Days 513-519! It’s time for a fun week!! This week was filled with time with my cousins, a long bus ride, and the start to my Kansas City adventures! I got to hang out with old friends and eat at some of my favorite restaurants from when I lived in Kansas City. Honestly, it was a fantastic week!

Thursday, May 29th was my last day staying with my cousin Sam! Tonight I would be switching over to staying with my cousin Ben for the rest of my time in Minneapolis.

Sam took the day off of work and we spent the morning hanging out and watching more of the TV show, Delicious in Dungeon, that we started in last week’s blog post. But just before lunch, we dove into some more art making!

I asked Sam if he would be willing to design the cover art for my music coming out soon. He was more than happy to and was excited to help! So today, he wrapped up making the cover art.

The art style Sam wanted to use was linocut. He designed a sketch of what he wanted, imprinted it onto the linoleum material seen on the table, and then carved out the image that he wanted. This turned the image into a stamp and after putting the paint on it, he was able to transfer it to a piece of paper.

We then took the image and pulled up photoshop to mess with it more and get it into the dimensions of cover art (which is a square). And… here’s what we came up with!

These images are for two of the songs on the EP that will be coming out as singles VERY soon! Sam absolutely killed it, he’s such a talented artist!!

There will be one more cover art for the entire EP, but I’ll show you that once it’s done!

It was a gorgeous day, so we decided to head outside and walked about a mile to a park. We brought along a paddle board set and hit the ball back and forth for while, chit chatting, and soaking up the sun.

We relaxed the rest of the afternoon, until Sam had some plans to go to. That’s when I packed up my bags and walked to Ben’s apartment which happened to be right down the street!

It’s really nice how close I am with my cousins and that I got to spend so much time with them so far! I really appreciate them letting me crash at their place while I’m in town and enjoying their company a lot!!

Ben, Maddie, and I had dinner and hung out the rest of the evening and we went to bed on the earlier side since they both had work in the morning.

Friday, May 30th started with relaxing and reading the book I started a couple days ago (spoiler alert, I didn’t finish it). I read for most of the day and worked on getting one of my songs ready to publish on streaming services! The distribution website suggested giving at least a week from uploading to song coming out. So my first song will be released on Friday, June 6th!!

Once Ben got off work, we went to a park near his house to “pepper” a volleyball around. Peppering is hitting the ball back and forth practicing bumps, sets, and spikes. Volleyball is a sport we both enjoy and unfortunately every effort to play it during the week had failed due to weather.

Sam and Anna came over to Ben and Maddie’s apartment, after the park, for dinner! We planned to have a little barbecue today and we had lots of food to go around!

After a fun and tasty meal, we all hung out in their apartment for a bit until Ben and I had to head out for a show! We had tickets to a small electronic show with a couple of Ben’s friends, Seth and Spencer.

We spent a few hours hanging out at Spencer’s apartment, chatting and listening to Ben and Spencer DJ music.

Around 11pm, we headed to the venue and enjoyed a very late night of dancing.

The artist, Tisoki, was playing a 360 set which meant you could stand all around him. It was my first set in this style and it was pretty cool to see!

It was a late start to the day on Saturday, May 31st. But once we got the day going, it was a really nice one!

Ben, Sam, and I decided to spend the day mostly outside and we wandered around a park that was a nice walk away from Ben’s apartment. It was a gorgeous, hot day and the cotton trees were dropping all of its seeds which made it look like the park was snowing.

It’s so wild being in Minneapolis when it’s warm. I’ve only ever experienced it when it was freezing cold! A much more pleasant experience!

We meandered our way through the park, sat by the river, and then meandered our way back to Ben’s apartment. I played some guitar for them and even started writing a new song! Sam had to leave for a dinner, so Ben and I finished off our day with mixing music!

Ben taught me the basics and we had a blast over the next 2 hours. I picked it up kind of quickly and maybe at Bonnaroo in a couple weeks I’ll be able to try it out some more with my DJ friends there!

We finished off the night with a walk to a brewery to meet up with a few of Ben’s friends. We enjoyed a couple beers, played, cards, and chatted till the bar closed.

It was time for some much needed sleep and I was excited for a relaxing Sunday.

Somehow it was already Sunday, June 1st… I’m not really sure what happened to the month of May!

Sunday started with sleeping in and then relaxing in Ben’s apartment until around 2pm when we set out for one of his friend’s lake house!

We drove for about an hour and met up with a nice, big group of his friends at a gorgeous lake! The group was very friendly and welcoming and were very interested on hearing about my travels. I got to learn all about them as well, which was nice too!

We played catch with a frisbee in the lake and when Sam and Anna showed up, they brought fishing poles! Ben and I joined in on the fishing fun and it was sooooo much better than the fishing day Sam and I had a few days prior.

