I've traveled to Nashville, been professionally developed, and am back in Iowa again. I admit before leaving I was no longer thrilled with the notion of leaving town with all the house stuff taking place. I stuck with my plans though and took off a few days early with a colleague that works in Des Moines in the area of public health. We left on Saturday morning but took off later than planned due to the weather and road conditions. We drove to Tennessee which took about 11 or so hours. She travels the way I do and we barely made any stops. Our first planned stop was at a state park called the "Land Between the Lakes" and it was pretty cool. We also stopped at Clarksville to their original train station. That was more of a stop for her as she thought it was cool to see a location related to the Monkees song "Last Train from Clarksville".
We stayed at a hotel in the college area of Nashville and just settled in the first night. A Chili's was across the street so we didn't try to find any local, unique eateries. She got a really nice hotel room that basically served as an apartment. It had a full kitchen. Considering I was "tagging along" I volunteered and slept on the sleeper sofa. The next day (Sunday), we went to Lynchburg TN to see the Jack Daniel's Distillery. I don't like that kind of alcohol but it was actually a really good tour. The place has really neat history in relation to the start of creating whiskey, Prohibition, and how the production enlarged to meet the world's needs. The tour ended with a tasting of five types of their whiskey. We did some tourist shopping after that and went back to Nashville. We purposely took back roads to avoid the heavy traffic and drove by a new development with houses starting at 500K. And they were having open houses. Jess decided we should stop and look at one. It was a very awkward walk through the house but was neat to see what 750K would buy down there. (FYI, they don't build many houses with basements. I think that's weird because they do get tornadoes.) I'm pretty sure the realtor thought we were lesbians or something.
We went to a local place for supper called BrickTops because we thought it was casual. It was not. But it was a really good meal. I was able to get deviled eggs for an appetizer with "millionaire bacon". It is the best bacon I've ever had as it goes through stages of being cooked, coated with brown sugar, cooked, brown sugar, etc. After a heavy appetizer I got a basic salad but we ended up sharing an ice cream sundae.
On Monday we went to the city's wax museum. It had a heavy focus on country music (of course) but it was cool. It was also a bit creepy at times too. It included some cool historical artists too. We went back into Nashville afterwards and found the American Pickers location in the city. The TV show is quite deceiving. It made it sound like they bought an entire old factory but the old building is actually a fancy strip mall and the Antique Archeology is just one of the stores. It had a lot of artifacts they've picked on the show and the usual magnets, t-shirts, etc. We decided to head back to hotel as we both needed to do some work and some pre-conference stuff.
Tuesday was the first official day of the conference. It was the SHAPE annual conference. (Society of Health and Physical Educators). The highlight seminars for me were related to me teaching pre-service how to teach health. I also went to some cricket activities as they are trying to bring that sport into the USA. Jess is originally from England so she's a big cricket fan. The lead speaker for the day was a educator from the Bronx that helped solve a food dessert issue in the area by having kids plant gardens for the school and community. He did well to outline what needs to be fixed in society and how teachers fit into that picture. Wednesday was another day of seminars too and then I made my way to the airport to fly back to Iowa.
The flight out of Nashville was a bit stressful because we left late. It wasn't a big deal for me because I ensured I had a decent layover at the next location but a lot of people were panicking as they were going to miss connecting flights. The flight was fully booked too and they started making announcements early that not all carry-on luggage would fit on the plane. They were encouraging people to check bags (free of charge) so I decided to volunteer my roller bag. Very few were willing to do so and by the time they were boarding the last two zones on the plane, they announced that all remaining bags had to be checked so people were pissed off. I got to Atlanta though (only took 20 minutes). It was an odd flight pattern---Nashville to Atlanta to Des Moines but it was a cheap flight. The flight to Des Moines was also fully booked which many people said was odd for a such a late flight at night on a Wednesday. I got into Des Moines at 11pm and Dan picked me up. We were up late though because I had to stop at my apartment in Ankeny to get my vehicle and when we got to Ames I needed to stay up to eat. I was starving.
I was back to work on Thursday and the rest of the week ended well. The conference itself wasn't as good as past conferences unfortunately but I did learn some new things. I saw/met more people from Iowa than I expected too. The venue for the conference was too big in a sense with how spread out things were but I guess too big rather than too small. The venue didn't have options for food and lunch either. There were a lot of hungry health and PE teachers walking around. The location for the conference next year is Miami! Doubtful I'll go, but it's under consideration.
I'll be spending this weekend grading a lot. I have about 400 assignments to grade for ISU alone. Weee!
Here are some pics from my adventures in the South:
