The blog has been resuscitated. Revived. Imbued with new life. Good timing, considering it's Lent and all. Back by popular demand (really just M&D & Aunt Mares), I'm going to keep track of my spring break travels on this bad boy.
In case you didn't know, I'm headed out to Napa, California for spring break this year. My friend David Hagan (from here on out, "Hagan" only), lives there with his dad and brothers when he's not at Hendrix with me, and he had a brilliant idea for an Odyssey trip: head to Napa!
I don't recall if I ever explained the Odyssey concept during the London semester, but here's a brief summary: Hendrix College really wants its students to get their hands dirty with learning. To go out and experience things first hand, and to encourage us to spend time doing the things we're passionate about. So in the interest of encouraging that sort of "experiential learning," Hendrix has developed a program that it calls the Odyssey Program. Hendrix students are required to fulfill 3 Odysseys during their time here as students. There are 6 categories of projects, and students must fulfill Odysseys from three separate categories to receive credit. Those categories are (drum roll, I need to hear some cheers, I don't know if I can remember all six but here goesssss!): Artistic Creativity, Global Awareness, Service to the World, Undergraduate Research, Professional and Leadership Development and Special Projects. They can be as simple as taking a class (I got credit for taking an acting class) or participating in an activity (band, choir, athletic teams), or as onerously tricky and difficult as we want to make them (traveling to Cambodia to work in orphanages, working to save the sea turtles in Greece, studying abroad for a semester).
Hagan's idea falls somewhere in the middle of that range, closer to the tricky end than the simple end of the spectrum. Our proposed idea was to travel to Napa in order to study "Cooking Local;" how using locally grown products can impact the quality of cuisine. So we're traveling out to Cali to take a cooking class, meet with a bunch of world-class chefs (hopefully!) to talk about local produce, go to some vineyards to learn about how wine fits into all this, and eating a LOT of AMAZING food. Seriously. Some of the top restaurants in the world are housed in Napa. No McDonald's on this trip.
Our cooking class meets at the local farmer's market to buy the goods we'll be cooking with. Then, apparently, off to a local winery to choose a wine that will best compliment the meal we'll be cooking. From there, back to the kitchen to get our hands dirty (Hendrix will be SO proud!). That's tomorrow, Tuesday. Weds and Thursday we'll be gallivanting around meeting with chefs and eating their food. We may or may not do a quick trip to San Francisco (I would guess not because we're only arriving late tonight and leaving Friday afternoon, but we shall see).
I just did the weather check, and weather.com is calling for icky weather. Temps in the 50s all week, plus rain. Thank goodness we'll have food and wine to keep us warm :)
Flight is at 5:30 Arkansas time, arrival in Sacramento around 11 if memory serves (we're flying Southwest). Can't wait!!!!!!!
Will try to take lots of pics, but don't hold your breath for them going up until next week; I'm taking the netbook (read: mini-laptop), and it doesn't like to post pictures. My words, however, will be all yours for the perusal. Enjoy, dear readers.
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