Last week 3/6 roomies decided to venture out to Durham for the Food Truck Rodeo Festival. Unfortunately, there was no rodeo, but there were over 40 food trucks present. From BBQ to baklava to cupcakes to fried ice-cream there was just about everything. Being a vegetarian and being too lazy to stand in long lines limits your options a bit, but nonetheless I got some creamy mac ‘n’ cheese and sombrero tacos.
Just like the slogan above, the tacos were anything but ordinary. Loaded with tater tots and lettuce, it was topped off with dressing, cheese, and tomatoes.
Now, the two girls I went with are caffeine addicts. If given the chance, they might just reside in a coffee shop for life. And with one of the best Coffee Shops in the US being five minutes away from the festival, we had to go pay a visit. As one who only chugs coffee during finals, I look forward to the hot chocolate. Many coffee shops only have the generic hot chocolate, but Cocoa Cinnamon outdid itself with the multiple types of hot chocolate available. I can tell why BuzzFeed ranked it so high.
Feb. 1 | some claim it’s too late for a new year’s resolution, I claim otherwise. Apart from the general, eat healthy, exercise more, I came across an elite daily article highlighting 21 Realistic New Year’s Resolutions. So what exactly are my new goals? To be quite I honest, I keep adding more and more to the list. But here are a few to start off with
1. Eat more fresh food (none of that microwaved, process crap)
2. Learn how to cook more than vegetable pasta and fried rice (though my fried rice is always a winner)
3. Incorporate a variety of exercise videos in my routine
4. GRADUATE (yup, this is the year I become a “grown up”)
5. Learn how to budget (money and time)
6. Enjoy little moments with friends (who knows where we all will be)
7. Stop describing myself as “busy”. Busy is no longer a state of feeling.
Rain or shine, I was determined to cross of one bucket list item: sunrise yoga on the beach. Though it was raining when the sun was supposed to come out, yoga eventually occurred later in the day (11am yoga). I don’t consider myself a yogi, but I’m not a complete beginner either. The bi-weekly yoga classes I’ve attended at the gym on campus have put me at the upper-level beginner position. So basically, when the teacher says get into warrior 3, I’m not like “huh, let me get my ninja skills out”. And why not capture these moments? Plus the beach adventures turned out to be quite interesting considering we found a dead jellyfish in the sand.
Despite it not being sunny and people wearing hats out with popsicles in their hand, the beach trip was an overall success. Boogie boarding, getting lost in a mirror mazes, and doing my sunrise-11-am-yoga with the family marks this trip as a success.
Second day started off with one of the best brunch I’ve had at Zocalo. Seriously though. I’ve never had better brunch food in my life and I’m pickier than 5-year-olds. From Zocalo’s we went on the famous Duck Tour. Forget hybrid cars and Ferraris, duck tour vehicles are the coolest. They’re cars on land and then turn into boats to go on the water. Re-read the last sentence. It’s like the amphibians of the car species. Participants get a tour of the city on land and then the vehicle goes into the water and we get to see the city on the Charles (say it with a British accent) River. HOW COOL IS THAT? Very cool I tell ya. Now that we had seen all of Boston through ducks, we decided to explore Cambridge.
If you ever get the chance to go to Cambridge, make sure you go see two places: Tealuxe and Harvard. I’m not too big into tea, but I’ll sip a Tazo here and there. Tara on the other hand loves tea. Walking into Tealuxe was like walking into Olivander’s wand shop. The tea is arranged like all the wands on a wall and the barista (if that’s what they are called) go up to the wall and pull out tea to serve you. Teapots and saucers along one wall and souvenirs along another. Honestly, if the teapots could serve tea in cups themselves, this place could’ve easily been a part of Diagon Alley.
And then Harvard. Need I say more? It’s the oldest institution of higher learning (Wikipedia definition) in the country and easily one of the most recognized names in the world. I started off 9th grade telling my school counselor that I would apply to Harvard and would get a math degree from there. My GPA quickly decided another route for me, but regardless I’ve always wanted to visit Harvard and get a sweatshirt that says Harvard. And that’s what I did. Harvard has very traditional architecture throughout its campus. It’s like all of the traditional looking buildings from UNC were placed into one campus with bricker/redder colors and there was a quad in the middle. A little anti-climatic, but nonetheless still beautiful. Visiting Harvard and the Boston in general made me realize what Southern architecture is. Everyone’s always talking about southern architecture and when you live in a place for 13 years, you take it for granted. But the trip up North, definitely made me realize and appreciate different forms of architecture.
Check out the different pictures from Day 2 and comment below on your favorites!
This past weekend I had the honor of attending a very special tea party with Samuel Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Paul Revere. Yup, you guessed it. I was in Boston, MA (or you read the title).
My parents gave me the option of traveling this summer, so I chose to visit my roomie (Tara) up in Boston. Tara’s interning in Boston with some cool-firm-whose-name-I-forgot. Plus, this was my first time traveling alone (like no school group, parent-chaperoned, school trip BS). Completely alone. Solo. Thankfully, I didn’t have to deal with too many delays and such, but arrived at Boston on Friday night.
So, from the airport to her apartment, I had to Uber myself home. Now, Uber is so damn cool. Like really. You download this app, call a driver, and BOOM they’re here in like 2 minutes ready to take you wherever you want to go. My first Uber driver was from Eriteria. How many of you even know where Eriteria is on the map?
Weekend kicked off with a Samuel Adams Brewery Tour. Got a little educational experience in with this activity, enough said. Afterwards, we walked around different areas of Boston and saw things like Quincy Market, Mike’s Pastry (go get their cannolis), Boston Harbor Front, and Faneuil Hall. Boston is a hustle-bustle city. Everyone’s always on the go, but the thing I like the most, is people take out the time to enjoy little things. Like street performers. Tara and I saw a group of men who would freestyle dance to different music and at the end perform a stunt. They took people from the audience and lined them up and told us they would jump over them. JUMP OVER THEM. And they did just that. My heart was probably beating faster than the jumper. Couldn’t get the best pictures of these because I didn’t want to trample over people, plus it happened in literally 5 seconds.
Check out the pictures from day 1 and be sure to read the post on day 2 here!
I come from a town where everyone my age describes it as boring. There is never anything to do, it’s a sleeping suburb, it’s all just parents and families here, blah blah blah.
Honestly, this summer I’ve discovered that
Yes, it’s a sleeping suburb.
Yes, it can be boring because its not LA and there is no Real Housewives filmed here.
Yes, its bleh because the coolest thing in the news is that a Publix (grocery store) is opening up near my house. But, despite all this, there are really interesting areas in the city. The city is surrounded by many lakes and the amount of trails are incredible.
Yesterday, my friends and I decided to check out Lake Crabtree. The lake lets people rent out canoes, kayaks, and pedal boats. They recently started renting out paddle boards, so we decided to take advantage of this.
I’d never gone paddle boarding before and my balance isn’t the best, so I already knew this was going to be either a disaster or a……disaster. And at first getting on it is scary. I mean you’re expected to be by yourself on a board the size of a yoga mat with a stick in your hand. All the “if you were stranded on a deserted island” scenarios were going through my head. But honestly, it wasn’t too bad. Definitely not the easiest thing I have done, but once you find your balance, paddle boarding isn’t the worst thing in the world.
It’s calming in a way and now if I was actually deserted on an island, I would wish for a paddle board to escape.
Check out some of the pictures from our adventure below and comment on which one was your favorite!
“It’s raining cats and dogs.” I hate that phrase. Mostly because when I was in third grade (my English wasn’t very good), I took it literally and told the teacher she was stupid and wrong in front of the whole class because it never rained animals. It rained water. The teacher took me aside and gave me a 20 minute lecture on how you shouldn’t call your elders stupid. I mean why cats and dogs? Why couldn’t we say it’s raining fishes and sea horses, or some other water creature?
Either way, the point is, yesterday the sky in front of my house looked like it was part of the set for the movie Twister and the tree in front of my room was swaying so hard it could have fallen on my car and crushed my means of transportation for the rest of my life. Summer Thunderstorms.
Every once in a while, one of these storms has the capacity to knock out the power in my house. And yup, this was the one. So the power was out. No wifi. No internet. No TV. The only cool thing about living in the 21st century with the power being out is gas burners. Why? It means, we could still cook. Dinner wasn’t going to be an issue.
Oh and candles. Lots and lots of candles. And because being on my phone for longer than 10 minutes bores me, the camera came out.
Peace. Love. “It’s raining fishes and sea horses”.
I’ve known Kelly for about 9 years now. We met at the locker bay in 7th grade and would walk to the cafeteria together during lunch. Middle school had its awkward stages where I switched around from friend groups and what not, so it wasn’t until high school where Kelly and I got close.
This girl literally taught me how to play a sport that I came to love: lacrosse. We would go over to the elementary school and play wall-ball. So, I tried out and somehow made the team and BOOM I’d see this girl everyday at practice. So from all the sprints, 5Ks, pasta parties, riding the nasty school buses for 3 hours to play in quarter-finals for the state championship in Charlotte, we bonded pretty well. But it wasn’t just during the school year.
