the great american road trip pt. 1

My friend, Ester, is here to visit. Native Dutchie, English teacher, world traveler, and first time visit-er to the US of A. It was a bit of a last minute trip, but we managed to pull everything together and as a last fling (before I start working) we'll be hitting the road and touring the best of the South which means that for the next month I'm going to fatten her up and teach her about democracy. Yee haw, y'all.

Our big adventure began today with a trip down to Stone Mountain Park to visit a Georgia staple. It just seemed wrong to not start with Confederate generals carved into the side of a giant piece of granite. Taking the tram up the mountain, we stood at the top and admired the Atlanta skyline and the other cities whose names I took a wild (but semi-educated) guess at. After a few photos we hiked down the mountain side, then around the base of the mountain to get back to the main park. We sat for a while on the lawn until the heat became unbearable then made our way to the car. With no real plan in mind and a pretty solid part of the afternoon left to kill, I turned trusty Julius (my 2007 Jeep Liberty) toward downtown Atlanta thinking that we could take a CNN Center tour or something along those lines. But, what we found was so, so much better. Apparently, every Wednesday night V103 and another radio station host "Wednesday Wind Down", a free concert in Centennial Park that features local artists. When we arrived around the park we couldn't really tell what was going on and opted to take a spin on Atlanta's new observatory ferris wheel. Looking down on the scene we could see a huge crowd gathering below and decided it was definitely worth our time to check out. After getting off the wheel, we crossed over to inspect the scene and found that we were if not the only, then two of the very few white people in the crowd. It. Was. Amazing. We were treated to soul music and jazz, a brief appearance by the soul train, the Harlem Shakers dance team, duets by men with reverberating voices and women who effortlessly belt out notes that I can only dream of hitting. And while it was hard to tear your eyes from the stage, the crowd was filled with people swaying and stepping to the rhythm. It was hard to know which one to watch. We also had the great fortune to sit right behind Niecey,

new friends are the best friends

our new friend, who took it upon herself to take care of us, sharing her umbrella to block the late afternoon sun - which had us sweating like a couple of sinners in church - and offering us her snacks as the night wore on. We parted ways at the end of the evening, but not before taking a handful of photos and becoming Facebook friends. It was quite the successful start to our grand adventure.

We'll be traveling a fair amount in the next few weeks, so I don't know how much I'll be able to post about. But I'll try to catch up every now and then. Stay tuned!

C.