After a wild 3 days in Freeport, Bahamas with my little brother and a bunch of brand new friends, I moved my stuff on board of the MV Explorer. The MV is home to the floating campus of the Semester at Sea program. The MV Explorer is a cruise ship. Originally built to be a Casino Cruise ship, this beast can take around 720 undergrads, plus faculty and staff across the Atlantic in just a few days, and look good doing it. My cabin was as you would expect it to be, small. But we had a big window and I could shower standing up (see blog below) and my roommate was Larry. Big Lawrence was a Hoss to say the least, he recently got cleared to serve in the United States Military, it won’t be long before the giant badass is pulling drowning fisherman out of freezing waters somewhere. Living on a ship is awesome. I was there for 2 months, and I really got to like it a lot. It would sway in with the ocean, and I quickly learned I have been blessed with an awesome stomach. I never got seasick, and I was one of about 4 from my voyage that can say that (let me just brush my shoulders off…). The staff was incredibly nice, and I made friends with lots of people from all over the United States. For the first time since I have cared, I didn’t have access to the internet. I could send as many emails as I wanted, but I couldn’t get on facebook or text or call people in the states. That was difficult. While in port, we would go out into the city, see the sights and experience all sorts of new stuff, but at the end of the day, that ship was home. We could go back there to a made bed, a proper meal, a safe environment, and a beautiful view of cities from the port. Few get to experience that while seeing the world.

When I went on an engineering study trip to Innsbruck, Austria, I lived in a hotel room for 4 weeks. It was right in the touristy district of downtown Innsbruck. Right up the street was one of the main tourist attractions, “the golden roof” or something like that. It was being repaired while I was there, so it was covered by a tarp that had a picture of the roof painted on it. I thought that kind of took the appeal out of the roof, but that didn’t stop the billions of tourists who wandered through there from taking pictures in front of it. The hotel was established in 1465, and Mozart is one of the people who has stayed there. I shared the room with Patrick, who happened to be an old acquaintance from back in my days at Hess. Our room was less than great. The hotel in general was awesome, our room….not so much. Specifically the shower. It was a corner room, so we had to deal with the slated ceiling, which wasn’t an issue in the regular part of the room. Unfortunately, that ceiling was directly over the bathtub/shower….4 feet over it. I’m 6-3. If you’ve never had to shower bending over the entire time, take my word when I say: its not great. The hotel basically had a little Italian cafe downstairs, and they set up tables outside. On nice days, I would go downstairs and sit on wifi while I had a beer or a glass of wine. My hotel behind me, the golden roof towards the right, a busy pathway with a few street performers to my left, tons of tourists passing in front of me, and the Alps in every direction. Innsbruck is the most beautiful city I’ve ever seen during the day, and though I didn’t get a good shower until I left Innsbruck for Vienna, I had a blast staying in the White Cross. Or the “Hotel Weisses Kreuz”.

I got back from Japan just in time to move into Ren 4 with Greg and one of his fraternity brothers Scott. (Who is sitting across from me right now watching Book of Eli) I moved into this glorious apartment with a balcony that overlooks worlds fair park, hardwood floors, my own bathroom, a huge kitchen, a big bed, a big TV and my roommates were Greg and a guy I had only ever met once. I began pledging the fraternity while I lived here, and I started to really experience people growing up and moving on after college. I was friends with people who were getting married, people who were getting real jobs, and people growing up. I started cooking a fair amount, and I have become really close with Scott since we have lived together for almost 2 years now. I’m going to come back to talking about this apartment, we’re not done here.

At the end of March, I got on a flight to Japan with a fully stocked Japanese Vocabulary at my disposal. And by fully stocked I mean: I knew how to say I’m sorry and thank you. I moved in with the Carnemolla Family, in a little suburb of Nagasaki. The house was about a 10 minute walk from my university, and I had a 9 year old little brother, and a 6 year old little sister. My host mother was an amazing Japanese woman that taught me a lot about living a life that will make you happy and making the most of a bad situation. My host Father was from Australia, and he showed me how westerners fit in in Japan. I had to learn to sleep on the floor, take traditional Japanese baths, eat food that I didn’t want to try, speak with my hands and my tone, and most importantly how different Americans live from Japanese People. I fell in love with Japan, but I also fell in love with the United States and how we do things. You don’t appreciate a lot of things until they are taken away from you, and now I recognize how much I love my pick-up truck, a hot long shower, buffalo sauce, big rooms, dr. pepper, and my cell phone. Japan is an amazing place, and it taught me to love traveling and made me want to see the rest of the world.

From December 2010 through the end of March 2011, I lived back home with my parents in NY. I had an internship at an electric company, and got more of an education in that 3 months than I could ever learn in a classroom. I say that in two ways. First, I don’t want to be an engineer. I don’t want to sit at a desk, solving math problems, and telling overly ambitious people that their ideas are nice, but won’t work out in the end. Paul was my boss, and who I followed around everyday. Easily the most brilliant man I’ve ever met. He knew the answer to every question that anyone ever asked him, and you could tell that he had been doing what he does for 30 years. He had that pure understanding of everything about the business that you can only get from doing it for a long time. I loved working with Paul, but I learned that I wanted to do what Greg did. Not Greg my little brother, but Greg the CEO of the company. He traveled around, he shook hands, he made phone calls, he wore suits, and he was a complete boss. Paul was obviously smarter than Greg, and had a better understanding of everything, but Paul was happy doing what he did. Greg wanted to be out of the office, making moves and playing the game. He was good too. The things I learned during that internship were: I like shaking hands and doing business with people, I don’t like doing math problems, and that you should take notes all the time. Constantly write stuff down. Keeping the women of the office happy is also a good idea, we all know that women run this world, and my girls in the front two rooms were the most amazing women ever, but they subtly made it very clear to Me, Paul, and Greg that they ran the show and not to forget it.

