All Settled In

I'm officially in Little Rock! Seems like this past month has absolutely flown by! After spending my last few weeks trying to spend as much time with my friends as I possibly could, it was time to pack up everything I owned, say my good-byes, and begin my journey half way across the country.

It took us 20 hours to get here but we split up the drive into a couple of days and made a few fun stops along the way. The first day we drove about 9 hours, stopping just outside of Atlanta. We decided to wake up early the next morning and go explore Callaway Gardens. We were not disappointed, that place is absolutely gorgeous! We wished we had more than just a few hours there with everything there was to do. It was hard to get back into the car when there was a beautiful lake calling our names. After spending the morning and early afternoon there, we hopped in the car and drove about 5 hours to Memphis. We stayed outside of the city since we weren't going to have enough time to really explore, but we did manage to find a good BBQ place right next to our hotel. We woke up early the next morning and drove only a few more hours to reach our final destination!

After spending a couple of days unpacking the cars, building furniture, and finding the perfect place to put everything, we were pretty much settled in. I'm living in a house with two other girls in my program, one of them moved in the day after I did and our other roommate will be here tomorrow. We're very happy that we found this house. It's very home-y and after a long day at the hospital, it will be nice to have a place like this to come home to. We seem to be in a great location; we're somewhat on a main road, but everything is just down the road from us. The farthest we've had to drive is probably only about 5 miles, and that's to get to downtown, so coming from Miami that is definitely something I could get used to. Gabe was here with me for about a week and a half to help me get settled in. It was nice to have his strong muscles around when it came time to build and move furniture, but it was really nice having him here with me while I was adjusting. He will definitely be missed that's for sure.

We've been exploring the city as much as we can in the past week. It is unbearably hot out with the huge heat wave that has been stuck frying the middle of the country. The other day it was about 110 degrees, so we can't really be doing that much stuff outside in that kind of heat. Last Sunday we went out the Lake Ouachita for the day. It's a HUGE lake about an hour and a half away from our house. It was absolutely gorgeous, but its going to take some getting used to to be able to transition from the sandy beaches in Miami to the rocky lakes here. Gabe and I rented bikes one afternoon and ended up doing the 17 mile river trail that goes around Downtown and then over the Big Dam Bridge and into North Little Rock. It was a nice ride, but going into it we thought it was only going to be able a 4 mile ride, but boy were we wrong. We were very happy to have packed 3 bottles of water, and lucky for us it was a little overcast that day so it was only in the 90's. We also went to three different farmer's markets around the city last Saturday morning. I've always wanted to be able to have farmers markets to be able to buy fresh, local produce at but have never been able to so I was excited for this! We bought a ton of fruits and vegetables and a couple sunflowers all for under $25! I tried figs for the first time, and we bought a yellow watermelon! I didn't even know those existed, and for those of you that have never had one, its about the same as the pink ones, just not as sweet. I think i'll go back to buying the normal ones I'm used to, but it was nice to try something new.

Everyone is so friendly here. Last week my roommate and I had to go to the VA hospital campus in North Little Rock to have our fingerprinting done for our program. When we arrived we realized that there was no order to the way the buildings were numbered and no maps. We decided to park the car and go in and ask someone at the front desk of a main building we found if they could guide us in the right direction to finding the building we were looking for. Well, there was no one at the front desk so as we were walking back to the car, we found a guy driving around on one of those golf-cart style things and asked if he possibly knew where this building was. He had no idea, so we continued on our way. We drove to another part of the campus hoping that we were going in the right direction, parked the car, and began wandering around once again. The same guy actually came around looking for us, told us to hop on the golf cart, and proceeded to basically take us off-roading around the campus until we found the right building. We were very grateful for the ride since it was about 105 degrees that day, but we were holding on for dear life.

Only 10 days until we start our program!

Gabe and I at Callaway Gardens

Another photo from Callaway Gardens

This is part of the 17 mile River Trail that Gabe and I biked

Gabe and I went to an outdoor movie at the Downtown
Amphitheater along the river and saw Caddy Shack