Summer Diaries. 1

Featured Image: Sunset at Caraway

So I am finally back to blogging. After several failed promises to myself and on this blog, I think I am finally back. 1. Because I am on (long) vacation finally *whoop* and 2. The ginger is back. I have way too much stuff swimming around in my head and I’m tired of pouring them all out into the Notes app on my phone without sharing with someone. In addition, I intend to change the name of the blog and hopefully move to a self-hosted domain. I feel like if I have to pay for a domain then I’ll be motivated to be more serious with my blog posts.

I have a couple of unpublished posts sitting in my drafts which I will post with time. I also had the perfect starter post typed up and written all in my head but oh well, this’ll have to do.

So summer is here! I am so excited to not have to study school work and look at any more math for a few months and I am so full of joy. I have a couple of things lined up for the summer and hopefully everything goes as planned. This is part 1 of a series that I will use to chronicle my experiences this Summer and document the beautiful memories I hope to create.

I wrote my last final on the 5th of May and I spent the next couple of days rounding off things with school, attending graduation parties of friends and packing up to move from my apartment, before jetting off to my first stop, Houston TX. I loovveedd Houston and I hope to go back before the end of the Summer. I also met up with my very close friend from way back, my day one; Nife-mi. We’ve been friends since JSS 1 and I see her once in a long while but the last time I saw her was in December of 2014 so it was so good to see her after so long.

I won’t say that there was anything particularly special about Houston but I just loved being there. For some weird reason, it reminded me about Lagos and almost felt like home. Maybe because I was surrounded by young Nigerians the whole time; an experience I have not had since I left home in August and which I had grown to miss. I also ate a lot of Nigerian food; I eat Nigerian food most times when I cook but I have actually grown accustomed to eating American food and stopped cooking as much because, stress. I felt that urge and motivation I used to have but lost to do, create or start something new and different that hasn’t been done before; business ideas and the works. I met a lot of people and forged new relationships, tried out food, and sampled the night life. I was so happy to be in a room with Nigerian music blaring out of the loudspeakers. Don’t judge me, it’s been too long and I don’t exactly enjoy shaking waist and bumbum to American music. A group of friends just started a new business that delivers hot and fresh African food to people around the Downtown Houston area so I was there most of the time and put on a couple of pounds consuming the delicious food. Each day was a different meal – meat pie and puff puff as starters or sometimes snacks with main course being jollof, fried rice, designer rice or efo, etc, with a chilled bottle of malt to wash it down. If you’re in Nigeria this may not be a big deal for you, but for me I was so excited. Anyway shout out to Chopative! If you’re in Houston and need food to be delivered to you, holla. the food is super delicious and decently priced too.

I got back a week after and raced to finish packing up the rest of my stuff and moving out of my apartment before heading to North Carolina the very next day for a leadership conference. So I got back on Tuesday, moved out on Wednesday and then was off to North Carolina with 5 other friends and we left at about 2:30am in the morning. It was a road trip which took us about 13 hours so we arrived at our destination at about 3:35pm. I slept through the journey but woke up to see some of the beautiful greenery and mountains along the way. I hope to visit at least 35 states out of the 50 US states by the time I leave this country. I was going to say by the time I graduate but that’s next year and I seriously doubt I’ll be able to achieve that by then so let me stay realistic here now. So I live in Illinois and we passed through 4 states – Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia and Virginia – before getting to NC. The conference was awesome! I served as a life group coach and I learnt so much; about myself, dealing with other people, patience, perseverance, life, other countries, and most importantly, leadership! I also tried out a couple of new things which I was scared of initially but felt exhilarating and excited after I tried them. New things being paintballing, canoeing, kayaking. I almost tried going on a zipline which involved climbing a ladder about 50ft above the ground then zipping at top speed from one end of the field to another on a zipline. It looked super fun but I developed an insane fear of heights and so I definitely wasn’t trying that. My friends begged and begged and tried to cheer me on to go but I wasn’t having it.

The conference was amazing and I was actually sad to see my new friends leave. It was a conference for international students and there were 23 countries represented there all in one room. Amazing right! We were split into teams of about 7/8 with 2 life group coaches. In total, there were about 9 groups. There were several challenges and team building activities with all the teams competing against each other. We also had team discussion activities based on the morning and evening sessions and I learnt so much just discussing with my teammates. We had an amazing speaker who I learnt so much from. I’ll maybe share some of the lessons I learnt from there in another post. I also learnt so much just from having conversations with different people from different countries and with different cultural and educational backgrounds.

One of the highlights of the activities was that each team had to create a boat made solely of cardboard, nylon bags, duct tape and foam rollers. This boat was to carry one person and float across the lake without sinking. Insane right? Well about 4 teams actually made it to the end although it was a struggle!! The conference ended and I was sad to see all my newly found friends go but we had to go back to our lives. It was like I was hidden away from reality for those days and I was glad to not have to worry about anything. After a 13 hour road trip, we were back home. I had moved out of my apartment before we left so I’m currently crashing in my friend’s house till I move to Chicago for my internship.

This post is looking too long so I’ll stop now. That and the fact that I’ve run out of experiences to gist about lol. I’ll be back to share more of what’s going on with me this Summer. Till then, you guys take care and be good. I heard Nigeria is really tough right now which makes me so sad but I have you in my prayers. I really hope things change for the better.

Enjoy the pictures below.

Yewi

P.S. I had way too many pictures to upload but WordPress made my life easier and gave me this nice tiled mosaic of all the pictures. You can slide across each picture to view the captions.