Hello!  This is Jamie!  I know I know, it’s been a while, blame the Rice bioengineering department.  Don’t worry, I’ve missed you guys, too. I’m currently sitting in the car typing this; it is the first hour of a 12 hour drive back to Houston from Nashville.

Okay, I lied. I’m going to be honest, I fell asleep in the car right after writing that^.  Currently sitting in Starbucks across from the Texas Medical Center writing this.  It is 9:50 a.m. on Sunday, and I feel like I’m about to fall over from lack of sleep.  Before you roll your eyes at me and grumble something about crazy college kids sleeping in til forever o clock after a long night of partying, hear me out.  I got back last night at about 3:30 am, and now I am here at Starbucks waiting to go to lab.  Not that I’m complaining, I actually really like lab and Nashville was super fun.  My school, Rice, is super weird, we have breaks called “midterm recess” where we get a Thursday and Friday off once a semester.  They are supposed to happen after midterms are over so we can all catch up on sleep, but honestly I’d rather get a full week off for Thanksgiving instead.  Sam and I usually use midterm breaks as an excuse to go travel somewhere outside of Houston.  We went to Austin last year and bummed around UT and had a blast.  This year, I was a little hesitant to go anywhere because I was so tired from a long semester of awful classes.  Our ideal vacations are not very relaxing—we both love exploring places. But, of course, Sam being Sam, and me being me, I found myself sitting in a car on Wednesday night ready to brave the long drive to Nashville. Our excuse for going was to visit Jordan and Sam’s best friend, Tate, from high school. Jordan goes to Vanderbilt and Tate goes to Belmont, which are basically right next to each other.  We spent Thursday, Friday, and most of Saturday in Nashville, and we had an awesome time.  Jordan’s friends were great and so was Tate.  (check out my awesome rhyming ability).

But I am my mother’s daughter, and naturally, this post is going to be about food.  I don’t think Sam and I had really bad food during our trip. Except for Pluckett’s. Don’t go to Pluckett’s. Well, in their defense, we went after driving from 7 pm to 830 am in the morning, so we weren’t really thinking about food. Nashville, like Houston, has a fantastic food scene.  All of the restaurants are very into the rustic vibe, which I am a major fan of.  The food highlight of the trip was Barista Parlor, a small coffee shop with possibly the best breakfast food I’ve had in a while.  (Sorry Houston).  I had this really yummy biscuit  (of course) with sausage, an egg, and jam.  I’ve never been the biggest fan of biscuits, but I figured I was in Nashville, so I had to try one. It sounds weird, but the combination of sweet jam and the salty sausage was actually pretty awesome.  Sam had your classic eggs, bacon, and potatoes breakfast, and he said the bacon was possibly the best he’s had.   As a side note, we did try to go to Biscuit Love, but the line looked like the line in front of the Apple Store whenever a new iPhone comes out, and we were not about to wait in it.  Unlike my mother, I am relatively sane when it comes to biscuits.  Sam does not have my Dad’s patience when it comes to dealing with Leong women and our obsession with food.  But he did have to listen to me belting out four hours of Taylor Swift on the drive up to Nashville and every single high school musical song ever made on the drive back.  Can we say Trooper with a capital T?

Another highlight of the trip was the coffee. I had so. Much. Coffee. It was glorious, but probably not the best thing for my stomach.  To be honest, I needed that much coffee, I was pretty sleep deprived.  It tasted so good, too.  I’m pretty sure I had three to four cups each day, some just straight coffee and some fancy ones like this.

All in all, it was a great trip.  I’ll admit it, I definitely missed my brother, and I loved spending time with him, even when he forced us to go to Chuy’s (a Houston original) for dinner and when we spent a solid 3+ hours trying to find a brunch spot because the wait for a table was way too long everywhere we went. (We finally settled on the 45 minute wait at the Flipside, and yes, it was def worth the wait).  Alright, I have procrastinated enough on my school work.  I’ll write again soon!

Hi Claire