The View...

This is the view from our apartment. The buildings that you see below the PALM TREES are a couple of the other apartments. The on campus housing is made up of 10 apartments (2 per building) all facing an inner courtyard. We have met alot of the other people living here already and I am excited for this place to become home.

We left for California early Saturday morning. We pulled out in the rain...we drove in the rain...we had some sunny patches...and then more and more rain. The first day, we drove 17 hours (including a 2 hour break at the border while we waited for our paperwork). As we neared the end of our day, we started debating whether we would camp or get a hotel. We had planned on camping so that we would have no chance of our car being broken into and, seeing as all of our possessions for the next two years were in there, we didn't really like the idea of that. But as we pulled into the town where we had originally planned to stop for the night, it was already dark and we were tired. So we kept going. (???) We played with the idea of driving through the night but thought that wouldn't be the brightest idea, especially since we really wanted to try a new route to bypass the desert. We stopped at a hotel, thinking that may be a good option, but we weren't ready to pay $120 a night for such a short amount of sleep. We couldn't decide what to do so at one point Nathan asked, "WWAD?" What Would Andrew Do? My brother, Andrew, just spent a few weeks picking cherries in BC and living out of the back of his truck. So, eventually, we pulled into a rest stop somewhere in Idaho and decided to slept in the car. At first I couldn't get comfortable and at one point during the night, I woke up from my shallow sleep and it was still completely dark. Truth be told, I shed some tears knowing that sunrise was still hours away and I hadn't slept well yet. I was SO tired! I prayed that God would speed the sunrise for me so that this uncomfortable night in the car could be over. And then I slept like a baby. We spent 7 hours sleeping in the car (with seats that couldn't recline because of all the stuff in the back seat). When we woke up it was only 7 degrees, but I had the warm blanket so I was fine. : )

The next day we drove another 12 hours and ended up in Sacramento CA. We camped there and spent the evening getting the road off of us, reading our books, and watching part of a movie on our laptop.

We arrived here on Monday and, after about 3 or 4 trips from the car to the apartment, we had everything inside. We right away ran to Wal-mart and a grocery store and loaded up on some essentials. Then, we set to work unpacking and moving in. It only took about 6 hours from arrival to putting our feet up. Not bad, if I do say so myself.

Today I am busy baking buns and bread and trying to get them done before our new student orientation that either started 20 minutes ago, starts in 10 minutes, or starts in 40 minutes. We're not sure exactly what time but Nathan just went to check. I'm hoping I still have 40 minutes, because I just put my bread in the oven and it'll take a while.

Classes will start on Monday so today is registration (at the orientation). Nathan has his courses picked. He only has class 3 days a week (Tuesday-Thursday) so the potential is there for some nice weekend day trips to San Francisco/Santa Cruz/Los Angeles/Redwood Forests/etc. There's lots to see and do around here so hopefully we have the time/resources to be able to take some of it in while we're here.

Well, I can't think of anything else. There's so much new that I couldn't possibly articulate exactly all that is happening, but I assure you we are enjoying the journey and doing well. Perhaps there will be more pictures to come...

P.S- Speaking of pictures, does anyone have any advice on uploading pictures from a mac to either flickr or blogger? I usually upload through flickr and post on this blog directly from there, but I haven't figured out a way to include more than one picture per post...help?