VIRGINIA BEACH

I went to Virginia Beach for a Moot Court competition at Regent University. It was fun...I think way too fun...maybe that is why we didn't do super well in the competition! But we made some friends and Duke won everything anyway, so all in all a great trip. The team consisted of me, Kari (roommate), and Daniel (married man/BFF). This always causes a bit of drama since when we applied to do traveling teams we got to write down some people we'd like to travel with, and I put Daniel as #1 and Kari as #2...

Here are some highlights:

WINGERS
En route to the airport, we stopped by Wingers in Lehi for dinner. Daniel's wife works in Lehi so we stopped to eat with her. When we got there, our waiter was amazing and somehow it came up we were on our way to the airport to go to a competition in Virginia. He looked at us and asked "is it a dancing competition?" We all just laughed...and then said yes...but continued to laugh so I thought he knew we were joking. I guess not, because then he kept on talking about how he was going to make his way out of that town someday and it all reminded me of a scene from Dirty Dancing or something - our waiter was going to dance his way out of Lehi...

WILLIAMSBURG
We went straight from the airport in Virginia Beach to Williamsburg. Of course by the time we arrived there everything was closed and it was COLD - but it was still great and we saw you could rent period costumes and wear them as you walk around so we all have plans to return. And we saw THE longest running movie of all time - it's been in theaters (well, in the Colonial Williamsburg visitor's center) since the 50s. And we checked out William & Mary Law for my friend Dave (see post below unless I have deleted it because I am slightly neurotic about this blog and often go home and think about the pointless posts and have to delete them).

3 BAD RESTAURANTS
Having not eaten all day, we were starving and looking for a restaurant in Williamsburg. We really wanted to eat something in a non-chain restaurant because we were in Virginia! (now - I understand if you see some flaw in reasoning here. We were in VIRGINIA. Not Rome.) Anyway - we drive around and see lots of chain restaurants but finally stop at some random Italian restaurant. We get in and instantly want to leave - but the host (with long, dark, curly hair - oh yes - a man) is too fast and seats us and it's awkward and we're stuck. The place is expensive, the food doesn't look that good, and worst of all: they are playing bad opera music! For five minutes the three of us sit and silently wish we were not there. finally someone says something and we all agree and just go! We hadn't ordered yet.

We decide to drive to Virginia Beach where there is seafood galore - or at least our free tourist brochures tell us that. We drive the hour to the beach and finally get to this supposedly amazing seafood place - and it's closed. What's more - it seems like all of Virginia Beach is closed! We are STARVING and finally find a seafood place...but before we commit, we check out the food and decide it's not worth our time. Shortly thereafter we find another seafood place. This time we go in and it's too expensive and has metal menus! So we opt not to again. By this time we have no problem leaving a restaurant if we don't want their food.

We drive towards our hotel, hoping to find something. We see a Waffle House, and contemplate it because we are SO hungry, but still drive on in case we find something better. Eventually we stop at The Outback and Kari drops $35 for dinner. It was so good.

THE HOTEL
Contrary to what Daniel told everyone, we did NOT have one single bed for the three of us to share. We even had two rooms! And our hotel was awesome and the bellhop took our stuff to our rooms and after talking to us said he needed to go to Utah because that is where all the cool people were. Wow!

REGENT UNIVERSITY
Unbenknownst to me, Regent was founded by Pat Robertson and it seems the school is built around this televangelist studio.

THE COMPETITION
We endured four rounds of competing. Daniel argued the first round and his judge was a jerk and I found myself thinking the entire time "why do we do this to ourselves?" Law school is not really an uplifting place, to say the least. We were happy when we got out because then we got to go to the beach. But it is fun to get up there and pretend to be a lawyer and discuss constitutional law with three mock judges.