A weekend in Casper WY

When I was abroad I made a lot of friends, most of those were Rotary exchange students just like me. I previously talked about the one time we met at orientation camp, this weekend I am ready to talk about happened five months after that first meeting.

Lunch at Five Guys

A Thursday night, after school, I prepared my stuff and I left the house at around six thirty. I arrived in Cheyenne Wyoming at something like one hour and a half later. I spent the night at my Turkish friend's house and the day after we had to drive a couple of hours more to reach our friends in Casper, just north of Cheyenne. I said hello to her host family and then we went down to the basement to watch something on Netflix. We came up with the idea to watch a horror or thriller movie and among them, there was "Dark Skies", with to be honest was not scary... not even a bit. I just felt like it was stupid and without a logic to follow, but whatever. The morning after we left right after breakfast, at ten-ish and drove to Douglas to pick up one of our friends before arriving at our final destination. At half past twelve we arrived in Casper but before reaching the rest of the team, we had lunch at Five Guys. I was texting the other half of the squad to let them know that we were in town, and I said "We will have lunch at Five Guys", but they understood that we were going to have lunch at five in the afternoon with them... They did not know that there is a fast food chain called like that.

After lunch, we arrived at our Brazilian friend's place where we met other two guys, the girl from Ecuador and the guy from Argentina. We left our bags and then brainstormed some things that we could do together. We left and while we were chatting we arrived at Walmart, which was thirty minutes away, more or less, from the house. Then, since it was actually cold and there was snow, we stopped at Starbucks to get something warm. There, the Turkish girl I spent the night with (not that way lol) started to teach us some Turkish words and the pronunciation of the alphabet. In case you did not know, this is a very hard language and it sounds like sometimes you have to pretend to have a sore throat to be able to make certain sounds. While we were making sounds and talking about girl's body parts (do not ask me why, this sort of happened), there was a guy on the other side of the shop who was laughing at his phone without saying a word. He was probably video-chatting someone but it just looked very weird from our point of view.

After our coffee get-together, we went back to our friend's house where we ate a lot. We started to play some of the games we brainstormed before leaving the house earlier that day and listened to music. After eating like one hundred pretzels each, we went bowling, where, not to brag, but I won not one but both games. I won the first one because I was lucky, I did score a strike but I only gathered seventy-four points. I started the second game right away with a few strikes and spares and finished it with a strike and one-hundred and twenty-three points. My Argentinian friend was second with ninety-seven points, but it was his first time playing bowling so I thought it was very impressive.

Hot and cold

It was kind of sad because if it was for us we would have continued playing, but one of the girls had to go, they were coming to pick her up, so the Turkish girl started to sing a song in her native language and it was just so funny. We did not sign up for free Turkish classes, but it felt like we did. Even though we ate before going to play, we ate some spaghetti at like eleven in the night. But it was just the perfect atmosphere, we started talking about this and that and before we knew it, it was three thirty in the morning. Our plan was to watch a movie but we just talked about relationships and travels. Even though we eventually did go to sleep, when I got up I felt like I did not. When we had breakfast we all looked like someone has beaten the crap out of us, lol. This day we wanted to change so we went to a hotel to use their pools. They also had a hot tub but this was not making bubbles, it was just still warm water. My friend did not even wait a couple of minutes to see if this would turn it on that she went straight to the reception to speak with someone who could fix the pool. After that, two of us started dancing in the cool pool and just the other two stayed in the hot tub. After the warm of the hot tub, we decided to go ice skating (hot and cold). I do not why but we were not lucky even at the arena, because there was a party going on, a kid's birthday, so the kitchen was closed and we had nachos for lunch. Skating was more fun than when I tried to do it in Denver. There, I had really weird boots and could not stand for a long time.

Between Mexican and Chinese food

The host mom of the girl who came with me to Casper could not drive up to get us on Sunday so she came after we skated. It was really sad to say goodbye because we literally stayed in Casper for only twenty-four hours, or something like that. While we were driving back to Cheyenne we almost ran out of gas, and you know how Wyoming is (if you do not... good for you), we had to drive a few miles back to find a gas station and refill the car. We had Mexican food, we played a game, watched some Vines (good times those, now the app no longer exists... ) and then we video-chatted with the guys in Casper. I know, we were just there that afternoon, but we were sad and wanted to know what they were doing. The morning after my friend and I slept late and then we went to Loveland where we had Chinese food.

This weekend was amazing, just like all the others I spent with these guys. See, here is the thing: everyone always asks me how it is possible that I enjoyed my exchange in a place like Greeley, a place that smells like cow one day and also the day after. I enjoyed it because I had people I enjoyed being with, people who cared about me, and this was all that mattered... The same thing applies to this journey of ours. It lasted only twenty-four hours and we were not in New York City, but we did spend precious time together, and that was enough for us.

- Cristian

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