For our explore Columbus outing, Taryn and I went to Cazuela’s Grill on High street!

Not going to lie, this was not a well-organized and coordinated plan we put together since of course we didn’t know what we wanted actually eat, gotta love girls’ indecisiveness on picking food options lol! I picked Taryn up with my car and we drive about 5 minutes to get to the place. Now with Columbus, you have to pay EVERWHERE for parking so, of course, I paid my little $1.75 to park on the side of the street. Meanwhile, I am not trying to scare Taryn with my parallel parking skills since it’s been a while since I drove lol. We walk up to Cazuela’s and since it was a weekday, in the middle of the day, no one was there so the wait time to be seated didn’t take very long at all. We first ordered our drinks and I start to ask her about her day, how she is feeling about finals week, ad overall checking in about the semester since we were both busy! The waiter then came back to take our order and after she left we started back with our conversation. I asked Taryn about some ACES events that she has attended and she was explained how she went to the pumpkin painting social event, which I also heard was fun! Then. asked her about her friends and how everything in Smith Steeb is going and she gave me the rundown. What’s so crazy is that she’s living in my old room and her friends live right across from her like how I and my current ACES roommates are now! We also talked about the black community on campus since for us, having that space and presence of the black community are really important, especially being at a PWI. We talked about different student organizations and events we attended together and of course talking about planning on going together to more events happening this spring! The food came out in what seemed like 10 minutes it was so fast! I got fish tacos while Taryn ordered something similar with chips and salsa, must I say was very delicious and filling after just one bite! While eating, we talk more about where do we go to study on campus, and for her, she likes to study at the library, for me, I like Hale Hall and of course in my toasty room with no distractions.

We continue on talking about Columbus in general about how people either drive too fast, too slow or at all even, then compared Columbus with our hometowns. For both of us, we are used to people driving fast but with accuracy, if that makes sense, here in Columbus it’s more of a fast, showoff, and potentially cut someone off by accident and then cause one since there are always alarms to be heard on High street. Then we talked about the weather differences and how I am an Ohioan and still not used to this bipolar weather, and I can only imagine how Taryn felt first moving here for school and experiencing this cold weather!

I paid the bill and we left the restaurant and I drove her back to her dorm and we said goodbye!

I think both of us overall learned a lot about Columbus and what it has to offer during the whole process of figuring everything out! Looking at the explore Columbus site, we saw a lot of options to choose from with museums, different cultured food, retail stores, and sites to see. Since it was cold and starving, however, of course, we choose food. We also realized that Columbus has a lot of Mexican-inspired food places like Barrio, Canzuela’s, Condado, Los Primos Tacos. Columbus recently opened a new seafood place that originated in my hometown (Cleveland), called “The Sauce” which brings a southern/soul-touching flavor to the city if you ask me! We both love to go shopping and so we’re thinking about visiting Out of The Closet thrift/ HIV & Aids testing center to possibly get new fits for this upcoming semester and possibly grab some new reading material from the book loft in German Village!  We would have liked to have chosen these other places to have gone but of course, with COVID safety and the lateness of the day, it was just better to be close to campus and grab a bite to eat and then run back to start packing from winter break!

Overall it was a really fun experience to hang out with my Mentee and I can’t wait to do it again soon!