Home Again

And so begins my saga of packing and unpacking. I arrived home from DC today at about 4 after spending a couple of days there and in South Carolina to see my cousin graduate from the Marine Corps boot camp. It was a ton of fun with a few minor bumps, so it's gonna be a pretty long post.

We left bright and early Monday morning to head to my Uncle's house outside of DC. We hung around there for a couple of days, which was relaxing. Their dog, Champ, was a puppy the last time I saw him, and man, has he gotten HUGE. We packed up Wednesday morning for the long drive down to South Carolina. We didn't end up going to the beach, but the hotel was great. So we hung there Wednesday and did our own thing.




Seriously, if you ever get the chance, GO TO THIS RESTAURANT. Chick-Fil-A is freaking awesome and delicious, and not up north. I loved it. So yeah, that was a good time.
Best quotes from that night and probably the entire trip:





Ted: Do you think if I stood up and yelled "The South will rise again!" that I would get a yee-haw?

and

(While discussing native americans and land)
Ted: Well, we did pillage their land from them...
Grandpa: They had their chance.

Other than that, not much happened the first few days.


On Thursday we rose at the lovely time of 5 am so that we could eat breakfast and get to the bast by 7am to see my cousin Nick on what they call a "motivational run." We actually saw him!!!! He's in the middle behind the guy with the flag



Then we had to wait around for a while until the Liberty Ceremony started, where we saw him in his uniform with his platoon. Seriously, watching all of them march in together was so freaking cool. Marines have sort of a special march/walk which looks awesome when they're all in sync.



So the entire group of us (18 of us, to be precise) were wearing shirts that said Zablonski (my cousin's last name) and had his picture and platoon info on them (my aunt made them herself with iron on stuff) and yeah, people were jealous. I think Nick was partially mortified and proud at the same time, since the average number of guests a marine has at his graduation is 4. Our group had 18. While we were saying hi, one of his drill instructors said "God damn Zablonski, you've got a whole fucking platoon!" But the best was yet to come.

After the Liberty Ceremony, Nick was free to hang around with us for a few hours and so we ate and he showed us around the base. But seriously, it was about 95 degrees with the sun shining, so on the way home, after Nick had to report back, I almost got sick and we were all exhausted and just hung around for a while. The next day was graduation!



I'm starving right now though, and I have to do a couple things so I'll finish updating in a little while. Here's a picture of me, my brother and my sister with my cousin, just to tide you over!