Deja Vu All Over Again

The past few days have consisted of a lot of cleaning and packing as I try and get ready to move.  As I go through my stuff there's been a lot of reminiscing involved as well and I got to thinking about the last time I packed up to move off to college.  It was August 2006; some things have changed drastically and some things have stayed the exact same.  We have a new president but we're still fighting multiple wars in the Middle East.  The Housing market was just starting to plummet and we're still trying to climb out of that hole.  I deleted my Myspace account and switched to Facebook which was two years old and earned $52 million in revenue at the time.  It is believed to have earned $1.1 billion by the end of 2010.  So I thought it would be fun to look back at what was going on in the world and my life then and see how it compares to now.

One of my favorite ways to call up past memories is through popular music.  When I hear Beyonce's 'Crazy in Love' I'm instantly 16 and enjoying a carefree summer.  So I decided to see which songs were on the Billboard Top 100 in 2006.  Some of them I still hear being played on the radio frequently such as 'Gold Digger', 'What Hurts the Most', and 'How to Save a Life'.  Others don't get played much anymore but are still fun...Grillz by Nelly (so glad he's making a come back!), Hips Don't Lie by Shakira, and one of my all time favorites Chain Hang Low by Jibbs.  One of my favorite viral videos from that year was these kids dancing to it.  

I started looking back at some of the big news stories from 2006.  Some of the stories seemed like they happened yesterday and others seem like ancient history.  Can you believe its been over 4 years since the Crocodile Hunter died?!  Or that we were all freaking out over Mad Cow Disease?  Some horrible things happened that year: Hezbollah activities in Lebanon, genocide in Darfour, and Pluto was stripped of its planetary title.  Ok, so the Pluto thing isn't that big of a deal but when you've been taught your entire life that My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas it's hard to accept that those pizzas never existed.  Or that they were not significant enough to be part of the equation anymore.  My Very Educated Mother didn't Serve Us Nine nothing.  That doesn't make sense and definitely isn't very educated.  Next thing you know we we'll be Excusing Dear Aunt Sally with no Please or manners at all.  Pluto, you'll always be a planet to me.  

As far as personal experiences go 2006 was a big year for me.  Between graduating high school and going to college I was blessed with the opportunity to go on a mission trip to Zimbabwe.  Those 3 weeks probably did more for my education than the previous 12 years of school.  It was my first time outside of the United States and the first time to be completely immersed in any culture other than my own.  I owe a big thanks to my parents, friends Cindy and Steve, and Bob for making that trip possible.  It completely changed the way I saw myself and the rest of the world.  

So what were you doing in 2006?  Were you reading 'Dear John', jamming out to 'Chain Hang Low', wishing you could speak Shona and sneak a pet Elephant on a plane?  While I'm 4 years older and slightly wiser I guess things haven't really changed all that much.  I still read Nicholas Sparks novels, listen to cheesy hip hop and if this whole social work thing doesn't work out my back up life plan is to return to Zimbabwe and learn to be an elephant trainer :-)