Back from Atlanta

Traveling is hard.

I've been in Atlanta for the past five days. I just flew back into St. Louis yesterday afternoon, and now I finally have a minute to breathe. I have the next couple of days off, so I'm gonna take some time to relax and get used to living in St. Louis now that there are more people here I know. After these past few days, though, I'm pretty content to just lie on the couch and enjoy not doing anything.

I had a good time in Atlanta. I flew out on Wednesday, met up with three other teachers to share a rental car, and got set up in a two-bedroom hotel room to myself. I had in-person teacher training from 8:00-5:30 Thursday-Sunday and flew back Monday afternoon. The training was pretty intense, but I feel more confident about getting in front of a classroom full of students and being in charge for 2 hours at a time. I say that now, but I know I'll be terrified on Day One. I still have one more phase of training to complete at home, so there's still some preparation ahead.

Apart from training, Atlanta was tons of fun! All the other teachers were awesome people from all over the country. My car-mates were particularly fun people who I'll really miss, one of whom will be teaching in St. Louis as well this summer. Shout out to Nick, Anne, and Arielle! Training would have been impossible to get through without them to vent to. 

Atlanta itself wasn't crazy exciting. We were all exhausted by the end of each day, so we didn't have the time or energy to go out much. On the last night, we were able to go to this really cool bar with the largest beer selection I have ever seen and some amazing food. I believe it was called Porter's.

Teachers know how to party.

I was mostly excited about the prospect of seeing filming locations of The Walking Dead. I at least wanted to drive by the C.D.C., but we ran out of time. I definitely had zombies on my mind as we drove throughout the city. We did see a man shuffling along the side of the highway with a zombie-like gait. However, the scariest part of the trip was taking a shortcut through a graveyard at night after getting ice cream, which is obviously the start to a great idea. We were walking through and realized it came to a dead end (laugh at my pun!) when we noticed a dog sleeping at a grave. We thought it was a dog visiting its owner, so we thought it was super sweet at first. Nope. It and another large, black dog came out of the shadows and started growling aggressively at the four of us. I had never been scared of dogs until this moment. Luckily, the just seemed slightly territorial and let us walk away slowly. 

Anyway, I made it through training, so now I just have this last stretch of training before I'm ready to be Mr. Brownell. I'll be driving back to the Lake this weekend to trade my mom's suburban for my PT Cruiser. It's virtually impossible to drive that huge suburban through the traffic in St. Louis. I am excited to be back at the Lake though. I haven't had a chance to be there since spring break, so I'm looking forward to seeing my friends and family there. 

In other news, my final grades from Truman are finally official. Looks like I did indeed graduate, which is a relief. Once I receive my diploma in the mail, maybe I'll finally feel like a real adult. But that's a big maybe. 

-Anthony