Trip to Atlanta

Since graduating from Hastings College, our friend Tim has been back to visit us and others in Nebraska a couple times a year.  We've never been to visit him.  We decided it was time to fix that, so we bought plane tickets to Atlanta.  We chose last weekend because Zach had Thursday and Friday off and I had Friday off.  I requested a personal day for Thursday, but I didn't find out until after the tickets were purchased that my request was denied.  I was charged $331.19 to take the day off.  That was hard to swallow, but there was really nothing we could do about it.

We took Monroe to Hastings on Wednesday evening and dropped her off with Zach's parents.  Then we drove to my sister's house.  She lives about 20 miles east of Lincoln.  The next morning, our flight left at 6:30.  We were in Atlanta by noon.

Tim picked us up from the airport and drove us to eat lunch.  We went to a restaurant that only serves grass-fed beef, free-range chicken, and locally grown, organic produce.  The food was delicious! Then we went to his house in Decatur, a quaint town within the city.
Tim works for an organization called L'Arche.  The mission of L'Arche is to have intentional community with people with intellectual disabilities.  Here is a link to their website, if you want to learn more.  Zach and I give monthly to L'Arche, so one purpose of the trip was to experience L'Arche first hand.  Tim lives with Terry, Patrick, and John, as well as two other assistants, Sara and Jess. The six of them do life together.  The Atlanta L'Arche opened last summer.  Terry and John have lived in the house since it opened.  Patrick moved in in August.  L'Arche focuses on doing family differently.   The three guys have jobs, but the six of them spend evenings together.  We enjoyed eating supper with the house and watching them work together and interact.  After supper, we said prayers around a candle.  It was a moving experience.

Terry, Jess, Tim, Patrick

John loves his family.  His parents and brothers live in Atlanta and see him regularly.  He is very proud of L'Arche, and even has ideas about how to grow it and fundraise.  John is legally blind and has a long and complicated medical history.  He lives a full life thanks in large part to his parents. He loves music, especially the instrumental intros to songs.  He plays the same song intro over and over.  John and Tim do a lot of trash talking and giving each other a hard time.


Terry loves sports, participating in and following them.  He has a 180 bowling average and a great basketball shot.  He, along with the other two, loves WWE wrestling.  He tried to get us to commit to coming with him to a wrestling event in March.  Terry has a lot to say, but he is hard to understand.  It takes a lot of concentration to follow his line of thinking.  There were times that John helped explain what Terry was saying.  Terry has a contagious smile.  


Patrick is the newest member of L'Arche.  He is not shy at all.  The first question he asked me was if I was married.  He, too, loves sports and wants to be a football coach.  Patrick loves movies and movie soundtracks.  He can name the actors in almost any movie you give him. Telling jokes and making us smile was a goal of his while we were there. We heard the same joke several times.


John, Jess, Sara


The whole house

Staying in the L'Arche house for the weekend and getting to know them all was a wonderful experience.

Friday:
We got up and went to a coffee shop in the morning.  Then, we met Curt, the executive director for L'arche Atlanta for lunch.  We met at Sun in my Belly.  It was a really cool restaurant with delicious food.  The conversation we had was a blessing!

After lunch, Tim took us to the King Center.  This is the museum and burial site of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.    Being there was a very moving experience.  I can't imagine how sacred this place is for someone who has experienced severe discrimination.

After the King Center, we went to get drinks with Trace, a professor we all had at Hastings College who lives in Atlanta.  He and Tim get together regularly.  It was great to see him.  

That night, we walked downtown to Tim's favorite restaurant, The Brick Store.  They had great food, and their beer menu was the longest I've ever seen.  We met four of Tim's friends from grad school for dinner and had more great conversation.

Saturday:
The next morning, we were driving to a different restaurant for breakfast, when we decided to return to Sun in My Belly instead.  I ordered the same thing I got the day before--Honeyed ricotta stuffed french toast with Banana's Foster on top.  It was one of the best things I've ever eaten, both times.

Zach and Tim each got a PEBLT, which was a pimento cheese, fried egg, bacon, lettuce, and fried green tomato sandwich.  It was awesome!

After breakfast, we went to the Dekalb Farmer's Market.  This was a huge warehouse full of fresh groceries.  Their produce section was the most remarkable.  I saw many, many fruits that I never knew existed.  Their seafood, cheese, and meat selections were incredible too.  It was quite overwhelming because there were people everywhere. 

After that, we drove out to Stone Mountain.  It is a huge piece of granite just outside of Atlanta.  They have a tram you can ride to the top, or you can hike it.  It is a mile to the top.

Some areas were really steep

At the top

Panoramic

That night, Zach and I crashed our first wedding reception.  John's brother Will got married a few weeks ago at St. George.  On Saturday, he and his wife had a wedding reception at their house that everyone from the house attended.  The party was casual, but definitely out of our league.  Zach and I were uncomfortable at first, but we quickly found plenty of people to talk to.  Everyone I talked to tried convincing us to move to Atlanta.  The reception was one of my favorite things we did.

Sunday:

Tim dropped us off at the airport at 11:00.  Our flight was leaving at 12:30.  When we got to our gate, we found out that our flight would be delayed a half hour.  At 1:00, they told us we were delayed until 2:00.  At 2:00, they told us we were delayed until 3:00.    

Finally at 3:00, they boarded us.  

What should have been a 1 1/2 hour flight, ended up taking 2 1/2 hours because we had to go around the storm.  (This storm had produced over 50 tornadoes in the Chicago area.)  Coming into Chicago, we experienced horrible turbulence.  The plane was rocking all over the place during the entire decent.  Finally, we could see the runway, and we were almost to the ground when the pilot suddenly pulled the plane back up.  He ascended above the clouds and circled the city again.  The pilot then came on and let us know that the plane in front of us did not get out of the way soon enough and he didn't feel comfortable with the distance.  We then restarted our turbulent decent.  As soon as we were safe on the runway, the plane erupted with cheers and applause.  The pilot came on and said, "Thank you!  Thank you very much!"  To say there were sighs of relief, would be an understatement.  I have not been that scared in a long time.  

Landing in Chicago only meant that we had to take off again to get to Omaha.  The takeoff was definitely not smooth, but it was much shorter than our "two" landings.  We finally landed in Omaha at 8:00, four and a half hours after we were supposed to.  We got to Grand Island at 11:00.  Zach's parents kept Monroe another night, so we crashed as soon as we got home.  

Our trip to Atlanta was wonderful.  We are so glad we made the trip!