This professor is a power house!

Today I feel more positive about my life. I've just come from my American Government class, and I swear that woman speaks my language! I watched my professor open up the minds of every student in that class. She reasoned with them, introduced new ideas, and watched their comprehension budding. I loved it! She talked about people's myths about the government and how they do not actually base their beliefs on knowledge. I feel like I don't have any right to an opinion if I don't get out there and learn all the realities of what's actually happening. This woman is such a good teacher in the way she lights a fire inside your mind. I'm no longer put out about taking this particular GE. It's amazing!

I say she speaks my language because I have seen this same problem in so many people. They get heated, emotional, and highly confrontational over issues. But when you ask them about the issues, they can't tell you a thing. That's because they don't have any actual knowledge, and it's frustrating. For example, you can be for or against the war in Iraq, but you need to have actual reasons for your position. I get so tired of hearing general vague statements about righteousness or patriotism. I want to shake people and say, "No! Being patriotic isn't enough! What is your reasoning?" And that's what this teacher is requiring of the students. We must learn all we can so that our positions are based in reality.

It's time for me to get learning, then, isn't it?

I need a fortress.

So I finally learned last night about what's happening with my Grandpa Wall. I can hardly believe it! His femur is broken badly, and the surgery to fix it may be fatal. But without the surgery, he will probably not make it. My mom was so emotional when she told me about it all, and I imagine it must be that much harder for my Grandma.

I cannot imagine losing Paul! The very possibility of losing her mate must be so painful and sad for Grandma! I hate even thinking about it. And I'm feeling distinctly depressed about living so far away at this time. I can't go back to Utah to be with the family! There's no way we could possibly afford it.

:(

I guess I'll just have to try to be there over the phone as much as I can and keep trudging on with my new classes. All this change is a little hard to handle right now! I see myself becoming increasing fragile, but I'm not sure what to do about it. I need a fortress to huddle down in for a while...

I'm still in Junior high.

Sometimes I think I have never gotten out of junior high school. It's ridiculous, but I never seem to be able to feel confident. It's like I expect everyone I meet to not like me. I hate that! How do I make that go away?

I call it my "curse." I've been getting this since I was about fifteen years old. I meet someone, they look at me and immediately dismiss me as if I don't matter at all. I have seen a lot of popular well-liked people in school or church talk to others very charismatically and then treat me like I don't exist at all. It can be maddening, especially if the person was someone I initially admired. And the thing is, I understand the phenomenon intellectually. It makes sense.

I'm overweight with kind of a strange body type, and because of this, I can't find clothes that will fit me that are attractive. Everything I own hangs or catches in some way so that nothing ever quite looks good, and nothing in my wardrobe reflects my personality at all. I consider having clothes that match who you are to be a luxury of the thin. And on top of this, I hate makeup and can't force myself to put it on. So my self-presentation is not great; I think it turns people off to me at a first glance.

And since people have always treated me like a piece of furniture, I find it hard to assert myself, to say, "Hello. I'm a person too, and I matter, even if you find me unattractive." I withdraw deep inside and don't even try.

It's stupid. This whole rant is because a girl at church on Sunday gave me the quick dismiss, and I've been trying to convince myself ever since that it didn't make me feel bad at all. Paul met this girl and her husband before I came up, and he really liked them. But as soon as I appeared, the girl looked at me, dismissed me, and turned away. I should have picked up my scriptures and smacked her! Right in the face. Everyone would know who I was in the ward after that!

So I've never really gotten past junior high yet. Isn't there supposed to be some point at which, you know, you grow up and stop feeling vulnerable and self-conscious? Isn't there a time at which you don't need your peers to like you?

I want some chocolate.

Humans and non-humans.

