Sunsets, Earthquakes, and Hurricanes... OH MY!

We have had quite the week here in Philadelphia. Just in this week we've seen beautiful sunsets, like the picture I posted here, right out our living room window most nights, we've experienced an east coast earthquake, and we are about to experience our first hurricane. Clearly, we are much bigger fans of the sunsets than the earthquakes and hurricanes, but it's definitely made things exciting!

The earthquake happened this last Tuesday and we definitely felt it! I was in the extra bedroom studying on the bed and David was in the living room watching TV. I thought I felt the bed actually moving but I really wasn't sure at first, because an earthquake is not something I even realized was possible out here. Then we heard the person above us loudly run across his floor (and we've NEVER heard anyone upstairs before). After that the movement picked up and I could definitely tell something was up and "earthquake" started registering. I came into the living room and David said, "What the heck?" Standing in the hall way and looking out the living room window I could really tell we were definitely moving. Then it stopped after about only 30 seconds or so. I looked at David and said, "I'm sure that was an earthquake, but can they even have those out here?" We turned on the news and sure enough, there had been a shallow 5.9 earthquake in Virigina just minutes before. It was nothing very serious, but definitely exciting and a little unnerving. Weird to think about how that affects this big, giant, tall building we're in. Hopefully that's the last of the earthquakes for now.

Then of course, we now have Hurricane Irene making it's way up the coast towards us. I also never really realized they got hurricanes in Philadelphia either, probably because I didn't really realize before we moved here just how close to the coast it is. The hurricane is supposed to make it's way in late tomorrow (Saturday) and be the worst during the night and then slow down by Sunday afternoon. They are telling us to expect anywhere from 4"-10" of rain and sustained winds of about 50mph. There is a hurricane watch, flood watch, and we're supposed to expect power outages. We feel totally safe here in our apartment, but I worry about all the other people and places that may not feel as safe as we do here and are bracing themselves. David and I went to the Wal-Mart today to stock up on some food and water and it was NUTS! The places was PACKED with people, there were long lines at every check out station and the shelves were pretty bare. I asked the check out clerk if it had been like this all day and he said, "Yep, since 8am this morning. This HAS to have been worse than Black Friday!" He looked exhausted. I also heard they were sold out of flashlights and batteries! Wow! We are all set to go though. We have plenty of food and water and our flashlight ready.

There ARE other things going on besides mother nature's excitement though! I was on campus three days this week; taking tests, going to meetings, going to orientations, etc. I can't believe how much more comfortable I feel now than I did three days ago. I got to meet with the music ed faculty and the other music ed TA's. I found out I am actually the only first year graduate student that was selected to be a TA this year! I'm excited to work with everyone and everyone has been incredibly helpful so far. I also took 4 tests this week: "music history, aural theory, counterpoint, and theory analysis." I wish I could say they all went "GREAT!" But they were all INCREDIBLY difficult. Most students I heard walking out all felt the same way. In fact I haven't talked to one person yet that didn't think the tests were pretty darn hard. I've even been studying for them, hard! Ask David! But I guess it just means there is more for me to learn (and remember) in these areas and it's worth taking the remedial courses so I'm an expert! Besides, it's free! Anyway, I'm happy all those are over and excited to start classes this week. I'm still not sure of my classes yet because I have to audition for ensembles on Wednesday. After that, I'll know whether I'll be playing in an ensemble this semester and whether I'll be in oboe lessons, which will affect the rest of my schedule. For sure I'm TA'ing a class on "band pedagogy" (basically the undergraduate's last class before their student teaching), and I'm teaching the "oboe/bassoon methods class" on my own (for undergraduates to learn how to teach those instruments in their band classes). I'm excited for both of those! :-)

David's job search is coming along. He has applied for several jobs and is giving it time to hear back from some before doing some follow up work this next week. He does have one great lead with our friend Heidi out here who put him in touch with a job hunter friend of her's out here. She said she would like to find time to meet with David next week, so hopefully that will help move his process along. It's certainly been nice having him around all the time and coming home to a clean house (yep, you heard me right. I'm talking dishes, laundry, bed made, countertops cleaned; don't know how I got so darn lucky)! But I also am so excited for David to have the opportunity to do something new and further his career.

We both are enjoying the excitement that Philly has to offer us and are looking forward to all that is to come. Until then, a toast to Irene! ;-)

Cheers!

Jersey, Sure!

