Summer Weekend in Peoria

This past weekend, I drove up to my college town, Peoria, IL., to spend some time with some of my friends from college!

As I've mentioned before on here, I am on the dance team at my university, and am also on the executive board for my dance team.  Before going home for the summer, we picked the weekend of July 7-8, to come back to school and have a dance workshop.  My entire team ended up being there that weekend, plus some people brought friends from home, making it a big and fun group!

It is only a 2 hour and 30 minute drive to Peoria for me, so I left on Saturday morning so that I had time to get there and get settled before I had to head over to start our classes.

The teacher of our first day of classes was the former dance teacher of one of the girls on our team.  We are a completely self-choreographed and taught team, so taking classes from a real dance teacher again felt really good!  She taught us four classes on Saturday: ballet technique, jazz technique, jazz combinations, and strength and stretch.  It was definitely a long day of dancing, but it felt so good to be dancing again, and to be dancing with my friends again.

That night, we went to my friend's off campus house for pizza, games, and watching videos from our recitals the year before.  When it got late enough, it was time for us to all go out together!

We had such a blast that night, and it was definitely much needed since I've been working so much at home this summer!

One of our team members who graduated this past May still lives in Peoria and has an apartment not far from our university.  She offered to make us some breakfast Sunday morning so that we wouldn't have to spend more money than we already were this weekend, which was super nice of her.  Everything was delicious, and fueled us for another day of dance (even though our bodies were so sore!).

We had fewer classes on Sunday, but it was still a tiring day!  We started with a leaps and turns class taught but someone on our dance team who graduated in May of 2017.  After that, we learned a combination to a Britney Spears song taught by our president, and then we were done for the weekend!

We all went back to our respective houses, packed up our things, and headed for one more stop before it was time to head home: food!  We went somewhere that I had never been to before, but one of my friends on the team absolutely loves.  It's called Thyme, and if for some reason you are ever in the Peoria area, you need to go!  It was so cool!

The majority of us got the mac and cheese grilled cheese with a side of tater tots, and my goodness was it delicious!  I brought the other half of my sandwich home and had it for lunch today, and it was just as good the next day.

One person got the chicken alfredo, and it was served in a giant mason jar.  Our waiter then proceeded to mix the pasta and the sauce in to jar before pouring it onto her plate for her.  It was an experience, and she said that her pasta was absolutely amazing.

After such a tiring weekend, I was definitely ready to be heading home!  I got home and basically went straight to bed!  I had so much fun back at school with my school friends, that it's actually making me excited to head back to school in around a month!  But I am definitely going to be soaking up these last few weeks of summer!