Roadtrip to Texas

I am now officially in the state of Texas.  We still have a few hours to drive tomorrow, but compared to the past few days it's a short drive.

We left around lunch time on Wednesday and made it to almost the Virginia-Tennessee border.  Yesterday we drove to Nashville.  On the way we passed the "now entering central time" sign and gained an hour.  We arrived in Nashville in the early afternoon, checked into our hotel, and headed back into the city to go to the Country Music Hall of Fame and see Opry Country Classics at the Ryman Auditorium.  The Country Music Hall of Fame was awesome.  A lot of what I saw I was familiar with from either my Inart 115 class or because it was more recent.  We also took a tour of Studio B which is where Elvis, Chet Atkins, and a lot of other famous people recorded.  For dinner we went to a BBQ joint on Broadway (where all the honky-tonks are) and had some amazing chicken and brisket. 

Today we were going to drive to Texarkana, TX (on the Arkansas-Texas border), but we realized we would continue driving to have a shorter drive tomorrow so we stopped about an hour past Texarkana in Marshall.  On the way, we stopped at the Arkansas welcome center to see if we would have to detour I-40 due to flooding.  We learned that the highway was now completely open.  The person who helped us then asked me how old I was.  He was a little upset when I told him I am 20.  I thought he was going to tell us a good bar to go to in Texas or something but my mom realized he wanted to give me an Arkansas coloring book.  She said that I love coloring and would enjoy a coloring book so he gave me one.  He thought I was 15.  When we were driving through Little Rock, we had a military airplane take off over us.  I wasn't expecting it, but it was awesome to see!

I have already begun to pick up the southern accent a bit.  My mom called me out on it tonight when I said Texas.  I should have figured because every summer when I used to visit my grandparents in South Carolina for two weeks, I would come home with a slight accent.  I also begin to pick up my sister's accent if I talk to her for too long.

A few phrases that are different down here (I'm going to try to keep track of this throughout the summer)
Southern = What I say
That's a hoot = That's funny
Get that out of the boot = Get that out of the trunk (of the car)
buggy = shopping cart