The Hill Youth’s blog site has moved! Check out thehillyouth.wordpress.com for the new home of The Hill Youth. There you’ll find weekly updates from our Wednesday night discussions, our complete video archive, as well as info on all the latest happenings with The Hill Youth. All of the old blogs and posts from this site have been moved there as well, but old links might still direct you here so we’ll keep this site open for archival purposes.

Head over there right now for 3 brand new blogs covering our summer discussions on sunburns, souvenirs, and summer blockbusters. Share the blogs with your friends. Comment. Ask questions. And bookmark the new site. And be sure to follow The Hill Youth on Facebook for the most up-to-date info! See you at the new site!

summer2011

Summer is here, and we want to make it The Biggest Summer In The History Of Summer at The Hill Youth! Click the link above to check out a full calendar of all of our THY events and start making your plans to join us at each and every one.

You can get full details on each event as they get closer by checking out our Facebook page. Just search for The Hill Youth and like the page if you haven’t already to get the most up to date information on THY. We’ll post the time and cost for each event there as they approach, plus we’re sure to have some spontaneous adventures and service projects that arise as the summer sun shines, so you’ll want to stay in touch with all of that. Head there now!

We want you to dream big and dream on and on about this summer. The summer holds so much potential, especially this one. Make the most of your free time. If you have any ideas for events or service projects, contact Alex so we can turn your dreams into reality. DREAM ON!

There are few things people are more fiercely loyal over than their favorite brand of soda, especially here in the south, which is pretty much Coca-Cola country. If you dare serve only Pepsi in your house or restaurant, I know many a friend who won’t even bother setting foot in your establishment.

It’s funny how people get so attached to a brand, even going so far as to tattoo themselves with their favorite drink. This past Wednesday at The Hill, every student claimed to have a preference between Coke and Pepsi and that they could tell the difference between the two. Yet when our students tried a blind taste test, only half correctly guessed which soda was which.

Pushing the experiment even further, we then conducted a triangle taste test on the half of the students who were successful in the first test. In this experiment, each person was given three cups – one with Coke, the other two with Pepsi. The goal was to correctly guess which soda was different than the other two. Out of this experiment, only one student was able to correctly distinguish the drinks.

What do these experiments tell us about our brand loyalty? We say we prefer Coke or Pepsi, but really we can’t even tell the difference between them. (Don’t believe me? Try the experiment yourself. Have a friend give you a blind taste test. If you get that one right, try the triangle taste test. I think you’ll be surprised by the results.)

So if it’s not the taste that connects us so strongly to Coke or Pepsi, what is it? I think it has to be the branding.

Have you ever heard the expression “Win or Go Home”? It’s a common one used this time of the year with such events as the March Madness Basketball tournament and the culmination of each season of the Real World/Road Rules Challenge, among other things. The expression is usually used when speaking of elimination games or tournaments, where if you don’t win your next event then you might as well just go home, since there’s nothing left for you. In the expression “Win or Go Home”, going home is equivalent to losing. Only losers go home; winners keep on playing, winners do not retreat.

I sure felt like a loser when I had to move back home a few years ago. I first moved out of my parents’ house in 2007. For one year I lived with a good friend of mine in my first apartment. It was the first time for both of us to be out on our own, and we had a great time getting our first experience of adult life. Sure there were struggles, times when we ended up eating peanut butter for dinner because we’d spent too much of our money on dvds and video games, times when I wished my mom would come clean up after us, etc. But after getting that taste of living out on my own, I never wanted to go back to being under my parents’ roof. One year later, though, the dream was over.

Most of you reading this know that I’m heading to Wrestlemania XXVII in just a matter of days. For the first time ever Wrestlemania is being held in my home state of Georgia, and I’ve had my tickets ordered for months now. Growing up as a huge wrestling fan, Wrestlemania XXVII is the culmination of 20 years of waiting for me. It’s the climax of a huge portion of my life story.

For 20 years I’ve dreamed of the day that Wrestlemania would take place in Georgia, hoping that one day it might really happen. Now that it is I’m overwhelmed with excitement. I’ve been watching all the 26 other Wrestlemanias day by day in anticipation. But even as my excitement level increases by the hour, I can’t help but feel a tinge of sadness as well. For 20 years I’ve dreamed of going to Wrestlemania in Atlanta, but I kind of always hoped that by the time it happened I would be on the card and not just in the audience.

When I was in elementary school we did a project called a dream jar. I think my mom still has mine packed away somewhere. Inside the glass jar we were told to create a diorama of sorts of what we dreamed of being when we grew up. Mine looked a lot like this:

I think it was this exact picture of Ric Flair and Randy Savage that made it into my dream jar (of course the picture I placed on Ric Flair’s body didn’t have a beard back then). The goal I had in the third grade was to make it to the main event of Wrestlemania.

That’s where I thought my story might go. Obviously that’s not going to happen any time soon, and it’s no real surprise to me to realize that. But having wrestling on my mind more than ever these past few weeks, my failure to realize my dream has been constantly on my mind. At times I’ve felt myself questioning God, wondering why it is that my story hasn’t gone the way I expected it to, asking him if he really knows what he’s doing, if I’m stuck in the wrong story.