My Summer in a Nutshell....a Very, Very Long Nutshell...

Hello all! I’m back to blogging! Sorry about my absence, summer really got away from me. Before I knew it, it was August and I was packing up all of my stuff to move back to D.C. I actually have been back on the GW campus for 12 days already for volleyball preseason. But, before I get into all of that, I’ll recap my summer for you! My apologies in advance for a super duper long post. My summer was fairly laid back, yet fun and jam packed at times. I attended Milwaukee Brewer baseball games, spent a few weekends up in Wisconsin Dells, worked as a cashier, and of courses spent time with friends and family as often as possible.

Probably, the most interesting thing I did this summer though was going to more concerts than any person should ever go to in such a short span of time. Like very year, I celebrated summer by attending Summerfest, which is the world’s largest musical festival that is held in Milwaukee on the waterfront of Lake Michigan. Summerfest runs for about 9 days and I went to 7 of them. So, for a sold week straight, my daily schedule was wake up at 6am, work from 7am-3pm, workout for volleyball, go home, get ready, and head down to the lake front at about 6-7pm for either a 7:30 or 10pm concert, make the 15 minute drive home that actually took well over an hour because of all the traffic leaving Summerfest, get home and go to bed by 1am-ish, and wake up and do it all over again the next day. It was an extremely busy and fun week, but truly exhausting. My Summerfest concert total ended up being 14 concerts in 7 days; all for only $140. I saw Britney Spears, Nicki Minaj, Katy Perry, Sugarland, Maroon 5, Third Eye Blind, Gaelic Storm, O.A.R., Goo Goo Dolls, BoDeans, Michelle Branch, Dropkick Murphys, Styx, and Sara Bareilles. However, believe it or not, those are not the only concerts I saw over the summer! I also saw Journey, Foreigner, and Night Ranger in concert. Like I said, I went to more concerts than any person should ever go to, but they were all awesome. However, if I had to choose favorites, I would say that the Sugarland and Katy Perry concerts were the best of the bunch. Here are some pictures and video from my Summerfest extravaganza (I did not film this video, my seats were not quite this good; if you want to watch more, every song from the concert is on youtube, just follow the links http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7P7JwaLRToM).

Believe it or not, during Summerfest week, I took the day off of work and played in an all day grass volleyball tournament. It was exhausting, as we played 6 matches between 8am and 5pm in the hot summer sun. We did well and I got to see and play with one of my GW volleyball teammates who also lives in Wisconsin! Then, right after we finished playing, we drove back to Milwaukee, got ready and went to the Britney Spears and Nicki Minaj concert.

my teammates for the day (and my GW teammate is on the left!)

Needless to say, I was dead tired by the end of the day. Well, that was my summer in a nutshell. Sorry again about the long post, but I wanted to catch all of you up! I’m off to bed now so I can be well rested for another day of volleyball preseason! Look for my next post soon (probably Wednesday) and it will be all about my return to campus and the beginning of volleyball season!

Feel free to email me with any questions! cbgraf@gwmail.gwu.edu

-Christie