Fish Fry

My new FRIEND Ali and I went to a fish fry last night. I had no idea what to expect but Ali had prepared me pretty well. Apparently these are really popular here and there are 'good' ones and 'bad' ones that you can go to. Last night we went to the low end one but had a lot of fun. You pay a cover at the door ($8 in advance, $10 at the door for this one) and you get all you can eat fried fish (think fish and chips) french fries, brats, and baked beans, and bread. You also get all you can drink beer!! Sweet. Then they set up all these tables of gambling around. You can play hold'em or some spinning wheel thing where you pick a number or blackjack at some of them and then the game that we played. It was called Showdown and basically it was 6-10 people at a time, you paid $1 and then they dealt the cards and until everyone had 5 (face up) and whoever had the best hand won half the pot. It was a good hour and a half of entertainment there! I won 2-3 times and Ali won 3 times (and the beer flowed cause they kept topping us off). After that we left and went out in the Oregon district where Ali lives. It is pretty much like a downtown Athens type place (only one road and much less bars) and it is sort of located where Midtown would be in respect to downtown. We went to about 3 bars and I couldn't tell you what any of them were but Ali knew a lot of the bartenders. It was a lot of fun and ended by me having to call Craig to come and pick me up :-) He didn't seem to mind too much. Good to know that if anyone else visits me I will have something for them to do. Ali has been here a while and is very outgoing (unlike a certain girl that lives here and is not nice to me) and she seems to know a lot of people. I went out with her and two of her friends on Thursday and they seemed cool too. They even asked me to come out with them Friday (but I do early morning spin on Saturday). I am definitely a little over the going out phase and had a little pit in my stomach all day thanks to the 7 beers I consumed last night but it is really fun to have people to hang out with again! I think that Craig will like it too because I had become a little clingy and haven't been traveling so he probably feels like he would like some alone time :-) So, I guess all you guys were right and it takes about a year.....and in two months I will have been here for 1 year. I can't believe it. It still seems so new!!

Volunteering was pretty fun. The girl running it is a bit of a valley girl so that will take some getting used to and I think that I would be a lot more motivated if it wasn't the night of my favorite gym classes. The kids seemed to pick up on the material pretty fast and all seemed like they could use a little nutritional information. They took a pre-quiz so it will be fun to see how they improve.