the eagle has landed.

I am finally writing from HENDERSON SETTLEMENT! Hooray!

We arrived this afternoon and promptly unloaded our full, full, full car. I have to say, though, that I'm quite proud of the car. Even loaded down (as you can see in the pictures below--check out how low the back is riding), it still got 34 miles to the gallon!

So. Like I was saying, we unloaded our car into our new apartment. It's not the Zoochi House, like we were originally expecting--it's above the administrative offices, and it's bigger than the Zoochi apartment--bigger than our apartment in NEPA!

Here are some pictures of the apartment:

the living room

the dinette

our bedroom - please note the quilt made of polyester fabrics.

Oh. And we found these random things among the supplies in the apartment, too:

we're on our way

Off we go!

We left from my parents' house around 7:30 this morning, our car laden and riding low from all of the stuff that we packed into it. (Pictures of that will be posted at some point--don't worry!)

We'd already decided that we were going to do the trip in two days, so we weren't rushing, and we took my dad's suggestion to travel along part of the Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park. It's beautiful--I would recommend it to anyone who's got some extra time to mosey through Virginia. We stopped at the Byrd Visitor Center and learned a little bit about how the Civilian Conservation Corps helped build this and other national parks.

Plus, I got to see my CCC boyfriend, Iron Mike.
Right now I'm typing from a motel just south of Roanoke, Virginia, where we've stopped for the night. We're going to leave early-ish tomorrow morning, and hopefully we'll be in Frakes by the middle of the day. I'm not sure what our internet situation will be right away, but you can be sure that we'll let y'all know as soon as we figure it out!

It's still not feeling real to me yet that we're going to be in Kentucky for a year. I realized the other day that we're going to have to go through that whole new-job-where-you-have-to-learn-how-everything-works transition time--I haven't done that in a few years. Other than that, we've been too busy for me to obsess about how things are going to be....actually, that's probably a good thing, since I haven't been getting anxious about it!

So. If our internet is as easy as we hope in Frakes, we'll be able to have some Henderson Settlement pictures up soon!

happenings and updates

The past few weeks have been very eventful! Things are starting to move and happen and change, so this adventure of ours is beginning to seem real.

August 17 was my last day of work at the Children's Library. As I mentioned earlier, I was sad to leave my job, even though I'm really excited about our adventure. Amy and Jenny (amazing and talented ladies) made me this incredible scrapbook as a going-away present, and now I have pictures of the kids and the staff and notes of encouragement and contact information, so I can keep in touch with people in Scranton!

Yesterday my parents were gracious enough to host a going-away party for us for people in Center Moreland. It was great to see everyone and to be able to spend a little extra time with them. The Center Moreland UMC has a covenant relationship with one of the churches in the Red Bird Missionary Conference (of which Henderson Settlement is a part), so our choice of Henderson has something to do with that history, and it'll mean more to the church, too, that we're in a place that they're already familiar with.

One last thing: our departure date has changed slightly. Dejuana from Henderson called this morning and said that there was a group of volunteers that had requested use of the Zoochi House a year ago, and she asked if we could push our arrival date back to September 29 (a difference of only three days). Actually, this will probably be even better--we won't be arriving there in the middle of a week, and we'll probably have a day or two to rest before we dive into working!

Free Stuff

We have a lot of stuff, the apartment we are going to at Henderson is furnished so we are stashing what we want to keep and giving alot away. It is fortunate that my brother just started a new job and has a four bedroom house to fill up so we are glad to help him. Here is some more stuff that we would like to find a home for. I had rescued the plants from imminent death, I hoped to find a loving home for them. Let us know if you are interested in anything and when we can bring it to you.

wicker shelves

stereo with cassette, radio and phono

CD tower

Norfolk Island pine

unidentified houseplant

running on empty

Because we seem to have been perpetual motion machines lately, I am really looking forward to our time in Kentucky.

Since December of 2005, we have put almost 45,000 miles on our Corolla. If you figure an average of 60 miles per hour for all of those 45,000 miles, that means we've spent about 750 hours driving in the past nineteen months. 750 HOURS. And that's just one car.

I'm not saying that it's bad to be on the go--most busy people I know accomplish amazing things. I'm just not one of those people. I like to stay home. I like to read. I like to walk around outside with no specific destination or purpose. I like to sit and do nothing on occasion.

So I am looking forward to having a year when we're not driving all over creation and when we don't have to be out each night of the week. I am excited about being a one-car family for a while. I am happy thinking that we'll get to really know the people in our church. Hopefully I'll manage to make good on my resolution to write more letters. And maybe I'll get to wipe the recurring panic from my brain.

point of clarification

Ok. I guess I need to clarify something.

In my last post, I mentioned that Eric and I would be staying in the upstairs of the Zoochi House. This apparently left at least one person wondering, after looking at the picture of the house, "How can they possibly stay in the upstairs of a one-story building?"

Don't worry--we won't be living in a crawl space!

The building does, in fact, have two stories. The top floor is shown in the picture--that's where we'll be living. The lower level is built into the hill. It's not very clear, but at the far right of the picture, you can see a railing for the outside steps that lead down to the lower level. There's also a set of steps inside, so if there are people living downstairs that we really like, it'll be easy to visit them!

So that's that. Sorry for the confusion!

living quarters

Well, it's official: we're going to be living in the upstairs of the Zoochi House.



The apartment is fully furnished, right down to the dishes, meaning that we don't have to bring any of that stuff with us. This is EXCELLENT. More car space for my clothes! No, just kidding. I will probably be leaving a good chunk of my clothes up north, too. One of the things I'm really looking forward to is the fact that we'll be able shed a lot of our belongings--even if it is only temporary.



Another excellent thing will be our view. The Zoochi House is right at the top of the hill that overlooks the valley where the cows are pastured and where some of the settlement buildings are. We saw it only once, when it was snowy-ish, but I am imagining that it is also beautiful in the spring, summer, and fall!


The only disappointing thing is that we can't take Amelie with us--Henderson Settlement doesn't allow pets in the volunteer housing. I don't blame them at all, but it would've been nice to be able to have our cat back! We'll just have to look extra hard for cat-friendly housing when we return. Or....is anyone out there looking for a feline friend?