NASHVILLE WEEKEND: HANGING WITH OLD AND NEW FRIENDS

In the weekend of September 25/26, we went to Nashville. Armed with our German friends Joe, Martin and Peter, we set ourselves for a 3-hour trip. First: getting our rental car. A very exhausting process of waiting, checking our details, driving in a gorgeous Cadillac to another location to pick up our car and finally getting the car…we were planning on leaving for Nashville at around 10.00am, but eventually we left at 12.15pm. Jesper's first time driving in the U.S. Yes, he was nervous! But he definitely pulled it off! He was great and we got to Nashville alive and kicking! Haha!

Not too long after we strolled around Broadway, we met up with a friend of ours, Travis. He was kind enough to show us around and take us to a nice Mexican restaurant called Rose Pepper. Great place, great service, unlimited nachos and dip! Always important ;P Hmmm…that should be their slogan. Anyway, we also got to see our good old friend Aaron again, it has been a long time, but good to see him again while we were having real American Mexican food! :)

After that, we dropped our German friends off at another friend's place and we headed off to Amber and Jeremy's place, where we spent the night. We met Amber and Jeremy during Everlife's first tour in Holland as we were helping them out whenever we could. Amber is part of the band and Jeremy played guitar for the band.They're awesome people, so incredibly nice. The next morning, which was a Sunday, we woke up very early to help Amber and Jeremy out with the setup of Conduit Church, a church that started small in a home, but has grown out to 100-150 members in just a couple of months. Now, our drive over there was very interesting. We chose a very good day to visit Conduit Church, because people were getting baptized! Since the church is held in a school, there are no facilities for baptisms. The solution? A mobile baptismal! Haha! Imagine a white coffin-shaped baptismal, filled with cold water, driving down the street. Boy, did we leave a trail of water behind. People could follow us to the church by that trail and every time we passed a car, we received those unforgettable looks…AMAZING! By the time we got to the church, two inches of water had gone out which we expected to be a lot more, but that didn't stop the party! :)

We had an amazing time at Conduit Church as we felt right home and it feels something which was done by the right people at the right place. After church, we went out to lunch with a bunch of people, like the old days! Haha! We had some good Thai food. We can't remember what the place was called, but it was GOOD. Then we drove around to a place called Brentwood, where all the rich people live which was recommended by Amber and Jeremy to see. :P We saw gigantic houses that could definitely be on MTV's Cribs. They were more like castles to be honest...interesting!

Later we went to one of our favorite places in Franklin, TN…Sweet Cece's. YUM!!! Frozen yogurt with all the toppings you want! Just because the Germans haven't had Sweet Cece's before…hehe! Jesper took it a little bit easier with loading up the toppings like previous time and shared one with Lena. And finally, after eating our dessert before dinner…we went off to a barbeque at Tyler's NEW place. Hanging out around the bonfire with friends eating burgers and making s'mores, definitely one of our favorite things to do as we enjoyed a real American relaxed party! :D We had so much fun, we didn't really want to leave, but we had to :( And that's why we arrived in Memphis at 3.00am in the morning! Yes…we were very tired. The best thing was still to come: we had to get up only a couple of hours later, because we had class at 9am…so, what did we learn in class? Uhh, how to stay awake after a couple of hours of sleep? Or how about: never drive back from Nashville in the middle of the night if you have an early class the next day. We'll keep that in mind next time and of course props to Jesper for being the driver.

-Lena & Jesper-