charlotte!

this past weekend i finally made the trip back to my hometown of charlotte, nc. and by finally, i mean that it's been 8 years since i've been back! it was awesome! the change there was ridiculous, but it was also 8 years of change. so many new neighborhoods, shopping centers, expansions and natural growth (i miss all the trees).

i stayed with my best friend since middle school, sangeeta.

we started out my trip with visiting my old houses...i miss them dearly.

this was the last house i lived in and the one i remember the most. my room is the top 2 right windows :) the people have painted some; the shutters used to be black and the door was white. my dad planted the huge tree there in the front. it was pretty much the best house ever!

we drove around a lot on friday when i got there. i was so excited i just wanted to check everything out. we went and saw my other house, my elementary school, a few shopping centers. we stopped to have lunch at this cute little italian place called rotelli. i had stuffed shells, delish :)

and while driving around, we had to go get sangeeta's car fixed. so we stopped at the dealership and i ran into an old friend's dad. he mentioned that my friend, jessica, had actually just been there. so we gave her a call and she came back to see me. haven't seen her in even longer than i've actually been back to charlotte. and we've known each other forever...like since diapers :)

that night i got to enjoy and old favorite, cherry blossom. we used to go there a lot. i always got shrimp fried rice, so i had to get it again. and it was amazing, just as good as i remember.

and i've been asking jesse about going to 6 flags every now and then, but we have yet to go. so, needless to say, i was pumped when we decided to go to carowinds. we went with sangeeta's sister, gayathri, and our other friend's sister, anusha. they added a new roller coaster, the intimidator. it was intense...90 miles an hour, long, and lots of "hills."

sunday, we got to go to another old favorite, park 51. we used to eat here a lot too. expect i was so young that all i ever remember getting was those tiny boxed cereals haha. i went for more of an adult meal this time, ham and cheese omelet with home fries and a biscuit. yummy!

had lunch at macado's in concord mills (for those of you in tx, it's basically the same at grapevine mills). and went shopping at aerie...got an awesome deal on some shirts and pants. and somehow we managed to make it over to southpark (which has grown like crazy; it's basically like a mini galleria) and then dinner at our friend neeli's house.

neeli's mom cooked chicken curry. i'm not a spicy food eater, so she made me a small portion that was much milder. but everyone was freaking out thinking it was going to be too spicy, but it was AMAZING! it was so freaking good, no joke.

(anusha, neeli, sangeeta, me)

minus my early flights (left dallas at 7:40 and left charlotte at 6:10), my trip was awesome! thanks vijayagopalan's for letting me stay with you and atyam's for cooking me dinner!!!