Nashville- Vacation

Okay now on to the actual trip which was a drastic change from the competition. Unlike that rigged, political, biased competition, the trip was great. Yeah the bus ride was long, but it was well worth it. We got to our hotel after a twelve hour ride and my first impression was definitely a good impression. I first saw the hotel and mistook it for a mall. A mall the size of Mall of America. The place is huge. We walked in, and i could see that in the middle of the hotel was a garden/rain forest area and it was so cool. We then visited our room which was also one of the coolest rooms I've been in. It was complete with a comfortable modern looking bed, nice furniture, and a high def T.V. After admiring the room we head out to the main section. We later learned that it was actually three sections. The scenery was incredible with waterfalls, fountains and animals in the place. All three were rain forest sections with different restaurants and stores in them. There were probably 5 or 6 restaurants in the place, including a Jack Daniels, Haagen Daaz, an amazing sushi place, and more.


After the preliminary round, we got to go the mall right next to the Grand Ole Opry. While there we went to the oxygen bar which was a huge waste of twenty dollars, even though it was relaxing. We also went to an extremely impressive Bose demonstration and I got some nice Oakley swim trunks. I was about to buy some expensive glasses since they were all on sale but I figured if I did my parents would castrate me. I also went to forever 21 with some people which I felt gay for going into. That is until I got to the small men's section where they had some really cool shirts, and I ended up buying two. The highlight of the day was definitely going to Dave & Buster's though. We had a descent chicken meal there, and then got going on the games which was a blast. We all had a 10 dollar game card to go crazy with. We started out by playing some shooting and racing games, then got started on trying to get as many tickets as possible. We ended up getting about 1,000, before we realized that we really didn't want or need them. So we began our search through the place looking for the best candidate to give our tickets to. We spotted a young kid of about five or six years old and decided he was worthy of our charity. We asked if he wanted the tickets and his dad very enthusiastically said yes. I think he was more excited than the kid was, but we felt good about our charity none the less. When we got back to the hotel, a kid down the hall decided to have a rave and he set up a strobe light, pumped up the techno, turned the lights off, and we went crazy. This lasted for about a half hour with about 3o kids in a small, hot room, before everyone called it quits for the night.

After finals the next day we went to The Wild Horse Saloon, which I thought would be fun, but maybe a little awkward. But that was before I knew what they had scheduled. They ended up having a local band play for us, and they were nothing short of amazing. They did a bunch of country stuff at first which I wasn't too excited about, but it was still pretty fun for country. That's when they broke into Jessie's girl and the crowd erupted. I was right up at the front of the stage and it was a blast. The lead singer then showed his vocal skills when he went into a few Journey songs, and sounded exactly like Steve Perry. He could even sing as high as him which is very impressive for anyone to do. After a few more country songs, they finished the set with Don't Stop Believing, which was pretty much perfect. I think that was probably the highlight of the trip. The only other thing that could compete with that was just hanging out with everyone else in the group. The trip was really fun mainly because everybody got along and became friends over the trip, and that made for some good times.