You know at the end of the year when you write:
“Loved having ____ class with you and making fun of Mr./Ms. ____. We should TOTALLY hang out this summer. Call me 999-999-9900 xoxo HAGS”
in practically everyone’s yearbook and then never end up seeing them until the start of the next school year? Well, I saw Kell-Bell over the summer. A lot. And it wasn’t just shopping at the mall or going bowling (because bowling was cool back then), it was volunteering. Kelly and I volunteered at the Cancer Patient Support Program at Duke* Hospital. This is where I realized how truly sweet and humble Kelly is. Part of our job was to go around in the waiting rooms and talk to the patients while handing out snacks. Things like this were so awkward for me. I never had the skills to strike up conversations with people (still don’t to an extent), but Kelly pulled it off naturally. She was always super humble and nice to the patients and to our supervisors, which taught me a lot. They say good friends are those that make you grow and step out of your comfort zone and volunteering with Kelly made me realize just that. So basically, this girl is awesome.
Kelly is one of the most humble, down-to-earth, naturally beautiful people I’ve ever met and I can’t wait for us to grow even more.
*I will only spell Duke correctly in this post because Kelly is a huge Duke fan. Possibly the one thing that irks me about her.
Raulston Arboretum | Raleigh, NC
University| Tulane University
NOLA Moment| Doing the Soulja boy with 50 other people on the street during Mardi Gras
Spot on Campus| PJ’s coffee
Dukk Gardens | Durham, NC
Favorite Make-up product | Mascara
Guilty Pleasure | Chocolate + Baking
Duke Gardens | Durham, NC
Spirit Animal| Seahorse/Meercat
Clothing Store| Anthropologie
Proudest moment | Finishing a half-marathon
TV Show | Madmen, Orange is the New Black, & Bachelorette
Raulston Arboretum | Raleigh, NC
“Go confidently in the direction of your dreams, live the life you’ve imagined” -Thoreau
Duke Gardens | Durham, NC
Ice-Cream | Any/All
Coffee | Black (but more a tea person)
iPhone app | The weather channel (the weather always correlates with my mood and I love being outside so I always have to be checking the weather).
So when my friend Kelly (look out for a blog post about her soon!) asked me to go to a Pig Fest my mind was like:
“really, a pig fest? Why did she just ask a girl who’s been a vegetarian her entire life to come to a pig fest”
“but, wait maybe its not just pigs they have there. Maybe they have hushpuppies and hushpuppies are the best. Maybe it’ll be cool, ’cause it’s like a southern tradition and maybe there will be prizes or something. Okay, sure why not? I mean I got nothing else to do, might as well go check out some dead pigs”.
Peak City Pig Fest is held in downtown Apex, NC. The city shuts down one street and 40+ food trucks, plus tons of vendors selling different types of things. Oh and there are pig races. Yes. Pig Races. And there’s a track for them too.
So, as a person who has never indulged in any sort of meat product, what did I do there? Learned and embraced aspects of my community. After reading the description of the event online, I had some images of my own in mind. People from food trucks poking sample BBQ things at your face, pig-themed souvenirs, and country music blasting down the street. It was kinda, sorta like that.
Walking down the street was similar to the state fair, with fried anything and everything everywhere. One of the places had fried Girl Scout Cookies. Yep all the thin mints and tagalongs fried. There were funnel cakes, jumbo turkey legs, _____’s special barbecue sauce, Jamaican jerky legs (still don’t know what that is), flavored cotton candy, jumbo ice cream cones, Asian tacos, gyros, basically everything. But it wasn’t just food. There were t-shirts, pottery, jazz festival tickets, and a beer garden for all the adults. So, something for everyone.
Favorite part: Pig Races. There was a track built for the pigs and a man speaking faster than the speed of light with literally no pauses announcing the pig races.
“Oh the pigs are coming down from the trailer and here is Jane* bringing our little contestants down oh here they are ready to run and fight for their lives just kidding not really but here they are ready to race little sweetheart over there who do you think is gonna win number 1 number 2 huh huh okay well we gotta start now okay alright are they ready they are ready and GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO there they are speeding off and oh look number 3 is ahead of everyone and wait did number 2 just turn around and start running the other way oh poor guy lemme help him out oh look at them go and number 3 has won it again round of applause for all the contestants ladies and gentlemen……..”
*used Jane because I don’t remember the person’s name. I couldn’t get the best pictures from the pig race because I didn’t wanna be that jerk and cut all the 6 year-olds in line so I could get a picture of the pig.
Biggest lesson learned from this experience: never believe something isn’t for you. My dietary restriction didn’t hamper my experience at the festival. Most of the food may have been stuff I couldn’t eat, but the festival is so much more than just enjoying pork. It’s about a small community coming together and enjoying things they like (sappy, huh?) while spreading their culture. Makes me appreciate my state even more.
Had to get in my attempt of a food picture.
The Canon Captures 