The fish were abundant and much bigger than the ones we were catching the other day. Sam even caught two large northern pikes, one of which wanted a nibble of his finger. But we caught smaller bass and decent sized pan fish too! It was a bunch of fun!

We also played a card game called chameleon with the rest of the group there and sat around and chatted for a number of hours.

It was a really nice way to spend a relaxing Sunday!

To finish up the night, we had dinner back at Ben’s house and watched the first episode of season 3 of White Lotus. I actually haven’t seen any of the show, but this season was based in Thailand! So that was very cool to see. But the show grabbed my attention enough that I will most likely watch the other two seasons sometime in the near future.

I woke up Monday, June 2nd and packed up my bags. It was time to say see you later to Ben and Maddie. Around noon, Ben dropped me off at the Minneapolis bus station and I found my way to my greyhound bus.

My next stop was Kansas City! But… I had a long bus ride ahead of me before I got there. I spent the 9 hour and 45 minute bus ride people watching (lots of characters on the US greyhounds), listening to an audio book, watching some TV, and zoning out staring at the fields and fields of farmland.

When we hit Des Moines, Iowa the bus filled up and I had the unfortunate pleasure of sitting next to someone with very little spacial awareness. We stopped at an Amish town as well, and strangely enough, there were Tesla charging stations outside of the Amish convenience store… seemed a little out of place!

But outside of that, I was in Kansas City before I knew it, being picked up by my friend Ryan!

Ryan had work on Tuesday, June 3rd, so I hung around his house for most of the day.

After getting up, I walked in the pouring rain to the grocery store across the road and grabbed food for breakfasts and lunches. The storm ended up turning into a thunderstorm, which turned into flash flooding and an active tornado near the city! It’s been a long time since I’ve heard tornado sirens. I saw a picture later in the day and it appeared that the tornado touched down just outside the city on the east side and continued in that direction… wild!

Ryan didn’t have wifi. So I spent the day playing guitar and waiting for my plans later in the day.

My friend Zach came over post work and we started catching up. Zach and I met freshman year of college in the trumpet section of the KU marching band! We’ve stayed friends ever since!

Ryan came home from work and then we all set out for dinner at one of my favorite KC staples, The Peanut.

The peanut is home to some incredible (and big) chicken wings and I’ve been craving it ever since I knew I was making a stop in KC. It was a really fun dinner chatting about travels, work, and reminiscing on the past!

When we got back to Ryan’s house, I showed them my EP and they both enjoyed it, which was really nice to see! Afterwards, Ryan drove me to my friend Maddie and Ally’s house, where I picked up Maddie’s car, which she’s letting me borrow for a few days! Super nice and helpful of her!!

Before bed Ryan and I chatted a lot about life, AI, and the trajectory of the world. You know, just some light stuff before bed!

I woke up on the early side on Wednesday, June 4th. I chatted with Ryan as he got ready for work and then passed back out for an hour. I then packed up my things, hopped in the car, and headed to Maddie and Ally’s house where I’d be staying the next couple nights!

(They had wifi so it made sense to hang there until my plans for the day).

Just before 1pm, I hopped in the car again and headed to Lees Summit to hang out with my childhood friend Josh and his wife Lily!

Josh, Lily, and I got lunch together at a Greek restaurant in town and then headed back to their house to hang out some more. Josh and I dove into playing his favorite game, Magic the Gathering (MTG).

I actually had a lot more fun playing this than I have in the past! After finishing up the first game, we went on a walk around his neighborhood. The air quality today was terrible and the whole city and suburbs were shrouded in the smog from the Canada fires.

After our walk, we played another match of MTG and then it was time for me to head out! It was so lovely seeing them and getting to hang out and we made plans to hang out again soon!

I drove back to the city for dinner. Tonight I met up with some more dear friends of mine! All friends from KU, BJ and Chase I met freshman year and Zach and Connor who I met later in my engineering program!

We met up at Parlor, which was a place I enjoyed going when I lived in Kansas City. It’s essentially a fancy food court. We had a few drinks, ate dinner, and chatted about current life and college life as well! It was super fun to reminisce on the past and catch up with everyone.

We moved onto another nearby bar called International Tap House (ITap), another bar I used to go to that has a TON of beers on tap! It’s a cool spot. We hung out chatting for a couple more hours and then called it a night!

I hope I get to see them again soon, but who knows when our paths will cross again!

It’s been a blast so far hanging out with my family and my friends!! Definitely worth the long trip back to the US from Australia. And it’s nowhere near over yet! In a few days I’ll be heading to the ozarks for a lake weekend and then I’ll be picked up for a music festival!! Plenty of fun to come!

See you next week!

– Elie