Grrrr... So I just went to my last class... or at least I thought I was going to my last class. I walked in, sat down, and asked the person next to me if I was in Anthropology. She said, "No. Sorry, but this is philosophy." I was so confused. I had to go to another building to find a computer to get online because I thought I had just written down the wrong room number. It turns out that I wrote down the wrong day! My anthropology class is actually Monday/Wednesday, and I had thought it was Tuesday/Thursday. So I managed to miss my first class yesterday....

I emailed the professor right away to explain what I had done, but I don't know if this professor is actually human or not. I say that because I've had both kinds. The human teachers actually care, try to help you out, and listen to what you have to say. As in, if you make a mistake like that, you don't have to be punished. The non-human teachers are the ones who don't believe a word that comes out of a student's mouth and don't care at all about specific situations or personal difficulties. (When I was so sick with diabetes, I was nearly flunked out of math because my teacher was non-human and would not believe that my illness was real.) I tend to favor the human teachers, but you never know before you sign up for a class which kind you're going to get. It's hit and miss.

I'm really like our neighbors. They knocked on our door to let us know that some woman was looking into our car this morning. I don't know if the woman had any bad intentions or not, but I was glad to have neighbors who would let us know that sort of thing.

Last night when I went to do laundry at the laundromat, I ran out of quarters and an African American man gave me another quarter to finish drying my shirts. It was so nice, and such a relief! I'm glad the people here are so nice! They're the human kind of people.

The Land of the Cockroaches and Ants

It really is! Two nights ago, I got up in the night to get a drink of water. When I stepped up to the kitchen sink, my big toe crushed something soft. I ran to turn on the light and found a cockroach still alive and twitching... It was NASTY!

I can't believe all the bugs here! Our house is way clean, too. It's not like there's a bunch of trash just sitting around or food left uncovered. I've seen four different kinds of ants within five feet of our house. There are the huge black ones that are all over the trees, the fast scary red ones that feast on dead cockroaches, the little brown ones that infested our car our first night in Georgia, and the tiny ones that you can barely see that seem to like the porches. Who knew so many kinds of ants could live in the same place?

Did I mention the hornets just outside our window, about twice as big as the ones in Utah. There are also the cicadas that keep up a constant cadence. It's a loud throbbing hum that rises and falls all night long. (It's a little hard to describe, but it's not unpleasant.)

We've had a busy week, spending a lot of time at Augusta State University. Paul had an orientation with everyone from his master's program, and he is one of three men. All the rest are women! He made friends with a girl from Colombia who invited us to come to a fiesta tomorrow. I'll let you know how the Colombian food is. I was happy that everyone was nice to him and he feels excited and welcomed into the program. We love Settlers of Catan, and he found some girls who would like to play with us with their husbands.

It turns out that I will be going to school this semester, but my schedule is random. I'm taking most of the generals that will not be covered by my transfer credits, so that I can get them out of the way. So I'm in these classes:

-Fundamentals of Human Communication
-Spanish 1001
-American Government
-Introduction to Weather and Climate (Lab Science credit)
-Cultural Anthropology

That last class is for my minor, which I had to choose yesterday. I figured if I was required to have a minor, I might as well study human cultures. That should help me with my fiction. So now I'm an English major with an emphasis in creative writing and an Anthropology minor. I'm really excited, although I just found out that my text books will cost over $700! If that's not robbery, I don't know what is.

A big, long move across America.

I know. It has been an eternity since I last blogged... It's a little hard to do without my own working computer. With my blogging job, I have not had time on limited-use public computers to do this blog. But I have a few minutes right now, and hopefully there will be more time in the future.

Hopefully this won't be too surprising for most of you, but... we're in Georgia now! Paul did get into an Experimental Psychological graduate program here at Augusta State University, and here we are. I had three stressful weeks after we found out before we moved. We couldn't afford any moving van at all, so we ended up stuffing all we could into our car and leaving the rest. It was hard (made me cry), but we left Provo.

