It Is Trish

I’ve been seriously slacking on keeping up with my blog, which I blame on staying in a house full of entertaining and affectionately demanding children.  I now understand all moms who have ever bemoaned their lack of productivity, and I am beginning plans on a future “Mommy’s Blogging; This is Your Jail” room.

As of Monday, I have crossed into the past!  I’m in Tennessee, my college years home, and the number of people to see per city has increased greatly.  I will save the Hughes and Smith families for a later post, because today is about the Fatick friends I’ve had the pleasure of seeing!

On Monday, I drove up to Nashville and met Melanie at 5:00.  Melanie and I were in Senegal at different times, but we heard a lot about each other and hung out at a reunion a couple years ago.  We explored some Nashville hot spots, only the first wasn’t so hot.  Construction was all over the place, so we walked for several blocks in confused circles looking for anything that looked remotely fun.  In the end we drove somewhere else, and wound up eating at 12 South Taproom.  It was delicious, and I had a lot of fun catching up with Melanie.  It’s always nice to find a wandering soul kindred spirit.  

I stayed the night at her house, then headed to Jackson the next day.  I’m staying with the Hughes family, but as I mentioned earlier, they’ll get a separate blog post later.  On Wednesday I continued the Senegal theme by hanging out with Nate!  We met up at Sonic and talked for a while until he took me to the house he’s staying at.

The family who is hosting him owns a four wheeler, so of course I suggested we ride around in it.  “Okay!” Nate immediately agreed, which is why I like him so much.  We rode around the neighborhood way too fast, and I know we were totally obnoxious to his suburban neighbors.  On the one hand, I felt a little bit bad, but on the other hand, I really liked standing in the passenger seat, arms thrown wide and screaming into the wind, praying Nate didn’t swerve and throw me from the vehicle.

I had planned to go to church with the Hughes family that night to play with their kids, and Nate came along.  But then it turned out the kids were all in programs, so we adults sat around and talked for awhile.  Then Nate returned me to my car, I returned to church, and followed Jennie and Dusty home (with a side stop in an abandoned parking lot that probably should have frightened me more than it did).

On Saturday I’m headed to Memphis to hang out with Mallory for a few days, and the Senegal reunions will be complete!  Those five months were some of my favorite in the world, and the people who worked or lived there are pretty definitely some of my favorite people.  It’s nice to know that we can always reconnect, even after a lot of time has passed.  Some experiences are powerful enough to create relationships like that.