Atlanta weekend

Well I had a crazy busy weekend in Atlanta. The Georgia Rotary students met on Friday night for a meal in one of Atlanta's high schools. Lasagna made a lovely change from the regular hot dogs and burgers. Once we all had our dinner and catch up we were told to go into groups of four and find a Rotarian who would be our host parents for the night. I stayed with a girl from Malaysia, France and a good friend from Scotland. The couple that we stayed with were really interesting and had traveled all over the world and had been host parents for 7 students in the past. They were also very interested in us, our views and our country which is always nice.
We had an early start in the morning at 8am. We arrived at the YMCA to drop off our bags as we were to stay there on Saturday night. We took a school bus around Atlanta with our first stop being the zoo. It was lots of fun and there were giant pandas there. After the zoo we went straight to the World of Cola. They had a tasting room at the end with different coke products that are sold in different countries all over the world. Although I didn't recognize the lemonade that is sold in England and I did hear a few other people saying they had never heard of the juice that is meant to be from their home countries.

After we all went a little mad in the giant Cola shop we headed to the Varsity. Two Saturdays in a row...not so good for my wee growing belly. We had some people from Atlanta with us so I was able to ask what the best meal was and although the picture didn't look too appetizing the chicken was rather tasty and not too greasy.
After lunch we went to an arcade which had go kart racing. We didn't all have enough money or time to go racing so most people just played the arcade games.

Then we went back to the YMCA to play the arcade games that they had there, and eat our pizza and salad. They opened up the climbing wall and swimming pool for us until 10pm which was fun. It was nice to just relax with everyone and have so much time to talk with people that I hadn't had the chance to yet. So we all slept on the floor of the gym on yoga mats and sleeping bags. It was not all that comfortable however, the fact that I was so extremely tired after such a busy day meant that I just fell asleep as soon as my head hit the floor.

Sunday morning I was collected along with the other students from Valdosta. We went to the aquarium which was just stunning. They had the most beautiful beluga whales and such stunning colourful fish. It was all just stunning.
Needless to say we slept well on the four hour journey home.

It was so tempting to just jump straight into bed when we got home but it would be so early and I didn't want to wake up in the middle of the night. So I waited until 10pm before I went to bed. This did not work out how I had planned as at 10pm the fire alarm went off once again and we were told to evacuate the building for another 4 hours while the rooms were checked for another apparent bomb threat that was called. A few people are getting paranoid but I really don't think there is any need to be. It is still an odd experience and something I could really .do without as with finals coming up it would be good to get enough sleep as possible.