back in the south

back in the south

Back in the South, with our southern drawls, warm(er) weather, and grits. We had an absolutely wonderful time – I think it was the best trip to New England I’ve had, even if it was short. New England just fascinates me in a way. Not the extent that I’d want to live there, but it’s so different than anything I’ve ever known in the south and hte midwest. I love trying to mimic the accent; all weekend I was saying “cah” and “heah” and “idear” and “New Bedfood”. Nichole even taught me how to say “Paul” – “Puh-ahl” or something like that; I think I’ve forgotten already. :-) Paul makes fun of me because in the same sentence I’ll mix a New England and southern accents. Hehe, I like it.

As per my last posts, we flew into Boston on Thursday (finally, I’ve been to Boston in the fall!) and immediately set about to visiting Paul’s former workplace and coworkers. I often wonder what our life would be like if I had moved up to RI instead of Paul moving down here. Paul says he really misses his old workplace although because his salary was so low we wouldn’t have been able to afford any type of New England housing. We’re both glad to be out of the winters. I think just being in pretty New Enlgand in the fall with the brilliant leaves (and I’m told we missed the peak by a week!) contrasting against the lovely blue ocean with the white boats makes us wonder.

Thursday night we had dinner with Becky and Matthew Miller. We had a delightful time – the four of us got along so well, and I think if we lived in RI we’d probably be on our way to becoming good friends. :-) Seeing Katherine was also special, as I have been reading Becky’s blog for over a year now and have followed her desire to have a large family, and then throughout her whole pregnancy, and through the birth. I even got to hold Katherine! I was very honest and told them I didn’t know how to hold a baby (which is why I usually decline when offered), but they were very nice and explained it was like holding a cat – ah, language I can understand! Katherine was just waking up and was slowly binking and opening her eyes. So cute! Paul and I were both a little sad to leave (especially knowing that visits will be very few and far between), even though we were going on 3.5 hours of sleep and had been up since 3:45am that morning. I hope the Millers had such a great time as well. :-)

I told Paul the problem with blogging about trips is that you have so much to say, but the quandry is to put it all in one long post, several shorter posts, or just not blog about everything? I think I am going to subject all my readers to the first thing since I also seeing the value in recording my experiences for posterity’s sake. (I do often like to go back and read my posts from a year or two ago. Does anyone else like to do that?) So I apologize in advance for this long post. :-)

Friday we had nothing planned so we called up Nichole since I had been wanting to see her. Paul and I enjoyed running errands with her – you know how it’s fun to do things like that when you are with old friends you don’t see very often? We went with her to the dollar store to find gifts for an 8 year old who likes green and animals and ballet. (Did she like her gifts, Nichole?) Then we walked around trying to find oil for her car (excuse me, cah). Once we returned to Nichole’s house, Micah arrived home from work and Nichole set about trying to hook me onto World of Warcraft. We had a delightful day and it made me appreciate their friendship even more! Ah, why must good friends be so far away? I told Paul we need to make some Georgia friends now. :-)

Friday evening was our party, which Paul’s parents put together for us and did a wonderful job. I have pictures which I will post later; let me just say that the cake was the coolest thing! Even though Paul and I really weren’t together for the whole night, we both got a chance to see friends (for me, it was Nichole and Becky and for Paul it was like 30 other people). I tell you, this is the way to do it! Smaller receptions after the big wedding – you really get a chance to sit down and visit, without the pressures of the wedding. I am so glad we decided to do this! Paul and I helped clean up and left around 11pm, where we returned to Paul’s parents house and talked for a while longer.

Saturday it rained horribly all day, but we still managed to visit Paul’s grandmother and his former housemate. We played with Chipi and Blackjack, the kitties Paul used to have before moving to Atlanta. Chipi was only 3 months old when I last visited Paul a year ago, and they didn’t even have Blackjack yet! Now they’re both full grown but still as playful as ever. Paul really enjoyed it. Kim then offered us some tickets to the RISD (Rhode Island School of Design) Museum, which was very neat. It made me think a lot about what is art, and how should we as Christians relate to art – especially in exploring more risque subjects like the human body and the dark side of human emotions. Perhaps a post is forthcoming – I know these are questions we often asked ourselves at Taylor in our art classes. I was excited, though, because they had original works by many of the masters, including Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Jackson Pollock, Pablo Picasso, Mark Rothko… All people we studied in my art history classes.

Saturday evening we joined Paul’s parents at a local Chinese restaurant, and then went to bed early because we had to be up at 6:30 to catch our flight. Our plane had the cool little TVs on the backs of each seat, and so we were able to watch TV the whole time. We didn’t have headphones, but we supplied the words we thought were being said by the nice lady on the travel channel… Hehe I started laughing so hard tears were streaming down my face.

All in all an excellent trip. However, now I’m back at work and I have some stuff to do with our website that is beyond my knowledge! I am determined though. We just have a problem because our web server doesn’t support PHP (only ASP), so it just really limits the freeware that’s out there.

That’s all I have to say for now. Pictures to follow soon! (They are on my computer at home.)

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