World Cafe Live!

Hey, everybody!

Last week was finals week and everyone was getting ready to head home...or to Italy is Grace's case. But you'll hear much about that later. Anyway, it was finals week and everyone needed a pick me up, one last hoorah before everyone went their separate ways for the holidays. Good thing a few weeks ago we decided to get 3 tickets to see Vanessa Carlton at World Cafe Live! We bought standing room only tickets because they were the cheapest, and being broke college students those were our best option! 

But I am getting a little ahead of myself. Let's backtrack. Last week something big happened. As many might know our roommate, Sarah, doesn't live with us much. She lives happily with her boyfriend right down the street. But recently it was getting a little much for her parents to pay rent while she wasn't spending any of her time there. We found out a few weeks ago that she decided to look for a subletter. Although we are sad to see her go, it makes total sense. Last week we found out that she found a subletter, and they signed the lease! The subletter, and our new roommate, Amalia, messaged us on Facebook and wanted to meet us. So right before the concert, she came over, we talked a bit and we showed her around. It felt like freshman year all over again. We were all a little nervous, and it was a little awkward, as meeting any new person is. But thankfully Amalia is great! She keeps kosher, which scared us in the beginning because we weren't sure what that would mean for us. Thankfully it shouldn't be too difficult, she needs to use different dishes, and cookware as us, but, for the most part, she eats NORMAL food. A very pleasant surprise. Anyway, we are so excited, nervous, and all of those things, but it's going to be a great learning experience! Once we get to know her, I'm sure we will do a post all about her, so stay tuned!

Anyway...back to the concert. When we go to the concert we were told that if we were 21 we could sit at the bar. As all of you know, we are not 21. So we looked like outcasts standing. Thankfully Grace was able to hook us up. She caught eyes with the woman seating the guests who bought table seats (which cost about double of what we paid). The woman came over and told us she was checking on the guest list, and if there were seats she would seat us. A little later we thought she forgot about us. As we were getting a little antsy carrying out coats as we stood, I tried hanging my coat on a light fixture as Grace quickly sprung to attention and told us to come with her. The woman must have given her a look, or gesture because we were about to be seated. 

We expected our seats to be in the back, with a bad view, but to our surprise we had the table seats that were the closest to the stage! It was great! A little later we had a man sit next to us. From the moment he sat down, he was a little sketchy, dressed in all black. But he introduced himself, his name was Alex. Anyway...Grace said she was starving so we immediately ordered food. Everyone was debating over which fries to get. The options were eggplant fries with a horseradish ranch sauce, regular french fries, or sweet potato fries with some cinnamon sugar thing going on. We all decided on eggplant fries because I got them before and was raving about them. As our main courses, Abby got a burger, without ketchup, whcih she ended up waiting at least 25 minutes for. Grace got a BLT on naan bread, and I got a fried catfish sandwich. They were all pretty fabulous. Alex ordered the chicken tacos, which came out as fish tacos so he then got free chicken tacos the second round. 

The concert started as we ate our food. The opening act was by Patrick Sweany. He was great and I think we all agreed that he was more entertaining than Vanessa because he told a great story as he went through his act. 

Patrick Sweany!

Vanessa came out with her glass of wine. She was good, but we decided that for her to be better and more entertaining she needed to add a little bit of a story. For some of her songs she did this. But she isn't good enough to just perform without any reasoning behind her music. 

Vanessa Carlton!

During Vanessa's act we ordered dessert. Grace got the warm chocolate cake, Abby got the creme brulee, while I got the sweet potato tarte. They were all fabulous. 

At some time during the concert Alex left, but he left his ticket unattended. Abby decided to grab it to see how much he paid for his ticket, to see what the difference was between sitting and standing tickets. She noticed his ticket was free. Curious why, she googled his name that was written on the ticket. His name was a suggesgted option on google. The picture was him. We realized now why he was so sketchy. He reviewed concerts, and his title was "actor." We were quite confused. Let's just say it was really odd that he was sitting next to us. He then came back at the end of the concert looking for his ticket, or receipt. But we had already taken it and couldn't give it back because that would be weird. But hey, it was a great story for the blog we thought!

