beautiful places / smiling faces

this past weekend steve and i went to south carolina to visit our friend mark. we drank sweet tea, we played settlers of catan, we played botchiball, shot guns, went to bon jones university, ate hardees, walked, drank beer and went to church and it was a wonderful time, for a few reasons.

1. mark, steve and i have a great time together. the reason for this is kind of simple but it's also a mixture of the complicated intricacies that make each of us so very different from each other, but yet so similar. we're deep thinkers, and feelers - romantics. we're travelers who love experience. we're mid-twenty year olds, we're struggling with the ideas of family, commitment, and "settling down," we're talkers and listeners and readers, we're sentimental and nostalgic, we love the counting crows. and so that's how a southern boy who graduated from clemson, owns guns and reads poetry and an engineer pothead child of two missionaries who grew up in europe and me ended up being great friends. i love people who love people - despite our differences.

2. it feels really good to leave pittsburgh. i knew this already, but i was reminded of this. i also spend a lot of time missing the west - or wishing i was out west - but driving down to south carolina, there were so many beautiful things to see. sure, the blue ridge mountains aren't the rocky mountains, and the canyons aren't the grand canyon - but that doesn't make them any less beautiful. i need to see more of the east coast. i need to see more of south carolina and west virginia. i need to leave more.