Food for Thought

So I post rather infrequently, and I suppose I justify my transiency with the well-accepted phrase that "those who often talk the most have the least to say". I have plenty to say, I assure you, but I want to make sure I reserve your precious reading time (or precious clicks to other pages like facebook or NYT) for the most important or interesting experiences I have had thus far and into the future.

Today, however, an extraordinary speaker graced the Lily Gallery with his presence.

This man, Raj Patel, has a very impressive resume, and has a lot to say about big issues.

Novices, Furman Trip, the Apple of My Eye, and the Big Apple.

Wow. Long time no post. I've got three weekends' worth of exciting activities!

September 23rd I drove down to Columbia to stay with Amit and judge the USC novice tournament for forensics. If you are in high school, I HIGHLY recommend you do forensics. It's such a neat program, and will help you so much later in life. I only wish I had done it earlier than I did. I'm very thankful of Amit for letting me stay with him (and thankful to his awesome roomie as well), and glad I got to see Caroline and Faucette and all of my Southside buddies! It was so great to see everyone. There was also a girl there who saw my Davidson shirt and said she wanted to go there so badly. I recognized her as the girl who had the Skippy Jon Jones: Lost in Spice piece last year. Among my friends, the piece is infamous.

During that week, I went canvassing with the Davidson Dems for Aaron Pomis, a very qualified candidate for the upcoming School Board election. I enjoyed it a lot, even though most people didn't answer the door for me.

On September 30th, I drove to Greenville, and had a grand old time hanging out with Caroline. I woke up in the new month, and realized I was late to my engagement--a Furman tour with the Eco-Reps. I hopped out of bed, threw on some clothes, brushed my teeth, and dashed out the door. Unfortunately, there was so much road work going on, so my drive was a bit delayed. I finally made it to Furman, and we started the tour. We saw the Eco House on campus, featured in Southern Living and accompanied by an awesome garden. After a tour of some of the other facilities, we grabbed some lunch and went to talk with some Furman Eco-Reps (they weren't literally "Eco-Reps", but they did the same job as us). Furman has a really neat Environmental Science major, and a couple of the kids there said they were majoring--or double-majoring--in it.

After our Furman visit, we hopped in the car (and van) and drove to downtown Greenville. After illegally parking in a church parking lot (not very Christian to make your parking lot exclusive for church use only during all of the week, huh?), we scaled a small mountain and met our tour guide at the top of Falls Park. Quick aside: the city had dyed the water in the fountains at Falls Park pink. It looked so crazy. Alright, back to my story: the tour guide introduced himself, and was none other than my beautiful father, Russell Stall. He told us a little bit about his nonprofit, Greenville Forward, and started the tour. We saw the Liberty Bridge, Falls Park, South Carolina's Governor's School for the Arts and Humanities, Fluor Field (home of the Greenville Drive), the Kroc Center, A J Wittenburg, and the Swamp Rabbit Trail. Finally, we ended with something tasty at OCHA, a locally-owned tea shop.

Needless to say, I went home that night worn out.

But wait! I did more that night?! No way!

I had dinner with my parents and grandmother, and then had my really good friend, Neil, over for the night. The last time I saw this dork was before I left for college, so we were long overdue. It was very nice to see him.

The next day, October 2nd, I woke up early so I could go apple picking with that cutie, Caroline. She drove over to the house about 9-ish, and we hopped in the car to go to SkyTop. Neither of us really thought about packing warm, so when we got there, we were freezing. We scrambled down into the orchards, looking for Jonathons, Winesaps, Golden Deliciouses, and Fiji apples. Only Fiji and Winesap were in the orchards, so we quickly went to pick them. Unfortunately for us, most of the apples had already been picked. I saw apples at the tops of the trees, and took to the skies to find them! (Or just climbed a couple of trees). We ended up only able to find a basketful of good apples on the trees, and our definition of good was quite loose. We went to this weird little bamboo forest they have in the middle of the orchard, and then went to see a couple goats. Caroline freaked out at the goats (she looked like a kindergartener), and then we went up to buy the apples. We grabbed massive bags of all the apples we didn't have and loaded them in the car.

Next, the good part: eating the delicious apple-centered snacks that SkyTop has to offer. First off, a pumpkin-flavored homemade donut and a apple-cider flavored homemade donut--SO GOOD. Next, slices of apple with warm caramel poured over them--ALSO SO GOOD. I got some cider and Caroline got some hot chocolate. The girl who served us saw my Davidson sweatshirt, and said that she was planning on going to Davidson, too! That's like, two people in two weekends! Anyway, we finished our apples and grabbed a dozen more apple donuts and left.

Then, Fall Break!

YES.

For Fall Break, I drove to Charlotte to my grandparent's house. My parents and brother were going to meet me there. While I waited, I played my grandfather's PlayStation2, but we couldn't get the color to work. I played Enter the Matrix in black and white. It was awesome. We spent the night there (Harrison and I stayed up way too late) and woke up at 5 am (see why I said "way too late"?) for a flight at 7-ish out of the Charlotte airport to LaGuardia Airport in New York. We carried all of our luggage on, which is something I've never done and that excited me greatly. (It's really not that thrilling, I assure you.) We landed in NYC (with a massive bang, I might add) and took a cab to Penn Station. Gosh, I love New York. It's like the greatest city in the world. We made it to Penn Station, and waited on a train to Dover. I was still in awe of how wonderful it was to be back in the city. We hopped on our train, and rode it for a couple of hours to Madison, New Jersey. There, Ned was waiting on us with a car to pick us up. We went to lunch at a bar where we got our first taste of New Jersey.... I guess literally, too.

We got some cupcakes and left Madison to go to Ned's house on Lake Hopatcong. His house is awesome, and he lives right on the lake. Harrison, Ned and I all hung out for the two nights we spent in New Jersey and had much fun. We went out on the boat twice, and watched Signs with a projector and a white sheet by the campfire. I decided that I want some boots because of the visit. Early Monday morning, we woke to catch a train to New York. We got on the wrong side of the platform, but the conductor was nice enough to wait for us to walk under the tracks to get over to the correct side.

Back in New York, we dropped our bags off at the hotel and grabbed brunch at this really hipster eating place. I had porridge, and it was SO good. We were all marveling at the fact that a person could stop anywhere in NYC and know that the food would be fantastic.

We walked to 30 Rock and saw all of Rockefeller Plaza before heading to MoMa, which I swear gets better and better every time I go. Unfortunately, the contemporary art exhibit at MoMA was being redone, so I didn't get to see my favorite exhibit. After MoMA, we headed to Trump Tower. It was cool, but everything was gold looking. Next, we met up with a mentor of Harrison's, Steve Moss. He is a man from (a long time ago) the UK who works for a French bank and lives in New York. He is an interesting guy, and Harrison had a nice little meeting with him.

After the meeting, we were too tired for more, so we went to the hotel for the night.

The next morning, we headed to Wall Street to see the Occupy Wall Street movement. We saw all kinds of awesome signs and a big papier mache megaphone. It looked pretty cool. We then moved on to the 9/11 memorial and looked in their museum--"museum". Harrison and I bought a shirt and Dad bought a pen.

We ate one final lunch, and prepared to leave the big city. Waiting for us outside the hotel was a limousine to take us to the airport. We all felt so awesome riding in it, and it was a great way to end the New York trip. We all flew back to CLT, then parted ways.

I've had a very great past few weeks.

Have a wonderful week.