The Girls are Back in Town

Way back in June or July, when I was still in London for the summer, my friends and I made plans for the two of them to come up to North Carolina and visit for a weekend. We excitedly talked about it for months and they finally made it up this past Friday! We’ve talked about visiting one another since our freshman year so it was a long time coming, I guess you could say.

Alice and Grace drove up from Florida on Friday and made it to Wake around 7 PM after a nine hour drive. But like the champs that they are, they hit the ground running and we went off to dinner in downtown Winston-Salem. Alice is vegetarian, so I looked around for a restaurant that served more than one vegetarian dish and would be relatively inexpensive. I decided to take the two of them to an old favorite of mine, The Old Fourth Street Filling Station. Although I haven’t been that often in the past year, my friends and I used to eat at Fourth Street all the time our freshman and sophomore years.

 

We were seated outside which allowed us to enjoy the balmy weather North Carolina’s been enjoying lately. Our waiter was very accommodating and Alice and Grace kept commenting on how nice people are in the South (strangers make eye contact and say hello when they pass!).

We started off dinner with glasses of wine and bread rolls with honey butter. We gushed about how much we all loved the butter and quickly devoured the basket. I ordered a pinot noir to accompany my dinner, although it wasn’t the best wine I’ve had since turning 21.

For my main, I ordered the Seafood Pasta which was a delicious combination of sea scallops, shrimp, lump crab, roasted red peppers and baby spinach over a bed of angel hair pasta and drenched in white wine garlic sauce. So good! I rarely make fish for myself at the apartment so I like to treat myself whenever I go out for dinner.

The three of us caught up on what’s been going on in our lives; laughing, chatting and retelling embarrassing stories from middle school. Before heading out, we forced asked our waiter to take a group picture of us to commemorate our long awaited reunion.

Growing up in Florida, I remember being completely baffled when I first stepped into a frat basement. For one of the first times of my life I was underneath a house which I thought was just the coolest thing ever. All of my friends at Wake Forest thought it was crazy that parties at my high school were held on tennis courts and teased me for being so overwhelmed by the fact that I was underground. After three years of living up here, I’ve gotten used to the concept of a basement so it was funny to see how excited Alice and Grace got when I told them that we’d be attending a frisbee “basement party.” It’s funny how worked up a Floridian can get about playing beer pong in a basement!

The next morning, we got a bit of a late start and spent the afternoon hiking in Hanging Rock State Park. I have way, way too many pictures from Saturday (Alice and I had loads of fun taking artsy pictures and pretending to be outdoorsy), so there will be another blog post on that sometime in the near future.

After somehow finding our way back to Winston, we made a stop at the local Walmart to pick up some camo. Now I’m not usually one to partake in such fashion trends but I always make an exception when it comes to an ADPi classic–Mallard Ball. The basic premise is that everyone and their dates channel their inner duck-hunter for our annual date function and dance the night away. Ducks are optional, overalls and camouflage are required. Before the date function started, we hung out in our friends’ apartment (aptly nicknamed the “Apartyment”) and took pictures while being overwhelmed by the sheer number of people in the living room. Like I’m not even exaggerating when I say that there had to have been 50+ people in the apartment at one point; luckily we nabbed seats as soon as we arrived!

I excitedly pulled out my overalls for the first time this semester in honor of Mallard Ball. Yes, I do own a pair of overalls although my younger sister strongly advised against it.

Alice’s fluffy winter camo hat was actually one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever seen, but it was wildly popular throughout the night.

We danced and people-watched in the Mag Room for a hot second before heading out to grab milkshakes from Cookout. Alice and Grace had to leave for Florida early the next morning, so we all agreed that we shouldn’t make our night another late one. I had really talked up how delicious the milkshakes from Wake’s favorite greasy drive-through are, and I’m happy to report that we were not disappointed. I ordered my usual, while the other two seemed a little overwhelmed by the 40 different mix-in options.

Our alarms went off early the next morning so that we could grab some breakfast before their long drive. We stayed on campus and enjoyed a quiet breakfast at the Pit (the cafeteria is usually empty until about noon on the weekends) which meant that we got to take advantage of the omelet line, minus the usual twenty minute wait. I made sure to snap a (classic) photo of the two of them in front of Wait Chapel before we said our goodbyes.

This past weekend was so much fun and it’s awesome that we finally got together after talking about doing this for so long. The three of us have been friends for so long, I’ve known Alice for 13 years and Grace for 9 years, which means that the two of them have all of my embarrassing yearbook pictures from middle school and really enjoyed showing them to my friends this weekend, but I still love them. Now that I don’t live in Florida anymore it’ll be more difficult for the three of us to meet up as frequently but I know that we’ll definitely make it happen somehow! I’m also glad that they survived the cold front that blew in on Saturday and Sunday, although anything under 70° is cold to a Floridian so I guess it’s all relative.