All in all it was a great way to spend one of our last few days together before the holiday. The next time we will see eachother will be for our trip to Montreal! 

xoxo, 

Christine

Uber? Coffee? Free??

Early Tuesday morning I had received an email from Uber, informing me that they had teamed up with Saxby's coffee. They were delivering coffee and pastries to Drexel students between 6-9 pm due to finals. I read it and assumed that it would be a costly endeavor, but kept the email anyway. Later in the day, and mainly due to procrastination, I read more about this coffee delivery and it truly was free coffee delivered right to your door!!

I excitedly ran to Abby's room and explained this to her. She was almost as excited as I was. Christine, who was home from work at this point, was not as excited...lame

6' o clock rolled around and Abby and I both excitedly opened the Uber app and sure enough there was a button implying free coffee!! After a little confusion, I was confident that I had ordered us coffee and pastries, but due to the high demand, I kept getting kicked out. I stayed persistent because at this point I really just wanted to see if it would work!

I sat at my desk for almost an hour reclicking the "Java" button and sure enough my request finally went through! I knew from my previous research that I had the option between hot or iced coffee, but wasn't sure how to specify which one and before Abby and I could figure it out, my Uber driver, John, called me. He regretted to inform me that he only had "cold coffee" left. I tried to ask him if it was iced coffee or hot coffee that became cold, but he didn't understand me. I told him to come anyway.

A few minute later John greeted Abby and I downstairs with a 64 oz growler of iced coffee, a box full of crumb cake and brownies, and a bag full of cream, sugar and cups for the coffee! 

Not my picture! In my excitement, I managed to get zero decent pictures of our goodies.

Now it made my late night studying so much easier, not because I needed the coffee, but it simply put me in a good mood. Sometimes it's the small things! 

Xoxo,

Grace 

Abby's Thanksgiving

Hello everybody!

Thanksgiving, the only day of the year when you have an excuse to eat more than your body weight in food and not feel guilty about it. I love Thanksgiving. Not because of the reason I just mentioned, but because I get to go to one of the most beautiful places and spend time with my large family. I spent my Thanksgiving in the Blue Ridge Mountains of South Carolina. Not too far away from Grace! My aunt and uncle live there and the entire family comes from all over to spend time together. My little cousins were there, being adorable, and a but of a handful I may add. But overall, we always have a great time together. We only all get together about once a year, usually just for Thanksgiving, but whenever we do its always so much fun. All in all, Thanksgiving was a success. I am truly grateful for my wonderful family, friends, and of course our blog readers! Hope all your Thanksgivings were fun, food, and family filled.

xoxo,
Abby

P.S. Here is a picture of where I was... Gorgeous right?!

The chapel next to my uncles house 

Grace's Thanksgiving

Hi guys! I realize that some of you might also read my mother's blog, so I will try to highlight different thanksgiving festivities than she did. 

I flew home Tuesday morning and arrived in Asheville around 4:30pm, my scheduled time of arrival. But good ole Kimberly had been in the airport parking lot since before 4!! She's a strange one. I made my way out of the incredibly tiny airport with a handful of other college students and was the ONLY one not to be greeted by their parents...a little sad, I know. I then texted her that I was outside the airport so that she would be able to pull up to the curb and I could jump in, but she decided that it was too busy at the arrival pickup and choose to pick me up at the departure drop off. I know, she's strange, but I love her anyway. I was greeted by her and a spastic ball of fur in the back seat. To be completely honest I was more excited to see Boomer than her. 

My brother, Philip, arrived the next day and made the executive decision that he needed to go shopping. So, off to the mall we went. Shopping with Philip is not easy, it never has been and will probably never be. He must have tried on a dozen jeans and looked at three dozen more before settling on ONE pair. And even then he wasn't sure if he liked them. At this point Douglas was bored and just started wandering the store. The next item on Phil's list was a vest. This started out easy as he saw two that he liked, but couldn't decide on the colour. My mom didn't think they were formal enough to wear to work and kept showing him different options that were much nicer than the ones he had picked out. The poor kid got so stressed out that he had to call Anna, his girlfriend, or as he refers to her, Boss Man. Anna walked him through some good points and he ended up buying 4 vests with the intention on returning two based on Anna decisions. Like I said early, never an easy shopping process with Phil. At this point Phil was starting to get hangry, but we couldn't find Doug. Eventually we found my Dad and headed to Great American Cookie to easy our hangryness.

