Breesin' with GiGi

In less than 12 hours, classes will be starting at Appalachian State University, along with many other adventures to come.

Not only are we nervous about classes starting, we are excited to see how we can get involved in the community. We are excited to find out what wonders of nature Boone has to offer. We are excited to try lots of delicious foods (don’t worry, we’ll be working out too!). We are excited to possibly travel abroad. We are excited to get to make new friends & to get to know each other better than we ever have before.

Anyway, who are we?

I am Kathryn Brees. Every time I write my own blog post, I will be introducing myself as Breesin’. I moved to Chapel Hill, NC in 2010 & ever since I have moved there with my family, we have never been prouder to call a place home. Thanks to my dad getting the cool assignments around the globe from the Navy and thanks to my family’s wanderlust, I have been to some of the coolest places the world has to offer. I still have a lot of places to check off my list (such as Peru and Iceland!) and hopefully I’ll find a way to study abroad during my time as an undergraduate at Appalachian State University. I chose to come to Appalachian State University because of the fabulous viola professor and because the school of music offered me a full ride. Not wanting to be bogged down by student debt, I gladly took the scholarship. I am planning on majoring in viola performance with an International Business minor. I have only been on campus for three days & I have fallen in love with App State in ways that I never thought I would. My goal after Appalachian State University is to take at least two years to volunteer in the Peace Corps, enter a master’s business programme, and then live in Spain (again) with my friend, Sarah. When I’m not on campus, I stay at home with my mum, dad, sister, and Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever, Reese.

I am Gabriel Chew. But you can call me Gabe. When I write my own blog post, I will be under the name GiGi. I am from Chapel Hill, North Carolina. I moved there from Atlanta, Georgia when I was six. I chose Appalachian because I wanted something different. I love the beach and have not spent too much time in the mountains. I needed to step back from life and think about what I really wanted and who I want to be and I believe Appalachian will help me with that. At App I am majoring in Healthcare Management and hopefully double majoring with Hospitality and Tourism. It is a weird pair but I promise I have an explanation. In 2014 me and my mom along with a few others traveled to Molas, Haiti to help with a medical clinic there. Molas is a small mountain village and I fell in love with the outgoing people. I want to be able to go back one day and make a difference. That is why I picked Healthcare Management. The Hospitality and Tourism part comes from my dream to be a wedding planner. They are two totally separate dreams but I hope one day to make them connect into something wonderful. At App, I hope to do some studying abroad. My family has been to Mexico, China and Malaysia. My dad is Malay Chinese so that explains the travels to Asia but I have always wanted to go to Europe. Hopefully that will happen soon. After Appalachian, I hope to find a job overseas and do some traveling with my boyfriend. I want to go back to Haiti and stay there for a while. Then, I plan to settle down and build a family and be an event planner. We will see how everything goes. When I am not here, I am with my mom, dad and brother reading books and watching Grey’s Anatomy and Stranger Things.

Sometimes, we'll write dual blog posts & when we do that, the title of the blog post will be Breesin’ with GiGi. We intend to write these blog posts on the many odysseys we will experience together.

Technically, if it weren’t for GiGi, we wouldn’t have come up with the idea to start a joint blog. We hope that this epiphany that started at The Carrboro Eye will blossom into something beautiful. Until next time.