Thanksgiving on the Mountain

This has been a very wonderful and hectic two weeks! To start with, Peter was elected Student Trustee by his classmates. It is an honor that we both are very excited about. He is planning to write his own entry soon about this position and his birthday celebration.

This past week we were able to celebrate Thanksgiving with three very dear friends from home. Luke flew into Chattanooga on Tuesday and stayed with us for a week, Casey and Addie drove up Tuesday night and stayed thru the weekend. On Tuesday night Luke joined us for a Soup Dinner hosted by another couple at the school. He got to meet a whole lot of our friends up here. Luke's a real trooper, so he took the overwhelming crowd in stride! On Wednesday I took everyone on my self-guided campus tour, we relaxed around the house and enjoyed a fire (and S'mores) in PW's new fire pit outside.
Thursday we watched the Macy's parade and had a delicious (and HUGE) Thanksgiving Dinner. Another seminarian offered to smoke turkeys in his smoker, so we took advantage of that and made all of the dishes that we would have had if we had TGD at home. YUM! Here's a pic of PW making his tasty mashed potatoes! After dinner we walked to Green's View planning to enjoy the beautiful biew with a bottle of wine, but it was WAAAAAYYYY too cold! We called PW to come get us and sipped our wine while enjoying a game of mah jongg (and Thanksgiving leftovers)!

On Friday and Saturday evenings I had to work, so Luke, Casey and Addie did some exploring on thier own. Friday night we all drove to Murfreesboro together to do a little shopping before I had to work. On Saturday Luke and Casey hiked to Bridal Veil Falls, it's one of my favorite places! I hated that I didn't get to go with them, but I was so happy that they came up here to spend the holiday with us.

On Monday Luke and I had lunch at Shenanigan's, a must-dine pub at Sewanee, and then spent some time with my friend Jen and her son Bill. We had coffee at Stirling's and visited some new sites on campus that I didn't even know about! Our next visitors get to see the Community Garden and drive down super curvy Roarks Cove Road to the Valley.

Before Luke's flight out on Tuesday we took a hike to Thumping Dick Hollow. The trail was steep and very slippery from all of the fallen leaves, but it was awesome!
The trail followed a small mountain brook, we had to walk across rocks next to a washed out bridge and climb over big fallen logs on our way down a rocky, steep trail to two caves. When we got to the first cave we realized that we didn't have a flashlight. Oops! We didn't let that keep us from exploring tho. We used Luke's iphone flashlight (Yes, The iphone does have an app for that!) and the flash of my camera. Here's a pic of Luke as we entered the cave. It was super dark!! And here we are inside the cave.
The caves stay at a constant 55 degrees year round. It was actually kind of warm compared to the outside temp. The Sewanee website said there were Native American carvings inside the cave, but without flashlights we were unable to find those. I am really looking forward to exploring the caves again.

Over the next few weeks we will be making a trip home and PW will be wrapping up his first semester of seminary. It's so hard to believe that we have already been here that long! In some ways it seems like we have just arrived, but we have made friends that it feels we have known our whole lives.