Our weekend in Memphis!

We went to Tennessee over the weekend for Steve's first Optometry School interview. We have been really excited for the past couple of weeks because this is one of Steve's top picks of where he would like to go to school. The school is called the Southern College of Optometry and is in Memphis. Neither one of us had ever been to Tennessee before, but everyone that we talked to ensured us that we would love it. I'm not going to lie, our first impression of Memphis was not so great. The city of Memphis definitely has some ghetto areas, and has more black people than white people, and lots of homeless people. I don't mean that to sound racist or anything, I just have never lived outside of Utah before! I have only lived in Richfield and Cedar City. Both places are extremely small and full of white people! Needless to say, I have had a very sheltered life and although I have traveled a lot, I have never visited a huge city in the south and actually considered moving there! But other than the reality shock of what big cities outside of Utah are really like, I really did like Tennessee:) Most importantly, the optometry school that Steve interviewed at was awesome and he loved it. I got to go on the tour of the school with him and I loved the school too. So now we just have to wait for about a week and a half, and we should know whether he got accepted or not. He also has 4 other interviews lined up for other Optometry schools and we really have no idea at this point where we are going to end up going. We are both just praying that he at least gets accepted to 1 school so that we don't have to go through the application process again! ha

Waiting to board our plane for Denver at the airport in Salt Lake City.

We sat on the very last row of seats in the plane and Steve was not impressed because our seats didn't recline, and his knees were rubbing against the seat in front of him! I think this is the ONLY good thing about being short. I never have to worry about not having enough leg room! haha

We flew from Denver to Nashville and there were birds inside the airport in Denver!

Tennessee is covered in trees! You literally can't see anything from the freeway except for trees.

We went down to Beale Street in Memphis to hear some live music on Friday night. Beale Street is where blues and soul music originated, and Elvis Presley recorded his first song on Beale Street! It was a pretty awesome place for people watching and it kind of reminded me of the Las Vegas strip because of all of the neon lights.

The bridge that takes you across the Mississippi River into Arkansas.

So apparently Steve and I didn't pay attention in history class because we didn't know that Martin Luther King Jr. was killed in Memphis, but luckily we were informed of this by a nice black guy and decided we better have a little history refresher while in Tennessee.

Steve in front of the motel where Martin Luther King Jr. was shot.

He was standing on that balcony in front of room 306 when he was shot.

They turned the old motel into the National Civil Rights Museum so that they could preserve the motel.

That building behind me is the building where James Earl Ray was when he shot Martin Luther King Jr. He cracked open the window a tiny little bit and shot across the street with a rifle to kill Dr. King.

The school where Steve had his interview.

Steve was SO excited to eat southern bbq! Now I understand why he gained 20 pounds on his mission in Texas.

Look at all of that food! Those ribs were the most delicious things I have ever eaten! I would take ribs over ice cream if they were southern bbq'ed ribs! haha

We went and saw the Memphis Temple. It was beautiful but very small. There was a LDS church next door to it that was bigger than the temple!

We went to see the famous Peabody Ducks at the Peabody Hotel in downtown Memphis on Saturday night. I had no idea that there were famous ducks in Memphis either, but apparently these ducks have been on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and even the Johnny Carson show back in the day. The ducks swim around all day in the fountain in the lobby at the hotel, and then at 5:00 PM they roll out the red carpet for them and they walk down the red carpet to the elevator to go back to their penthouse suite. Yes they really live in the hotel in a penthouse suite! Crazy huh?!

One of the ducks! There were so many people there to watch the ducks, we couldn't get very good pictures.

Steve and me in front of the ducks fountain.

Crossing the bridge to go to Arkansas:)

We did A LOT of traveling in only a few days, but we had a blast and those delicious ribs made it all worth it!:)