Knoxville was DEAD! When school is out this city is sleeping... big time. I wondered through the hallowed grounds of Rocky top. It was a big and pretty campus. But, mostly I needed to check into the hostel for the night.

Upon checking in, I was sitting in a room with 2 gals, and 3 guys. Two of the three guys were human pincushions. I say this because they were taking part in an in-patient medical study. From what I understand, this consists of them being giving different drugs over an extended period of time (3 weeks) and seeing if there are any adverse reactions. And get this, they stay the entire time in the hospital, not allowed to physically exert themselves too much. Sounds fun right? It did suprise me that the financial compensation for those is between $3,000 and $5,000. The other gentlemen in the house was a North Irelander who was biking around the states, I didn't get much of a chance to talk with him. The 2 gals were British (Lucy and Adele) and I hung out with them for most of the time I was in Knoxville.

These girls were too funny. There were doing a 3 month whirlwind tour of the Americas (North, Central, and South). We wandered around Knoxville for awhile, but again it was pretty dead. We landed at a restaraunt and shared a meal... but what we did what not near as fun/funny as where the conversation went. We covered all sorts of topics. My favorite was listening to them describe their impressions of taking a 16-hour Greyhound bus ride from Washington DC to Nashville (they came to Knoxville after they went to Nashville). They revealed that they had always had the impression that African Americans were very poor; however, from their experience on the greyhound they did not feel this was very accurate. They said the bus was filled with all sorts of people: poorly dressed white folk, hispanic, and some African Americans. And the African Americans had the newest clothes of all the people on the bus. They said that they were wearing "the biggest shirts we've ever seen, they reached their knees." Their shorts were "huge and were pulled down past their bums." They had new sneakers with "socks pulled up very high... I guess they must have very cold ankles" they concluded. I roared when they told me this. That was just a sample of some of the things we talked about, but needless to say I laughed my way all the way out of Nashville. These girls were the best.

My time in Knoxville was shortlived but I wished my British friends Farewell and was off to Nashville.