It was my junior year, my little brother Greg was starting classes at UT, and his dorm room was the very same room I had lived in the year before. Ol’ J-529. I was living in an apartment complex called the commons, a relatively cheap, simple apartment about 10 minutes walk from my classes. I was fine with the apartment, but I got to live with Max and Patrick, which was awesome. Plus it was a 4 bedroom, and we only had 3, so Greg slept in the other room all the time. Back then I hated engineering. A lot. I was in it because my dad wanted me to be in it. Living with Max and Patrick and having Greg around played a big part in keeping me happy and sane. Greg was pledging back then, and I still didn’t know anything about Greek life, and I learned that living away from campus means that you have to more actively spend time with your friends. You can’t just walk outside anymore to find people you know.

In the summer of 2010, I went random once again. I needed a place to stay for the summer, and one of my friends set me up with a guy who was trying to sublease. His roommates turned out to be some of the chilliest guys I’ve ever met. Jordan and Chris were both awesome. They had an endless supply of girls moving through the apartment, and completely opened my eyes to the world of partying on a large scale. We had keg parties, they drank every night, they lived college the way that we see it in the movies. Living with them taught me a lot about how to let loose and have fun, and they are still guys I see at the bar all the time. I saw Jordan last night in fact. Probably the best memory of that summer was a party we had and this gorgeous little cheerleader was my Pong partner. She was no taller than 5 foot, and I picked on her all night about not being able to see over the cups. Well into our first game, we were down 5 – 2. She was like “we need to get it together or we’re going to lose.” I gave her a puzzled look and said “what are you talking about? We’re winning.” and she gave me a very puzzled look. I decided to go for it and pull out my greatest pong trick, the old “HI-LO”. I told her to yell HI-LO! as loud as she could, and then shoot the ball, Imagine it going in the cup and let it ride. She did as I suggested, though skeptically, and as the ball left her hand, I bounced it in. She also made her shot, and after getting the balls back and making another shot, I said “told you so.” That game began a 7 party – 18 game win streak for me that summer. If only I had any game, cause that girl was beautiful.

My freshman year, I had been friends with a lot of the guys on the floor above me. Their RA was a boss and let us get away with murder, so he arranged to have us all live together again, mostly having super single rooms. I basically had roommates on my floor. We were all friends, we all got along, we all shared a bathroom, and we all got close. This is where I met Max and Patrick. They were these two freshman who just happened to get placed into one of the rooms that we hadn’t found someone to fill. They quickly assimilated into the culture we had developed, and within a few weeks of living down the hall from them, they both became really good friends of mine. I also spent a lot of time with Nick over in Gibbs, because I had my meal plan there. I made friends with lots of people over there, including Patrick, who I just had wings with a few hours ago. I had a super single bedroom, which basically meant I had two of everything I needed, and a room to myself. I bought the ugliest green carpet you could ever imagine for that room, I had two beds, a huge TV, and all my Ties hung over the pipes that crossed the back of the room. I loved that dorm room too, and I developed a lot of friendships that year that are my strongest ones today.

After living in Hess my freshman year, I needed a place to stay over the summer in Knoxville. I wanted to take classes at UT and my buddy BP offered me a room at his house in Knoxville. I figured that would be pretty sweet, his family is amazing and it would be a good experience. I learned about southern living from the Pattersons. They took me in, took good care of me, and hung out as a family basically every night. They just talked and listened to music, and ate and ate and ate and ate and ate. Grandmother and Grandaddy insist I call them Grandmother and Grandaddy, and I believe Grandmother believed I was too skinny, because she made sure I stuffed my face every night at dinner. I got to live with one of my best friends and hang out with him everyday, and he taught me how to sail that summer. Their daughter became the little sister I’d never had, and she still is. She’s a freshman at UT now, and I feel pride in how well she does with everything, and that I’m still close with her. The Patterson’s took incredibly good care of me, and still do. I have a southern family now that when I find a girl I want to marry, they will be the first family that I bring her home to.

I was going to just write about how great my current apartment is, but then as I wrote, I thought about the other places I’ve lived. I reckon each year made for a neat experience where I learned a lot, so I’m going to go through them step by step, blog by blog, about the different places I’ve lived. Cause honestly, they’ve all been pretty tight.

My freshman year I lived in Hess with Old Man Safdie. He was 23, and had already graduated from American University with a fine arts degree. As best as I could understand, he had promised his dad that he would go to UT for at least a little while. Since he had already graduated, he decided to just do freshman year all over again. He lived in a freshman dorm, had a random freshman roommate, dated a freshman girl, ate in freshman cafeterias, and while the classes he took were 400 level art classes, he took them with the purest intent of just expanding his skills as an artist. Nowadays, he works for an art studio in Nashville, and he’s still super nice and I hope I get to visit him sometime. Hess was awesome. The rooms were big, and new, it was right next to the library, and on Pedestrian Walkway. It has a grocery store, and at the time, a KFC downstairs. The bathrooms were public, but they got cleaned everyday, and the responsibility of keeping it clean never fell on me. I had a bunk bed, lots of friends living on my floor and the floor above me, and it was easily the most important place for me to have loved. I was a freshman coming to a completely new world, and Hess definitely helped me fall in love with Tennessee, Knoxville, and this University. If I had hated my dorm, it very easily could’ve changed my life.