The journey was LONG and exhausting, but it was fun too. We stayed at my mom's house for a day and a half and then headed out for Denver. My cousin Lindsey and her husband Nick live there. (I realized just now that I don't know for sure if that's how she spells her name...) They were so nice to us! We had a bed to sleep in and great food to eat. I was sad to go. We drove from Denver all the way across the eastern part of Colorado and the broad expanse of Kansas. We loved Kansas because it was so open, green, and beautiful. The roads were almost empty, and the other drivers were polite and relaxed. I thought it would be a good place to live, although I had to laugh at all the religious billboards that said things like "I trust you, Jesus" and "Christ heals; pornography destroys." We flew through that state into Missouri. We veered from the freeway in Kansas City, Missouri, and headed north to a little town called Kidder, where a friend from Paul's mission lives.

His friend was Ammon Galbraith, and we stayed with him, his wife, and their four little boys. Ammon had taken the next day off work to spend with us, so we stayed in Missouri for a day with the Galbraith's. They took us to Liberty Jail, where the prophet Joseph Smith was imprisoned. It was a sweet heart-breaking experience to go there and see the tiny little basement where he was held. The Galbraith's, too, gave us great food and a bed to sleep on. I loved being there.

The next day was the long one. We drove from Kidder back down to Kansas City, across Missouri, into Illinois, through Kentucky, and finally through Atlanta, Georgia and we stopped for the night in Newnan. We stayed with some friends of Paul's from his old home ward, the Royle's. They were awesome, and once again, made us delicious food. (This time, it was a white chicken chili with corn bread!) The Royle's are actually an older couple whose children have all married and moved out, but their kids don't live far, and they called them home for a lunch with us. It was fun!

Newnan is about three hours from Augusta, so we had to make that last drive before we could find a house. Finally we were able to get a cute little blue house in a very quiet neighborhood. The house hadn't been lived in for months and it has required some cleaning on our part, but I love it and I'm so happy to be here. We have yet to meet a mean person here. Seriously everyone we meet is relaxed and nice, even if their accents are so strong that I can't understand half of what they say. And there are A LOT of bugs here, which is something I'm going to have to get used to.

I have had some trouble with my financial aid, and I'm not sure if I'm actually going to be able to go to school this semester. I might have to wait until next semester in order to get the financial aid that I need. That's kind of a pain in the butt, and it might just work out anyway, but in the meantime, I'm looking for another online writing job. I've spent the last hour and a half responding to Craigslist postings for writing jobs, so hopefully one or two of them will be interested in me. Please pray for me! I don't know what's going to happen, but on the bright side, Paul has his financial aid taken care of and he is registered and set to go in his program. I'm really proud of him for getting in, and I'm excited for him. We found the Psychology Department here and met another grad student who was way nice and made Paul feel good.

Well, that's enough for now. Blogs really shouldn't be this long... I'm going to re-do my blog background now, to fit the new settting. This is a different world, after all.

Stupid graduate program people.

With our computer not working at all now, I can only get online at the library. So there isn't a lot of time to do my private blog. I'm doing the ones for my job, of course. It sucks to not have a working computer at home, but it has had a few good affects. I've been spending more time reading with Paul since we don't have the computer to occupy all of our attention. That's kind of nice. We read together a lot when we were first married, but then it kind of fizzled out. Now that we're doing it again, it just feels like we're closer.

Sometimes I get so depressed that I wonder if things will really work out for us. We've been waiting for a month to find out if Paul will get into a graduate program and we still have no news. It's so frustrating. After a whole month, two of the schools let us know that they hadn't recieved all of the parts of the application, even though Paul had them sent. And they don't even start considering an application until they have all of the parts, so they've basically been sitting on his applications without giving him a second thought. Meanwhile, we've been so nervous, hoping he would get in and wondering where we could live. It's so aggrivating! I can just see these people snickering maniacally and taking pleasure from our anxiety.

Anyway, we could use some prayers. We've prayed a lot for ourselves, but some outside help would be nice. Maybe if tons of people pray for us, something miraculous will happen. Otherwise, I don't know what we'll do.