Firsts

For Memorial Day weekend, I went to the infamous Duck Beach - a gathering of about 1,000 LDS singles on the beaches of North Carolina. For the three years I lived in NYC, I haughtily rejected this East Coast tradition. Yet for some reason it made sense to me to fly from Seattle to Washington, D.C. and then drive 6 hours to spend 2 days in a house with 40 people I barely knew.

Part of me just wanted to observe the spectacle. However, my hopes for one day making a juicy documentary have been dashed: there was surprisingly less drama than I would have expected from a Mormon Spring Break. But the trip did allow for many firsts. For example, it was my first time to:

puke on an airplane,

see my dear friend Melissa pregnant,

be in the state of North Carolina,

stay in a house that had an elevator, movie theater, pool, sauna, hot tub, billiards room, dozens of flat screens, integrated sound system, and beach access, but not a garbage disposal,


sleep in movie theater stadium seats,
(That's not me, but that is the very room I slept in.)

meet someone who actually, sincerely, honestly likes Glenn Beck,


eat at Chick-Fil-A,


attend a church that was so crowded that people were sitting in the hallways,
(The ward had even rented chairs from the local school.)

roll my own sushi,

and kayak on the Potomac with my bro Jeffrey.

In five days, I get to experience the "first" that I've been anticipating for four years:
first time on the continent of Africa!