Now Playing: Andrew Peterson, “Many Roads” from “Counting Stars”.

You want to know what life is like in Bloomington, Indiana? Well….

First impressions weren’t terribly inviting. My mother, Laura, and I pulled in fairly late Monday night and promptly got lost while trying to find our hosts’ house. The town appeared to be a blur of fluorescent lights streaking and spreading into each other, a mélange worthy of a Jackson Pollock painting. (Yes, I had to go look that word up, so you should, too.) We hit a roundabout, and my reflex was to start around it clockwise instead of counterclockwise! The effects of those driving adventures in Northern Ireland still haven’t worn off, apparently. 

Tuesday morning was move-in time. Pastor H rounded up a couple of math grad students, who obligingly screwed together the Ikea bed and desk that Laura S left behind for me. They had an apparently magic toolkit that contained every implement known to man for wrestling with recalcitrant furniture.

The townhouse is in good shape, though the washing machine leaks, I’ve heard. I like my wee room. It’s taken a couple of different iterations of furniture arrangements, but now the posters are up on the walls, the books are on the bookshelves, and the clothes are in the closet. The other three girls seem to be nice enough. No instant friendships, but perhaps that would be too much to ask. We’ve all been keeping to ourselves for the most part.

One of the best parts of the week, aside from having my mother and sister here to help with the transition, was having Laura and Elizabeth stay for a couple of days on their way up to Geneva. Yesterday we cooked all afternoon. Here’s Elizabeth with “Jeffery”, the chicken, boiling happily in “his” spa bath with one toe sticking daintily out. Unfortunately, today we realized that “Jeffery” was probably a hen, but by that time “she” was nicely pulled to bits and frozen for future meals. I won’t recount the rest of our grisly entertainment; suffice it to say that now I have a stash of cooked ground beef, chili, and broth to last me for awhile.

Our other adventure yesterday was finding a tension rod from which to hang a curtain. We went to Wal-Mart (my second time that day!), but they were out of tension rods—a swarm of freshmen had obviously severely depleted their stock. Said freshmen were still wandering all over the store in appalling numbers, so we escaped as quickly as possible. We went to Target, but the infestation had reached it, too, and nary a tension rod was to be had!

So we marched nearly the whole length of College Mall, from Macy’s to Sears. Macy’s was too highbrow to have a tension rod, but at the very back of Sears, tucked modestly away in a corner, was our quarry! I think the clerk was a bit incredulous about how ecstatic we were.

Today the girls left to go on to Geneva. I’m missing them already. I spent the day in the townhouse, settling in. In the afternoon I went out again (my third visit to the Center of the Universe in two days!) to get a key cut. I was astonished that none of the freshman needed keys—it only took five minutes and one dollar and forty-seven cents before I waltzed out of the store with my new house key.

This evening I think I’m going to go for a walk and maybe finish North and South. I’ve got nearly all my textbooks purchased from Amazon—despite what the other grad students said, ABE books was not cheaper—and can’t do much more until tomorrow. It’s a lovely evening, cool and clear.