Well things are finally starting to settle in around here. Our apartment finally is "live-able," we are starting to become familiar with the area (we can definitely get to the Target without the GPS now), and we have food in the cupboards and fridge. In fact we felt settled in enough the other day to make a trip to the Jersey Shore. We've had quite a bit of strange weather lately, including a daily record of 5 inches of rain in one day earlier this week. Strange coincidence that just after the Seattleites move here we help Philly set a "rain record?" I think not. ;-) We've also had plentiful thunder and lightning storms too. It is definitely fun to watch the lightning out the window, since it's something we don't see all the time in Seattle, but I'm over it now. The other morning the thunder woke us up at 8am (a little too early considering we didn't go to bed until 1am), and then kept me up most of the night last night. And we're not just talking rumbling in the distance. I'm talking woke you up in the middle of the night because it was rumbling the floor and felt like it was clapping down right on top of the apartment building! It's cool, but I could go a few days without it so I can get a good, solid, night's sleep in.

Back to the Jersey Shore. We decided since we knew it was going to be one of the only nice days (nestled in amongst the storms), that we ought to take advantage of it while we still can. I had never been to the Jersey Shore or boardwalks before, so we decided to go for it. We picked a beach called Point Pleasant. It's about an hour and a half drive from us, but we hit quite a bit of traffic heading in so it took more like 2 hours. At first we couldn't find parking, but then we lucked out and ended up with a spot on a little side street (don't worry, it was a safe street), and didn't even have to pay for it. I learned on this trip, however, that on nice beaches like this on the east coast, you have to PAY to go on the beach. What the? I guess that's normal out here. I also learned the beaches are SO DIFFERENT (and nicer) than the PNW coast. The sand was... sandy (not rocky), the water was the perfect temperature (didn't have to dip in and come running back out with goosebumps), and there were actual waves. I've never seen David with such a big smile on his face as when he would body ride the waves in and crash onto the shore cracking up. It was true happiness. Ha ha!

After we enjoyed the sunshine and waves for a few hours, we walked the boardwalk to look for places to grab a drink and a bite to eat. I had never seen a real boardwalk before, so I'm pretty sure I was just walking around in awe. A carnival right there ON the boardwalk? Whoa! We ended up stopping at a Tiki bar right on the beach. I'm sure David could give a better description of how the interactions went with our waiter- but let's just say he was less than pleased. The guy was pretty flamboyant, and as David said, "much more interested in dancing and putting on a show then getting us our drinks." He went up on the stage and started booty dancing to a Miley Cyrus song, meanwhile we had ordered our bucket of Corona nips at least a half hour ago and still hadn't received them. Once we finally got our drinks we relaxed a little and ordered some food. I had a dozen steamed clams and David had BBQ Pork Sliders. Both were really good and it was very fun to hang out in the Tiki Bar and relax. It felt like a little mini-vacation for a day. The picture of us above is from the Tiki Bar (post receiving Coronas). It was a good day and I'm so glad I got to experience the Jersey Shore before the summer is over!

I am enjoying my last few days of freedom and David is full swing in his job search. I am actually going to make my first trip to Temple today to get my id card and turn in some paperwork. I'm going to practice taking the SETPA (regional rail) and everything. David already is getting some responses to resumes he sent yesterday and is excited to be getting going with the job search. We also are starting to actually have plans on our calendar too! Looks like Saturday we are going to get to see David's good friend Tina play soccer here in Philly (she plays for the WPS Magic Jack), and then Sunday we are going to have the couple we know that lives in the same apartment complex over for dinner. We love each other a lot, and we love our new apartment, but it's fun to have plans too! :-)

More to come soon! Miss everyone so much!

Get Moving!

Hellooooo everyone! It has been a few days but that's because we've been so busy with moving into our new place! You'll see why I've chosen the picture of David with his head in his hands as you read. ;-) We arrived Monday evening in Phiadelphia and got to stay in Villanova with a family I knew from a family I taught at Chief Kanim. Beautiful area, beautiful house, wonderful family. Other than that, pretty uneventful as we basically just slept and headed out to move in to our new place on Tuesday morning. What follows is the highlights of the last few days that usually ended with our head in our hands (as seen in the picture). However- I'd like to preface all this by saying- these were all small things in the scope of life, "character building" as I'd like to say. We are both healthy, happy and safe and that is what is most important. That being said....

Move In Morning: We discovered, after getting our keys, that where we had to park the truck in relation to where our new apartment was .... was a LONG way. And the freight elevator we had to use to do all our moving, ya, not so "freighty." It was the same size as the resident elevator only it was metal instead of wood paneling and you could reserve it so you wouldn't have to hold it up while other residents tried to use it. We also chose the hottest day this week to move. 95 degrees and humid. We each made about 25 trips with all of our stuff up a long ramp into the basement, up the elevator, and down to the end our apartment was on. I don't know that we'd ever been so hot and exhausted. We must have gone through about 5 bottles of water each.