In an earlier blog post, Christine had mentioned that my house is currently unfurnished, well at least part of it is. Before moving to China we had given away our large TVs, assuming that we would buy new ones once back in the US. For some reason we kept two small dinky TVs, which my parents were perfectly content using. Why we kept these I have no idea, but probably the same reason I kept the majority of my middle school clothing... My mom and her new bff Charlotte have chosen a TV cabinet that can hold up to a 60-inch tv and my brother decided that now was a good time to buy a new TV. Personally, I think he wanted to watch football on a big screen. We decided to pop over to Best Buy and see if they were going to have any Black Friday deals on TV's. It turned out that they had already started their Black Friday deals and my brother and dad quickly set out to find the best TV that Best Buy was offering. They kept going back and forth between two: one that had nanocrystals (or was it tubes) and one that did not. They finally decided on the one that had nanocrystals after deciding that it was not just a buzzword. The only problem was that the TV was too big to fit in the car with 4 of us. So we drove home dropped my mom and brother off and then went back to Best Buy to buy a very large TV. 

Thanksgiving was the next day and it was relatively calm and relaxed. We had a traditional spread with very few leftovers and the few leftovers we had went into making gumbo. Boomer was a happy dog as both Philip and I played ball with him. I have never met a dog so goofy as him.  

On Friday, Philip and Douglas took off to Atlanta to see the Georgia vs Georgia Tech game on Saturday. My mom and I stayed home to dog sit and get some more housework and school work done. It turns out we didn't miss much as the big rivalry game was not much of a game. Georgia even fired their head coach after the game and they won! 

Sunday, Philip and I were given some last minute jobs and then ushered off to the airport! 

Overall it was a great break and I look forward to being home for a few days over Christmas break!!

xoxo, 

Grace

Christine's Thanksgiving!

Hello all! I hope you had a great Thanksgiving holiday!

This year when I took the trip home for Thanksgiving it was the first time I had been home since move in day. The most exciting part wasn't sleeping in my bed, or seeing my family, it was being able to be greeted by my two furry bundles of love that I missed oh so much!

The second night I was home I got to see Max, my boyfriend, for the first time in about 2 and a half weeks. We met up of  a lovely dinner at Applebee's, that of course included his favorite food, mozzarella sticks. After that, we headed over to do a little shopping at Kohl's for his holiday party outfit.

The next day I woke up to the smell of turkey roasting in the oven. Our turkey was a fat one, weighing in at 24 pounds. He was so large he did not fit in our roasting pan so he had to take up a large amount of space in the oven, but thankfully it all worked out. When my family came over we ate. Our table was filled with turkey, filling, butternut squash, green beans, crabmeat casserole, cranberry sauce, and I can't forget, our butter sculpture of a turkey for a festive touch. Once we stuffed ourselves with the main course, we continued to move on to dessert which included pumpkin roll, chocolate peanut butter roll, and a homemade apple tarte made by yours truly. After dessert, Max and I headed over to visit his family and then came back to my house in hopes of a visit from my cousins, but they were unable to make it.

The next day, my brother, Colin, and I headed to the movie theatre to see Mockingjay: Part 2, as it is our thanksgiving tradition to see the Hunger Games movies together around the holidays. It was an awesome time, but the movie was sadly subpar compared to the rest of the series. After the movie, I headed over to Max's house once again and we went to find a Christmas Tree for his family. Which Max made me cut down. What a terrible boyfriend... (just kidding!) It was a great day that was completed with some naps on the couch while watching Friends and some pizza delivery to make it just a little bit better.

The rest of the break wasn't too exciting, and went super fast. But now it's time to look forward to Christmas! I hope you all have a fantastic week!

xoxo,
Christine