Thursday, May 24, 2012

Gay Charlotte - Natalie - Day 9

We slept in until 9 a.m. today (we're such rebels) and took our own sweet time getting on the road. We drove the seven hours to Nashville blasting Lady Gaga and Beyonce along the way. 

We made it to our halfway point around 7 p.m. to stay at Danielle’s apartment again. We were all starving and decided to use our leftover food money to go and eat at California Pizza Kitchen. Our waiter, Kirk, was a friendly dude who looked almost identical to Mitchell from Modern Family. He asked us what work we doing in Charlotte and when we told him, he got really excited. He told us about a program that had come to his school called Soul Force that had really helped educate him about LGBT issues. We've been really fortunate to meet some amazing people who not only support what we're doing, but are excited to talk about it. 

After dinner, I talked to a friend of mine who goes to college in Nashville (or “Nashchill” as she calls it) and she recommended that we explore the downtown area. We drove down the main street and were immediately floored by the amount of flashing lights and music floating from every open window. 

We went from talking about metaphors for falling off of curbs, to discussing which McDonald’s we wanted to eat at, to talking about religion and the institution of marriage. Even when we ran over a large curb while trying to navigate Nashville, the positive atmosphere of the group didn’t dwindle. No matter what, we try to stay happy. We just work.

After driving around for a while we headed back to the apartment. As Danielle had already left to go to Peru, we had the entire apartment to ourselves. So, of course, we decided to stay awake all night. It started with just a few of us talking about our prom experiences, college and feminism. Somehow though, everyone just ended up never going to sleep. We played keep away with my sleep mask, spooned and almost got up the courage to go swimming at 1 a.m. Almost.

All in all, it was a great last night of our break.
-Natalie Parker

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