Returning the Truck: After all that moving, David decided he REALLY just wanted to get rid of the truck as soon as possible. So we decided to drive to downtown Philly and return it that same evening. We might have re-thought that idea had we known we were about to experience an east coast rain storm. We gassed up, got on the freeway, I was following David (who was driving the truck and empty car carrier) in my car. And about 5 min in, it started to dump rain. Now- I need you to step back and picture it really dumping the rain... like big FAT raindrops, really hard, so hard and fast that I couldn't even see out the windshield. People around us slowed down to about 30mph and put their flashers on. I couldn't even see out my window. I literally started praying out loud. Somehow, we made it, with me following behind David. I honestly, truly feel blessed that we both got there at the same time with no issues. But when David pulled into the PENSKE parking lot, there was no where to go. There literally had to have been about 25 other trucks parked there that had been returned that day. We ended up helping the guy who worked there (becuase he was there by himself), in the pouring rain/thunder/lightning (yet still about 90 degrees and humid), move the car carrier by hand away from the truck. What a fiasco! But we got it there safely and had our first Philly rainstorm experience. ;-)

Target: We discovered there is one right up the road. Which makes us happy. We've been there at least three times already. There is also a California Pizza Kitchen, Chipotle, Starbucks, and a take out PF Changs place next door. It's pretty much awesome. We have also memorized how to get there and get home from there. Just thought I'd share that. It's kind of a big deal.

The Apartment: We love it. It's very big. 1400 square feet feels huge when you've been living in 625 sq ft. We have cabinet space we still haven't even used yet in the kitchen and plenty of counter space. The dining room is an actual room with a cute little chandelier, the living room is really big (with a fireplace which I love), there is a long hall way, a half bath and a full bath, two bedrooms and lots of closet space. The area around the complex has a locked gate, in order to enter the parking lots you have to have a resident sticker in the window or register with the management that mans the gate, you have to have a special electronic key to enter the builiding, and we have two locks on our door. I feel VERY safe and everyone we've seen around here so far has been friendly and looks pretty normal.

The Hitch: So we noticed the first night that our toilets didn't really seem to be flushing properly, either one really. Then Tuesday evening the half bath one clogged up out of nowhere. We just figured we'd leave it for the night and go to Target the next day. Then the main bath one clogged up as well... and OVERFLOWED! We cleaned it up and called the emergency maintenance. They came up about 2 hours later (and 3 phone calls later), to unclog both. It seemed they just needed to be plunged. So then we felt a little stupid that that was all it was. Then the next morning, the main bathroom toilet overflows AGAIN! So we go up to Target on Wednesday morning and get a plunger (it was a good excuse to go get Starbucks too since the coffee pot wasn't set up yet). We come back and attempt to plunge it. Then we flush it again. It starts to overflow for the THIRD TIME but David turned the water off JUST IN TIME before it actually overflowed again. We called maintenance and he cam up and worked on it for about a half hour. Everything finally seems to be working properly but we both still get nervous anytime either one of us needs to... well... put "something" in the toilet so to say. ;-)

Wal-Mart: Neither of us have every been Wal-Mart shoppers before. But when you have so much you need and you're on such a tight budget, Wal-Mart is pretty helpful. We found one the other day and did a little bit of shopping there but it seemed a little sketchy. The curtain rods we purchased weren't the right ones and we needed to return them so we decided to head out again today, but this time we went to an area of town we thought might be a little better... BINGO! Super nice and normal Wal-Mart! With food... which was awesome... cuz we needed to restock our fridge and cupboards. We even got a few pieces of furniture we needed for cheap (like a new desk set, a little bookcase for the CD's and extra DVD's which David told me I was going to have to put together myself but I plan to distract him and find a way out of it, and a SUPER CUTE little Italian clock with vino bottles on it for the kitchen (only $8). It was a good trip and our kitchen is full so we can stop eating out, which let me tell ya, after more than a week of eating out... I cannot WAIT to make home made tacos tonight! ;-)

The Plan: We are working on trying to get our Comcast internet and cable set up out here but apparently whoever lived here before us hasn't cancelled theirs yet and they are having some issues they want to take care of before they come and install ours. Luckily the downstairs lobby here has wi-fi which is what I'm using now and we have plenty of movies we can watch (and David is happy to be able to play video games still). Hopefully we'll get all that resolved early next week. We are hoping to get the artwork and photos up on the walls today and do the finishing touches on the place. Once it's done, we are planning on doing a video tour of the place, loading it on the computer, and sending it out to many of you so you can see the new digs!

Goals: Ikea trip either this weekend or Monday, find a movie theater so we can watch the last installment of Harry Potter, and start the job search/studying!

We love you all and can't wait to share our new place with you and keep you updated on all the Phiadelphia adventures ahead!