Going Bowling!!!

Part 2 of our trip was going to Orlando for the Champ's Sports Bowl! We left Josh's mom's house early Monday morning to go pick up our best friends Anna & John. We had a pretty smooth trip down aside from a little bit of traffic in SC. We got to Orlando Monday evening, cleaned up & met some more friends in downtown Orlando. We had originally planned on going to the pep rally then going out. Unfortunately, the snow storm kept the band & cheerleaders from getting to town on time & it was canceled. We decided to just go out for dinner & drinks. I was surprised to see that about half of the restaurants/bars were closed. The ones that were open were not really prepared for a large out of town crowd. We finally found a restaurant that could accommodate all 8 of us & it took forever for us to get service. It was SO crowded & I really think there was only 1 waitress in the whole place. Other than that & a random UNC jersey on the wall I liked the place. The pizza was great & they had decent specials. We went out to one other place then went back to the hotel since we wanted to get up early to tailgate.

We got up & got everything together the next morning. We got to our lot around 12. We paid $30 for parking we were told we had to pay for in advance. I found out later that we had other friends in the same lot that paid $20 that day! Anyway...at least we knew where we were tailgating & didn't have to try to find a place. It was pretty empty when we got there since the game didn't start until 6:30. We parked beside all NC State fans & they were all really nice. One of the guys that was parked near us ended up being someone I studied abroad with...small world. We played tailgating games & had a ton of fun. Some of our other friends came by too. I haven't seen some of them in a long time so it was nice to see everyone. Our seats were on the upper level & was pretty cold. It actually wasn't much warmer than it has been up here. Crazy. The upper levels were not nearly as full as I expected them to be. The crowd in general was much smaller than I thought. We played well & ended up winning 23-7. Better than I expected :-) By the end of the game we were on the bottom level & we just moved up to the front row after the game. Later on we found out that about 15,000 people weren't able to make it down for the game because of the snow. I guess that's why it was so empty! It was a great game...I couldn't have asked for a better way to end football season.

Study abroad reunion!


Celebrating!

Unfortunately, I don't have many good pictures. Anna has some great ones though!
We had a pretty smooth ride home. We were all tired & the ride home is never as exciting as the ride there. We stopped my Josh's mom's house to pick up the rest of our things before we dropped Anna & John off. We had way more stuff than I realized & everybody but Josh had something in their lap. Luckily it was a short ride. We went to visit my parents 1 more time before we left for Raleigh. Once we left we decided to stay with Josh's mom in Lumberton for the night. We were both really tired & we just wanted to sleep in a comfortable bed. We were definitely not up for crashing on an air mattress that night. We got up the next morning & got ready for Raleigh!