Moving Boxes

We have left Tennessee.

I wanted to write a reflective post about the time we spent there, but I haven't managed to find the distance that would allow me to do that fairly yet. Suffice to say that the 1400 days in which we resided in Tennessee were an experience, and that we gained some wonderful friends in the process.

A quick update:

I. graduated from nursing school in December. They hooded him and he shook hands with lots of people. Then he was allowed to sign up for the national nursing exam, which he (of course) passed with ease.

In late December, I. was offered employment at a very good hospital in Northern Virginia. He accepted and started work in mid-February.

I finished my contract in Tennessee in May, and then we (and my mom and some friends) fit most of the contents of our house into a moving van and took everything to our new home.

We now live in Northern Virginia, reasonably close to Washington, DC (hello, Library of Congress and Folger Shakespeare Library!) and very close to Dulles Airport (its much cheaper in the suburbs). After four months apart, I. and I are thrilled to be able to see one another every day, and we are also enjoying the return to city life.

So far, we've taken nearly a dozen walks together, attended two street festivals, eaten at least five kinds of international food, and shopped at three separate international grocery stores. Most of all, I am enjoying the time off; though I will be job-hunting in the very near future, one of the biggest blessings of this move has been the time I now have to cook, clean, and slowly catch up on the emails I've been ignoring during four years of crazy work. (If you live in Oklahoma and are reading this, you are at the top of my list).

Stay posted! I may also, finally, have time to blog again!

It's been a while, Internet.

I miss blogging. For the past two years, it feels as if my head has been locked inside a cloud of busyness, and I've not had time to collect my thoughts or to stay in contact with friends and family members whom I love. Human interactions have been fleeting, but the ones we have managed to squeeze into our overstuffed lives have been worthwhile.

More than a year after our last post, I. and I have seemingly done very little, but my catalogue (and the sparse photographs I've eked out) are fuller than I remembered. Here's a brief recap:

Probably the most exciting event in our lives is I.'s schooling. He has successfully completed his fourth semester of nursing school (a week ago), and has two classes and two practicums to complete before his anticipated graduation in December. For the first time in what seems like years, we are starting to think about the future rather than the present. I. is hoping to complete a one-year nursing residency program somewhere after he graduates. At the moment, we're looking at hospitals both in our current town, hundreds of miles away, and even thousands of miles away. Nursing is in demand at the moment, but our eventual destination will probably depend on the location that hires him.

 I'm still teaching at the same school, but have negotiated more administrative duties in exchange for fewer preps this year. We've just completed construction on one new wing, will be finishing a second wing as soon as the humidity in the floor drops below a certain percentage, and are apparently about halfway through the construction of our gymnasium, cafeteria, theatre, and library.

I've temporarily paused one of my jobs (early-morning tutoring) because I am dabbling in other teaching arenas at the moment. I've spent the summer teaching Latin online (which has been great fun) and (on Tuesday) will begin work as a composition teacher for one of the local community colleges. I'm scheduled to teach an evening class at the campus that is geographically closest to us (though it's still about an hour commute home afterwards). Being offered this position was one of the greatest moments of my summer, and I still am struggling to believe that I'll be back in a college classroom in only a few more days! I'm also scheduled to co-teach an online Shakespeare class with a colleague from graduate school in the spring. I think my colleague and I are both looking forward to it immensely.

 I've almost entirely avoided cameras for the past year, but here are a few moments I did manage to capture digitally:

I. on a short walk around the lake in Cookeville, TN (July 2015)

Life-size chess pieces (Atlanta, Georgia; late 2015).

First view of Olympic Park (still Atlanta).

Turner Field (still Atlanta) from the top of a super-ritzy hotel.

SNOW DAY!!! We took a walk to our local library, but they weren't open.

Helen, GA. We spent a long weekend there for our anniversary this March.

Stream below one of the waterfalls near Helen.

Snake in Helen!

Another waterfall . . . another hike (still near Helen).

Maybe I'll manage another post before next summer.

Growing Green

It's summer, so life is slowing down a very little. I. has started what began as a small backyard garden and quickly expanded into a butternut jungle. These photos are a few weeks old and don't reflect the impressive rain-induced growth spurt the squash have demonstrated in the last week.

