in the pool as the rest of us talked. And then in honor of the fruit salads that the two moms used to make together when my mom was through assistant teacher to their mom, we had a fruit salad with whipped cream. Towards noon, my old friend decided to wake up and finally get up, so we had a few minutes to chat. We took pictures together and then headed back to the house.

For a while when we hung out at the house, the kids were playing sports on Kinect. That, my friend, is hilarious. I laughed so hard I had tears. Little Elly was playing beach volleyball and for some reason, her avatar had total chicken legs. No joke, the legs were just wobbling back and forth for a good while. It was so funny. I also got to watch Alex and Amin play through most of the sports. The running was especially funny because of how intensely they were running in place. Then Elly, my dad, and I played the bowling. My gosh. Elly threw a bowling ball almost into the avatar crowd and the crowd actually screamed! It was so funny. She did it twice. I tried it but all I got was a spare and then a few gutterballs. We were all cracking up about the screaming.

We decided to have a small party for dinner. But then it was somewhere around 6 families, so it wasn't very small but it was a lot of fun. I ate too much chips and salsa at the beginning so when we started on the taco bar, I wasn't the most hungry. The best part was the talking.

I DO like to go out and do exciting things, but I really like people and talking to people. If I could just travel the world and have good conversations with people that would be the best job. Of course, the conversations have to actually be good. Not about politics or diplomacy. I just want to connect with people.

One of my old friends was telling me that they're an officer of a club at their school called Sparks, which is basically LGBT/ally club for awareness and that kind of thing. (correct me if I said anything inaccurate) Well, that reminded me about the time I did a Friendfactor 1-night online workshop type thing that was talking about being a better ally and how it was encouraging school clubs and events and all those kinds of things. Of course, at the time that I watched that I was in the middle of junior year, the elephant (research paper), my aice enviro lab, and organizing GHS's Dance Marathon and I couldn't possibly do another thing. I had already quit indoor drumline to try to make that semester easier. And so I didn't do anything with that class except keep the knowledge and some notes in a memo on my phone. And that makes me a bit sad because going into my senior year, it's too late to start a new club. We'll see what happens in college.

Thinking about my friends from different states, countries, backgrounds, orientations, races, and opinions, I believe that the more diverse your friends are, the more of an interesting life you have. I found a cool quote related to this perspective.

"A happy person is not a person in a certain set of circumstances, but rather a person with a certain set of attitudes. - Hugh Downs"

I just believe those attitudes include openness to learning, opinion, and diversity.

So I ended the day by picking up balloon pieces, seeing (and laughing at) a little of the news, and writing this post (I'm back on schedule!). Loads of things happening tomorrow- we'll keep marching on. I didn't have any phone pictures from today, so I just showed you what the inside of Amin's room looks like.

See ya someday!