Confession: Guilty Pleasure...

*NSYNC and Backstreet Boys. That's right. There's something about these boy bands that will forever have my heart. Backstreet Boys was the first concert I ever attended and Millennium was the first CD I bought with my own money (my first CD ever was Hanson... but that's another story). My love for *NSYNC came a short while later (and I also attended that concert) but don't worry, the love was just as strong if not even a little stronger.

So why this random blast from the past? Yesterday I was driving when "The Two Of Us" from this wonderful album

came on while I was listening to my iPod on shuffle. This spurred something in me that made me want to listen to the entire album . . . so that's what I did of course. It made me so happy. And the best part... even after years of not listening to this album I remembered every word, mmmmhuh, oooooh yeah, 2 Step!, and so, so much more. And even as I'm writing this

Brooke and I are listening to more NSYNC songs and once again not missing a single word or beat and laughing all the while. We were discussing how funny it is that we can even remember every little word and phrase in the background as if we were back in jr. high again. She pointed out though, that if we wanted to, we probably wouldn't be able to just start singing the song out of nowhere on our own but once the music starts going... there's no stopping it. We jam out and sing every ever word.

The first time I ever experienced this great phenomenon was about our first week in Romania

where we went on a little day trip to see some monasteries traveling in group of 3 taxis driven by some of our facilitator's family friends. Mario (our Romanian facilitator), Candice, Whitney and I got to ride with our driver in this great thing. While about all of our group of 12 had iPods at this time, Whitney still was carrying around her wonderful Walkman. And if you have a Walkman, what do you need? CDs of course! So while all of us took our iPods on this little day excursion Whitney drug around a little bag with her all her CDs and her Walkman. We were all kind of making fun of her at first until she asked our driver on the way home if we could listen to some of her CDs. We popped this gem into the player and started singing at the top of our lungs.

The 2 Romanian's in the car with us thought we were kind of crazy but ended up loving it and if the song was too slow and not up-beat enough, the driver would say in his Romanian accent "next!" (pretty sure the only English word he knew- cause we taught him) and skip to the next song. It was here on this trip that we renewed our love for our boy bands and didn't miss singing a word even after years of not listening to Backstreet Boys. "Backstreet's back ALL RIGHT!" We laughed the entire way home and it set the standard for the rest of our time in Romania, where we listened to even more Backstreet Boys and NSYNC.

For all you other boyband lovers... go watch some YouTube videos of their songs. I guarantee it will make you very happy and brighten your entire day. Go do it, I dare you.