I couldn’t help sharing this awesome wrapping paper. :O Florence is awesome. Yes, the orange squares are post-it notes. The white part talks about how love is the greatest happiness. heh heh heh.
Shortly before I left, I met up with a friend in Emeryville and we took a longgggass walk on the waterfront. (We’d never been there before, and we [or I. I talk a lot.] had a lot to say. :O ) This is probably the last sunset on a beach that I’ll be seeing for at least a year, because I am now landlocked, my friends! :'( Good thing it was pretty!
I was originally supposed to get to WV on Thursday, but our connecting flight ditched us in Houston, so we ended up staying the night in Texas. My mom apparently has friends all over the planet though, so he sent his daughter to pick us up while he stayed at home and cooked up an awesome dinner. (My dad was especially joyous about this because he got to play ping pong. :o ) Anyway, we ended up getting to my actual apartment on Friday, and we even managed to do it without the airline losing our luggage again. ;)
(This sign was in the LWB airport. It is tiny and I really wish I could fly into that airport instead of Charleston or Roanoke, but >$1000 and 17 hours is completely not worth it. :[ )
I’m kinda in love with my apartment, so much so that I don’t want to move out, even though I seriously just moved in. >_> It costs less than the room I had back in 6F (wish they were here with me… ;_; ). I have two bedrooms, a gigantic kitchen, a living room, a bathroom, along with my own deck and balcony. (It also came furnished. :) The bed was already fitted with sheets, and the guy who used to live there left me with 15 textbooks and a shelf full of notes. I also have a billion extra blankets, so I shouldn’t have to worry about being cold in the winter (hopefully). :o My landlord even bought me a desk for the second bedroom, which I’m planning to use as my study. (I’m thinking of getting a pole for the living room since there’s the most space there…) I have 2 fellow students & my landlord’s grandson as my neighbors. :]
Here’s my living room! :]
My backyard (shared with 3 others, but still. holy crud.).
My balcony! :] I didn’t put in pictures of my rooms/bathroom/kitchen because I can’t take very good pictures of em’. :/ Weird angling.
Speaking of neighbors, I met one of them in person today. (I say this because he emailed me about a month ago because he found out I was gonna be one of his neighbors and wanted to welcome me in advance to WV, so we were emailing back and forth.) He got me a housewarming present from his hometown! ;_; [I feel really bad because I basically don’t have any idea what to get him. :[[ ] We joked about Morse-coding through my floor/his ceiling if we need anything. :O
We managed to finish cleaning and unpacking by the first night (although “morning” would be a better way to put it… we got there at 9 p.m. and finished at 4 a.m.). On Saturday, we drove to Virginia to pick up my car, which I’ve decided is a girl and have thus named her Cordelia (thanks, Joanne! :D ), since she’s an Accord. Since there was fortunately a Costco in the same town, we stocked up on a whole bunch of food. It’s my hope that I won’t need to buy food other than fresh fruit/veggies for the next year.
I had to drive Cordelia at <50 mph from Virginia back to WV because my dad didn’t have a GPS and the rental car he was driving couldn’t go past 45 mph uphill. :'( Twas an ultimate test of patience, but Speedracer taught me a lot on that. Convincing my mom to stop telling me to start braking from 50 feet away was a different story though. ;_;
Meet Cordelia! <3 <3 <3
I took my parents on a mini tour through the campus today. (It wasn’t much of one though since we didn’t go into any of the buildings and I was speaking through memories from back in October, but still, it’s the thought that counts.) I think they’re a whole lot more at ease because everyone’s been so friendly and welcoming. :D We ate at one of the two Chinese restaurants in town today and the owners came out to talk to us. One of em’ told me that if I ever wanted a Chinese dish of some kind, I could just let her know and she’d cook it up for me. (It’s usually a buffet. :O ) She also said that if I get lonely living by myself out here on my eternal camping trip (it’s what it feels like :P ), I should feel free to move into one of her places.
And the same goes for the students! Needless to say, I believe that one of the traits they screened for in their students = how nice they were. o_o I’m slightly scared of what’s going to happen to me when I step back into the real world, but let’s take this one step at a time, shall we? Bring on that culture shock!
