Tourists

This past week has been a lot of fun. I have had my first visits from home -- two of those already! Brian and Sarah came for the weekend, and on Sunday night, as we were driving to the John Mayer/Sheryl Crow concert, my mom called and said that she, my dad, and my Aunt Barb and Uncle Jeff were coming on Tuesday. So, I've gotten to do some of the more touristy things around Nashvegas in the last several days. Here's a rundown of what I've been up to.

Brian and Sarah arrived on Friday night. They came over and saw our house, and I took Brian over to his accomadations. On Saturday, we went to the doughnut shop that is down the street from here (which does not even compare to either Baesler's or Square Donuts). We toured the church and the Campus for Human Development. After some lunch at McDougal's chicken, we came back and hung out at the house for a little while. We went to dinner at the Green Hills Grille, after which we spent a little time walking through the Mall at Green Hills, where none of us could afford to buy much of anything. The Green Hills Mall has several stores that don't include price tags in their routine -- Louis Vuitton, Tiffany's, etc. On Sunday, we went to church, where I was the lay assistant and played the piano for special music. After that, we went to Calypso for lunch, and walked around downtown before the concert that evening.

My parents and aunt and uncle got here Tuesday evening. I took them back to their hotel in Brentwood after going to dinner and coming back and seeing the Toolshed and meeting my roommates. On Saturday, we went to the church and Campus, and then the Upper Room Chapel, where I continue to be amazed by the robotic nature of the people who work there. We enjoyed a nice lunch at the White Trash Cafe, where trailer trash culture is celebrated. It is a meat-and-three that boasts a very unique atmosphere, including a bathtub and old tires as its exterior decor. During the afternoon, we went downtown, saw the Ryman Auditorium from the outside, and went to the Ernest Tubbs Record Shop. It continues to amaze me that there are live bands playing in bar after bar downtown no matter what time of what day you walk by. We then headed over to the tourist section of town--Opryland, where we saw the hotel, and the Opry Mills mall, which did not excite me that much.

It was great to see my family and to show them where I am living and working! Any visitors are more than welcome.

FYI: In the past week, I've gotten to see several celebrities in person:
-The cast of American Chopper on the Discovery Channel (Big Paul, Paulie, Mikey, Vinnie, Cody, and all of them)
-John Mayer (of course)
-Sheryl Crow (of course)
-EMMYLOU HARRIS (We are almost sure we saw her the other night. Her tour bus was pulled up in front of her house, as we'd seen before, and we saw a woman that definately could have been her getting in with some clothes. Even if it wasn't her, it was a half-sighting. I looked up pictures of her on the internet, and it did look just like her when she's not all made up for performances.)
-Sister Hazel (Do they count as celebrities anymore? We went to a free "unplugged" concert they gave at Borders last night.)

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We're headed over in about ten minutes to get the results from the myriad of personality tests that we took last month as the first step in our vocational discernment program. I'll let you know if I passed.