North Carolina - April 2024

After we returned from our two week trip to Mexico, we spent another week in NC at John and JoAnna's so that we could attend our 25th Fuqua reunion which was held at the end of the week as well as Ruby's bat mitzvah.  Leading up to the weekend festivities, we worked out a lot (both in John's gym as well as doing walks at Umstead and Wa Duke) and did some admin stuff but then also caught up with the following people:

• Keith met up with Anastasia (former colleague at LivCor) for breakfast at Hotel Casio Raleigh.

Breakfast with Anastasia

• We joined Kim, Jonathan, John, JoAnna, Will, Keith, Kate, Ruby and Johnny Mac at Namu Korean for trivia.  We played two rounds, winning first place in the first round and second place in the second round.  The food was pretty good as well.  

• Had lunch with Debbie Chang at Fosters.

Lunch with Debbie

We also drove by our old house and saw that they had painted it all white and fenced in the yard. It appears that it's the same owners that bought the house from us.  We thought they did a nice job!

Our old house

For reunion, we attended the following events:

For those who were in town early, we met up Thursday evening first at Julie's wine bar - Uncorked RTP and then second at Beer Study Durham. There was quite a showing so was good to get an early start and catch up with folks.  We stayed up late and got to bed past midnight!

Gang at Beer Study 

On Friday, we picked up Kim and Tom at the airport and drove to Durham.  They saw Andy at the curb so we gave him a ride as well.  We then picked up Rak at WaDuke and all went to lunch at Foster's - meeting up with Danelle, Emily, and Kara.  After lunch, we did a walk around WaDuke and then we got ready in Rak's room at WaDuke.  Everyone met up at the bar at JB Duke hotel for cocktails and then we all went over to Fuqua Friday for beer and heavy appetizers.  Still wanting more social time, we then all went back to the hotel bar for more drinks and chatting.  JoAnna and Shawna stayed a bit longer than Keith and John and ended up getting home past midnight!

Reunion photos

For Ruby's bat mitzvah, we attended the service on Saturday which lasted three hours.  While we didn't understand most of what was going on, it was so cool to watch the traditions of the service and of course to see Ruby and the rest of the Artin family participate in the ceremony.  Ruby did an amazing job!  After the service, we stayed for lunch (which was bagels and cream cheese and all the fixings) and then went back to John's for a nap.  

That evening, we attended her party which was held in Chapel Hill at an event space (used to be the wine bar when we were in school).  The party was a lot of fun - we danced and had a nice dinner of Mediterranean food!  We ended up staying until the party was over - 10pm.  We had originally intended on going back to Fuqua to join in on the after party but we were too tired so went back to John's and crashed.

Ruby's Bat Mitzvah

These events were a great way to end our East Coast roadtrip as we got to spend time with many of the people we love! Our next stop was to drive to Louisiana (over two days) to spend time with Shawna's mom.