As we are now in the beginning of Spring, I think it is a good time to log in many of my adventures which occurred during the past winter. Unfortunately I did not do much traveling out of state. However, I was able to explore much of Kentucky through our school's speech program. I was fascinated at how different many of the towns and rural schools were from my home town of Louisville, KY. The first and last of the seven tournaments that I attended took place at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, Kentucky. This tournament was named the WKU Hilltopper Junior Tournament for a very good reason. The landscape where the town is located was very hilly indeed. It was amazing to see how the gently rolling hills of my back yard could transform into the dramatic ones of Bowling Green within a few hours drive. The last tournament of the season was the Kentucky High School Speech League Junior State Tournament which was also in Bowling Green. The car ride there and the actual tournament proved to be very eventful. Though I did not get to explore the town as much as I would have liked during these visits, due to the events that were at hand, I did make basic observations of the area and of the campus.
Our journey started out from Louisville at six o'clock. The drive would take us about two and a half hours. I was weary and wished more than anything to go to sleep because I had woken up at five in the morning to get ready. Nonetheless I was excited for the first tournament of a long string of speech events that would span the upcoming weeks. As we reached the outskirts of Louisville it was still dark, but under the street lamps I could see the outlines of trees that were barren with the freezing temperatures. The farther we drove the more forested the landscape became. The surroundings were also gradually getting more hilly. Though the hills were not reaching a mountainous height, they were still high enough to create valleys. These valleys are used by farmers. Towards the end of our drive we entered the town of Bowling Green. As we drove along College Street with its old Victorian- looking houses we saw the Cherry Hall at the top of the hill that we were now driving on. Once we reached the top we were right in front of Cherry Hall and could see the surrounding hills. The building itself is a beautiful structure with its white marble walls. The rooms in which the participants of the tournament were to preform their pieces in were scattered around the campus and in various buildings. This gave the students an opportunity to see a good chunk of the WKU campus. The ride back from the Hilltopper tournament was fairly uneventful, but the drive back form the KHSSL tournament, which was also at WKU, proved to be an experience. After the latter tournament, I was in low spirits because I had not made the final rounds in any of the events I was preforming. My mother stated that she was starting to doze off so we were going to stop at the next McDonald's to get a coffee. As we took the exit, the first thing we saw was a horse that was tied to a tree. At first I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Who would station their horse so close to the main road? Too curious to stop driving, we continued down the road that lead to the fast food restaurant. Right next to it was a wagon. It turned out that there was an Amish family who was selling their hand made baskets. As my friends (whom I had met at in the McDonald's) and I looked upon their merchandise, we started a conversation with the family. This was not only an experience that lightened my saturnine day but was also an opportunity for me to learn about a culture which was unfamiliar to me.
No comments:
Post a Comment