Special thanks to Eduardo's younger brother Conner, who spent the week with us starting in Waco loading the truck, helping us drive the vehicles during the big move, and finally carrying most of our furniture up the stairs at our new place! Also special thanks to my parents who joined in for all but the truck loading, since they were coming in from Houston that day. Hopefully they felt as appreciated as they were.
The actual loading of the truck wasn't nearly as bad as I had been afraid it might be. One of the big reasons it went so smoothly was that we had just about everything in boxes, suitcases, or plastic tubs, so we weren't carrying very many random objects back and forth and trying to find places for weirdly shaped things. Also, we started the process at 5:30 AM, while it was still "cool". Being an August day in Texas, of course it would be hot. But of course, it had to be at the tail end of a record breaking summer for Waco, accompanied by an extreme drought! The weather forecast was for temperatures up to 108 degrees and without a cloud in the sky, which is waaaaay too hot to be outside, especially doing any kind of manual labor. So it could have been terrible, but the early hour made all the difference there. However, the biggest contributor to our truck-loading success was the guys from our amazing lifegroup: 3 of them showed up between 6:00 and 6:30 AM ready to do nothing but carry furniture and heavy boxes for a couple hours before going to work. Between the 3 of them, plus Eduardo and Connor, they had all our furniture in before I could even finish making bacon for their breakfast burritos! In the end, I think we had the truck door shut by 8:30 and we were able to spend the rest of the day in cool air conditioned places. We are so thankful for our lifegroup!
We also got up early on our first day of driving, so we could throw in our last few items and hitch up the trailer that would be used to tow our second car behind the moving truck. Thankfully, our two full days of driving were so uneventful that waking up a little early is the most interesting thing I have to report! We passed a lot of green farmland and lush forests, so it was a pleasant drive. Mainly I was eager to arrive at our new place and get to work settling in!
Eduardo and I had 2 full days with my parents and Connor in Urbana before they had to head home. During that time we unloaded and returned the moving truck and tried to start unpacking some boxes. By the time they left we had a fully functional kitchen, we had our bed and our TV set up, and all our clothes were in our closet, but the place still hadn't really begun to feel like home. It was nice to be able to show our family around town and take them to visit our new church here in town.
The five of us also had a blast on our little one-day vacation to Chicago that we all took, using the excuse that the airport was there anyway. We rode the L train, visited the Chicago Institute of Art, ate authentic Chicago style pizza at Gino's, and of course visited the bean. We even got rained on a tiny little bit, which was a real treat for us Texans this summer. At the end of the long day we dropped my parents off at the airport and headed over to Wheaton to spend the night.
Our 2nd day in Chicago was all business - Eduardo and I took Connor to visit Wheaton College, where he hopes to attend next fall. He had an admissions interview, we all went on a campus tour and swung by the bookstore, and we even squeezed in a visit with the good'ole financial aid office. We also got to visit 2 little museums - one was about C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and other authors; the other was about American Evangelism and specifically Billy Graham. They were both pretty interesting, but I didn't enjoy either one as much as just walking around campus. It's really a lovely school and I enjoy being on college campuses in general. The biggest bummer for me was that the whole experience made me miss my dear friend Megan, who attended Wheaton but now lives in Honduras and I rarely get to see her. I wish she could have been my tour guide!
Things around our apartment quickly got to that point where we had unpacked the big easy stuff and the things we use everyday, but getting settled further has been quite a chore. I've completely rearranged the kitchen cabinets at least 3 times (I'm not sure I'm done but they have gotten a lot better) and I'm still working on organizing our 4 (FOUR!!) storage closets. Why am I complaining?! I absolutely love it here, and it has already been so nice having more space than we are used to. I am sure that once things are settled, we will be a million times more organized here than in our last place. Hooray for being able to store all junk!
Tomorrow unofficially ends our little month of "summer". Even though neither of us has started work yet, Eduardo and I both have to go into our offices tomorrow morning for meetings. I'm looking forward to meeting everyone, but I'm still a little sad that my free time will be gone. It's true that I've stayed pretty busy, but it has been amazing to have a month off with no work! Who knows when that will happen again? I guess it's just part of the adventure that this has all been. Until next time - adios!