Rosebushes (these came with the house):

Our first squash plants:

My handsome gardener:

I.'s peppers:

And aloe from my little window garden:

Back in School!

At long last, we are emerging from the fog of the 2014-15 school year. It has been exhausting. I'm in no way ready to plunge back in, and somehow the summer has ended up giving us only about four weeks off. I don't know how some people stay in this career for forty years.

The good news is that I. has been able to venture forth into greener pastures! Back in the winter, he applied to nursing school at a nearby university, and he was admitted into an accelerated program. Because it's accelerated, he not only had no time to recuperate from the school year, but he actually spent the first week of nursing school writing finals (and having them administered) for his middle school students. He is thrilled to be on the way to a medical career after many years of wishing and hoping for just such an opportunity.

Here's I. on one of our early trips to get to know the campus:

We took this in front of what we then thought was the nursing building (we were wrong). Oh, well! School started in mid-May, so he has now been in the program for about a month. He comes home often and regales me with new facts about bowel movements and germs.

We've also moved about 30 minutes from our old house, in order to split the commute more evenly. We now live in a house that is twice the size of our old one, and are enjoying the fact that for the first time in our marriage, we don't share walls, floors, or ceilings with any neighbors. Our new home has three bedrooms (really one bedroom and two libraries), a luxurious bathroom (it is actually larger than our bedroom on the last house) and a separate garage. We are blessed! We also now live downtown in one of my favourite small towns in Tennessee, within easy walking distance of the public library and a Christian coffee shop. I. has taken up gardening, and I am desperately trying to get unpacked and ahead on meals before the school year kicks me into my endless cycle of exhaustion again. In the meantime, we've been sleeping in until 5 on weekdays and 7 on weekends, which feels like the height of luxury.

Christmas Cheer

We went away for Christmas, and I missed the last days of the December Photo Project because our "smoke-free" hotel with "free wifi" turned out to be a "wifi-free" hotel with "free smoke." We ended up being moved because smoke was pouring into our room from our next door neighbors' suite; though it was nice to breathe (eventually), neither room had any real access to the Internet.

That said, hotel aside, our Christmas getaway was fairly magnificent.

Living in the United States and without a lot of disposable funds, planning our solo Christmas escape was a little tricky. After a lot of debate, we settled on Niagara Falls. Knowing that it would be a crazy tourist destination made me nervous, but I've never seen the falls, and I. hadn't been since he was young.

After  two days with family, we drove up through Detroit and meandered across foggy Ontario. We had an adventure when searching for a bureau of exchange, but eventually ended up with Canadian currency. We pulled into our first hotel on Christmas Eve afternoon and made it to the falls around dusk.

The crowds were crazy!

We first saw the falls in daylight on Christmas Day. (These below are the American Falls, with America in the background). They were stunning!

On the 27th, we had an adventure: we walked from Canada to America and back again (this was officially my first border crossing on foot). The American side of Niagara has been turned into a state park, which means that all the Americans get a nice view of Canadian skyscrapers, while all the Canadians get a view of a very lush green park. However, getting to see the rushing water up close was amazing!

 

We were warned that Niagara would be touristy, and the warnings were wise. However, we had a pretty awesome time walking around the city, driving around Ontario, and spending hours of every day staring at the falls themselves. The highlight of the trip really was the rushing water, and walking down to watch the falls never disappointed.

 

On our final morning, we rose early and went down to the falls to watch the sun rise over Horseshoe Falls. A few moments after the sun broke through the clouds, snow began to fall. It was most certainly one of the highlights of our trip!

[Belated] DPP 22: Trees for All

We visited family this week, and were unable to get out of decorating at least one tree for the season. Here's the finished product (with thanks to my brother-in-law for asking me to take a photo of it, since I barely remembered to turn on any of my electronics on the 22nd). 

[Belated] DPP 21: Cardinal Directions

I. and I have long loved this road sign, which is on the path from Morristown to most northern places and marks the beginning of an important junction. Sometimes I don't even think that our travel has officially begun until we have passed this sign.