Benches, Beverages, and Bathrooms

Writing a blog has proven to be more work than I thought. I have sat down at the computer to try and write one and nothing good comes out...hopefully this one will go better than my previous drafts. Last week was Spring Break for me and most of my family. It was a much needed break from school and work for a lot of us. It was a special Spring Break because it was the first time I ever went on a Spring Break trip. While at UNC I always just came home for Spring Break and relaxed. This year, I went to New York City! It was a great trip, but definitely the most exhausting vacation I have ever been on. Along with my mom, two cousins, an aunt, and a family friend, I spent four days jetting around the Big Apple. I think we did just about as much as you can do in New York City in that amount of time. While I'm sure we didn't do it all, we did most of it! We saw Central Park, went to the Statue of Liberty, visited Ellis Island, went to Ground Zero, shopped in Times Square, SOHO, and Chinatown, walked across the Brooklyn Bridge, saw a show on Broadway, went to Rockefeller Center, and did A LOT of walking.

It was a great vacation, but New York is a very different place than the Good Ole South. We had a lot of fun, but we were all so exhausted when we got home, we felt like we needed another vacation to recover from our vacation! In New York you do a lot of walking, but there doesn't seem to be any benches to take sit down and take a load off anywhere! Even in the airport on our way home, we didn't find very many seating options. After walking around so much and not being able to find a place to sit down anywhere, it would be nice to have cold drink. However, if you want one, good luck finding one that is reasonably priced. I got a bottle of Diet Coke from a street vendor, it cost me 3 dollars! When we went out to eat, we each got a very small glass of water, about the size of a small drink from McDonalds. We didn't get refills. From the few drinks we did get to have, of course our bladders filled up. Well like benches and reasonably priced beverages, a bathroom is hard to come by in New York City. If you did find a place with a clean bathroom, you had to buy something in order to use the bathroom. So, usually you bought an expensive drink, which then made you have to use the bathroom again later. What a mess! Well returning to the airport in North Carolina, we saw bathrooms and benches everywhere we looked! Going through the drive-thru to get a drink for the car ride home, we found reasonably priced beverages. I've been home from vacation about six days. I'm back in school, which is no fun, but there are plenty of benches, beverages, and bathrooms. Thank God for the South and our need to sit down, have a drink, and relieve ourselves!

More Than an Ordinary Friday

Overall today has been a pretty long day. I'd say at moments it was very hard for me to remain positive and I even slipped a few negative comments in here and there. So how do you have a rough day and then sit down at the computer and write a blog about being positive? I have been wondering the same thing most of the day. I knew it had been a while since I posted, but I just couldn't come up with something positive to write about! As the day wore on, I realized that today is not some ordinary Friday. Today is a SPECIAL day! And to my fellow students at CCCC and the faculty at Onslow County Schools, today is not special because it is the first day of spring break. Today is a special day because it is Good Friday. After dwelling on the negative things most of the day, I thought to myself, why on Earth am I focusing on all this negativity. Today is NOT about me, it IS about my Lord and Savior. Today is the day that Jesus Christ sacrificed himself for me on a rugged cross. Today is the day that Christ died for my sins. Today is the day that it was finished. Today is the day that God gave his Son so that I might live! It is a day for spiritual reflection, sit in quiet and worship God. Instead of being focused on me, I need to focus on what God did for me and you! So if the rain and cold weather has bogged you down, take time and reflect on the sacrifice that was made for you on this day many years ago! This music video, "It is Finsihed" by Matt Papa, helps me to remember what was done for me. It helps me take the focus off of me and put it onto God. I pray that everyone has a wonderful and blessed Easter weekend.