Things I have learned in my first week on campus:
Food is life. Food is essential. Make it good. Make it local. Make it fresh. Asheville gets this.
Shoes are always optional.
Spending time outside is just as essential as food. Do it.
People like making friends and Asheville is the best place in the world to talk with, share ideas with, and meet someone new every day.
Do the things you love to do. This is along the same lines as eating and spending time outside. Important things.
Do things that scare you. Like taking the bus into the city.
The smell of freshly done laundry is one of the keys to happiness.
College is the most fun, sad, exciting, homesick, freeing, lonely, comforting, uncomfortable, crazy things in the world.

I made this list because I need to keep these things in mind. I live in the most beautiful city in the world. I live in a city where the people are friendly, anything goes, normal is weird, weird is normal, and the pizza is always topnotch. My senses are constantly being overloaded with all that there is to take in. It's overwhelming, I can't explore all the things this city is willing to show me in the mere week that I've been here. I need to have more patience with myself as I adjust. My biggest issue I'm having is that I want to feel at home now. I want a billion new best friends now. I want to know the city by heart now. Nothing works that way. I've got a decent amount of time to be here and to figure all that shit out. The most important thing right now is to remember to breathe and enjoy everything, one thing at a time.

Lonnie made a new best friend named Tyler who is really cool and drives a Mini Cooper. And by that I mean he drives us around in his Mini Cooper. Anyway, we went to Walmart and bought a 1000 piece puzzle and spent the majority of 2 days completing it.

College.

And then after we completed the puzzle we got bored and our brains were a little fried. So this happened.

This very informative sign has been relocated to our hall's bulletin board after one of the 6 baseball players who live on our hall got offended and decided he didn't want it on his door anymore.

The Hop is a local homemade ice cream place that sells cartons of its ice cream on campus. It's basically the best thing that has ever happened to anyone ever. It's also Samm and I's Freshman Fifteen all wrapped up in a little innocent-looking container.

And to wrap up this crazy, scattered, all over the place update, here are some super cool gifs I made of me on the phone with my grandma and Lonnie taking down a sticky note.

made it.

I am officially a resident of Asheville, North Carolina. Adjusting to college life has been exhausting but wonderful. In the midst of all my attempts to feel at home, I sometimes forget that I'm in a completely new city. Samm and I have managed to make our dorm room our own, as imperfect as some of the details may be. I bought my books today(minus my spanish book that I had to order online) and the next thing I have to get done is buy art supplies. It seems as though my to-do list has been never-ending since the moment I graduated high school.

The first time I felt at home is after hanging out with Lonnie. We got pizza and went to Walmart and watched Netflix and then got Bojangles. We did the things we normally do and it was nice to get away from the campus for a bit.  I guess it's true when they say that home is a person, not a place. I miss my family, but my brother is teaching them the ropes of Skype, a process that is pretty hilarious to see when your mom shouts unnecessarily and your dad can't look happier.

As far as colleges go, I could not have picked a better college to go to. I haven't gotten lost yet on the campus due to it's small size and the campus is gorgeous. There are trees and flowers and mountains in the distance. Everything is beautiful and alive. I can't wait to spend nice day walking around and taking pictures. The people here are also friendly. Angry people don't live in Asheville. I'm pretty sure there's a law against it.

Classes start tomorrow and I'm hoping that I'll get into the swing of everything soon enough. I'm normally not a fan of routine, but not knowing what the next day brings can be scary and uncomfortable and I'm ready for some kind of stability. At the same time, I'm making sure to enjoy this exciting place filled with new things to explore and discover.

i guess this is growing up.

This may not look like much of a post, but trust me, it is. Tonight is my last night in my room before I leave for college. It's funny seeing all the happy facebook posts of kids in their new dorm rooms while I sob my life away at the thought of leaving behind my home.

Don't get me wrong, I am excited to go to college. I'm so excited. And I'm also ready. 

But I will miss my best friend Katie Calabro. I will miss her apartment and her cat and her sock bun and watching scary movies with her and eating too much chocolate and drinking too much coffee and doing old school work-out videos.

I will miss my dad. But I can't talk about that because I turn into mush. I will miss my mom and her doing everything for me and being my personal assistant. I will even miss my brother and sister. I will miss my dog and my cat and my bed.

It's just funny that as soon as I finally felt at home here in Concord, as soon as I have figured out where to get the best burger in town and the exact time that the soft serve ice cream place closes, it's time for me to leave. I believe that's a good thing though. In my heart, I don't want to stick to the same place. I don't want to just be comfortable somewhere. I want to explore and discover new things, places, and people and I'm so excited to do that in such a beautiful place like Asheville.

I will try my best to keep updating through this whole process, but tomorrow is promised to be a crazy day. I'm just going to take everything step by step and enjoy as much as I can.

tattooed.

*sorry about the up close and personal foot picture, also it's really hard to get an upside down picture of your own foot without your toes crinkling up

A simple symbol which holds so much meaning for me. Jack's Mannequin is a band which, way back in 8th grade, changed who I was going to be into who I am. Jack's Mannequin is a band which my dad and I have bonded over, pausing our busy lives to see them whenever they where in town(or as far as Asheville or Atlanta). Jack's Mannequin is a band and Andrew McMahon is a pianist, singer, songwriter, and inspiration. Andrew McMahon is a man who has written music which gives new meaning to me each time I hear it and has gone through leukemia, yet was so down to earth he complimented my best friend's socks when he met her and I. The symbol for the band itself means "Inspired by a quote from Siddartha "the river is everywhere", the asterisk's meaning is the lines represent life and the things around you, but like an asterisk everything intersects with each other at some point, not only connecting everyone with everything around us, but also a unity with the universe." source. The symbol represents who I am now and who I have been for the last 5 years. The symbol represents my past life and my life currently: everything in transit.

southern thunderstorms.

Katie and I took a roadtrip to visit her grandparents in South Carolina. Their house is a magical place filled with light and places to explore. They have a horse named Thunder and two crazy dogs named Bella and Hannah. Their neighbors have a family graveyard a short walk away from their house accompanied by an abandoned house which is barely still standing. South Carolina is such a wonderful place because it's from another time. Everything is full of history and time itself seems to pass a little slower. We all took a moment to sit on the porch and watch the storm roll in. Taking time out of daily life to just pause and be is definitely a new habit I need to form.

summer's kiss upon the sky.

the little things.

1.) Beach flowers.

2.) The most ridiculous glasses I have ever seen. My grandmother found them and thinks they're hilarious, but they creep me out more than most things I can think of.

3.) An antique milk jug I found to house all my sea shells.

4.) American flags and pine trees absolutely embody summer.

holiday from real.

Holden Beach. A trusted floppy hat. The bluest skies. Color and inspiration everywhere. The perfect place to get away for a while. Myrtle Beach was a blast, but there is no place like this. I grew up here. I feel at home here.