Onward to the Golden State-

SO,

I haven't written anything in a long time, pretty much since before we even left Taiwan which was several weeks ago. In the past 4 weeks, this is what's happened:

-flew to Maryland
-massive road trip across the country, first time driving a Uhaul truck, while pulling Aaron's Jeep
-drove through Maryland, Virginia, Tennessee (stopped to see friends, go to church), Kentucky, Indiana (stopped to see Aaron's family), Illinois, Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah (said hello to cousins there), Nevada, and FINALLY! CALIFORNIA!

Aaron flew out from Indiana to start his job and spend some time with the staff before school started, so that left me to drive our junk. Luckily, I was joined by my very caring brother Jacob, and Aaron's brothers-in-law (Josh and Jonathan), whose parents both work at our new school. Wow!

It turns out that I was inhibited to fulfill my grand plans of picking up free furniture on the way out to California for two reasons. One is that my new iPhone didn't have much data on the plan, and two, the stuff that we did find was just not awesome enough for us to haul. However, oh man, did we score with some of the treasures we eventually filled up our new apartment with.

As soon as we arrived at our school with a moving truck, one of the teachers came by to see if we wanted a kingsized mattress and boxspring. Yes please!, we said!

Then another teacher asked if we needed a table and chairs. Absolutely, we said! And then I honed in on my craigslist investigation skills and rounded us up a nice big kingsized bed ($125) and some an antique handmade bedroom furniture set that is in perfect condition ($200). My mom contributed an iron and a toaster oven to the mix as well as some thrift store kitchen stuff, and the old dean left his couch and living room chairs for us, and we now had an almost furnished house!

To stock our kitchen, we decided to bank on our leftover wedding gift cards, which were perfect to have when we came back, and we bought silverware from Target, and some really sturdy yet graceful cookware from Crate and Barrel. I'm still excited about my cookware. I'm going to make some fried rice for all the Asian kids this week.

(btw, i just want to insert here that i was never a big fan of gift cards, but in the midst of planning for a wedding last year, we had no idea what to register for and now that we have time to really think and research the things for our house, we can be a lot wiser about what we do get. just a thought-what do you think? so thank you for those that got us gift cards!)

On the way down to the San Francisco Airport to pick up a student last Friday, we made a detour to Ikea to get some dishes, a knife magnet thingie, and a couple houseplants, which I will probably kill in no time.

We almost feel like grownups!

The last item that was donated to our new life here is a car that used to belong to my grandfather (i call him Bompa) that makes us feel like royalty. It drives like a dream and even has heated seats and one of those projector lights that tells you your speed on the windshield. How did we get so lucky? I have no idea. Someone is taking care of us, and the only thing we can do is say thanks and live lives of love to those around us. It really is like that cheesy movie with Helen Hunt-what was it called? Pass It On? Oh-Pay it Forward-that's it. So we are going to try our best to live up to the generosity that others have done to us, and are just so thankful to be here...