Southern talk.

One of our friends in the TTN program is from Arkansas. Surprisingly, she developed the nickname Arkansas and it has stuck with her since day 3 of class. She has a real name too, it’s Lindsey, but we all like calling her Arkansas better. Personally, I think it fits well with her accent. Which is great btw. The best thing about her is that she is so funny with out even realizing that she is funny, which ends up being – funnier! For instance, during class one day we were learning how to correctly perform enema’s. For those of you who don’t know what it is – google it and for those of you who have had one before – I’m sorry – and for those of you who perform enema’s on a regular basis know that, as Arkansas would say, it may be as “bad as a wet biscuit!” hahaha. I looked at her and asked, “What did you say?!” She repeated herself and exclaimed, “This is as bad as a wet biscuit!” hahaha. There are some obvious differences between her and I – but I think we will be great friends

Squirrels and Bugsy

Well, this is a little harder to explain, but if I do a good job, it will be really funny. Our bathroom has this window that opens downward; the hinges are on the top and it opens outward, over the roof top. So you can kind of picture it that we could open up the window and use the roof as a shelf, but we never would. Ok, hopefully that makes sense. So earlier in the summer when it was much cooler, we would leave the window open to ventilate the bathroom. And one day, I looked out and there was a squirrel RIGHT there! And it scurried away but it got me thinking about what I would do if a squirrel ran into my apartment because it would be really easy for this to happen even though I don’t think squirrels would do this (but you’d also never thing a squirrel would get it’s head caught in a Yoplait cup and THAT has happened before). So I go into the kitchen and present this scenario to Allison and as I am finishing up Allison points to the ground and is like OMG and her eyes get huge and I FREAK OUT. I just screamed a blood curling scream because I literally pictured a squirrel next to me. I believe I jumped somewhere in there too. So that was awful and hilarious. BUT THEN…

The next night Allison and I are driving home at night (probably from studying at Starbucks so my guess is 11 or 12 at night) and we live on a pretty safe block but it’s really close to really unsafe blocks so we have to be careful. So we are gathering our things and sitting in the car when Allison turns to get out and does the exact same blood curling scream as I had let out. And I thought obviously we were being robbed or something but really it was just Bugsy, Carlos’ dog that we have met plenty of times. It was just two glowing eyes staring right at Al waiting for her to get out of the car. It was awful and hilarious and both of our ears hurt after those two days.

Assigned seats.

Welcome to the first day of class……

“WAKE UP TINY ELISABETH!!! WE CAN’T BE LATE!!!!”

Now, let me explain to you the reasoning for my tone.. The first day of our July semester – Elisabeth and I were on time to class. Which is good, right? Typically, yes. But on this day, our classmates beat us to class!  Which resulted in two devastating things: 1) Our new classmates got first dibs on their seat that day. Which ended up being their seat for the entire semester. Which means that being on time is actually code for being late. Which results in devastating thing number two:  2) Elisabeth and I couldn’t sit next to each other. Instead we sat in opposite rows. Me in the farthest corner of the room and Elisabeth was centered right in front of the projection light that shined on her tiny eyeballs during every class period. Needless to say, we didn’t want to make the same mistake this semester. (And by semester, I mean 6 weeks. Welcome to our accelerated life where everything we do is quick and fast paced and to the point – just like our speedy process of getting ready the morning of our first day of school!) So, back to that Wednesday morning….

Right on schedule! We figured out our shower times the night before, the coffee was ready to brew, toasted blueberry waffles was the breakfast of choice and our plan to get to class early and claim seats next to eachother was in play. In the process of getting ready, blowdrying my hair and getting the coffee started (Shocking. I mentioned coffee) the worst possible thing happened that I didn’t prepare for – and – without warning – my blowdrier shut off – and, I bet you guessed it . . . I blew the power fuse!!!! WHAT! I am on a time schedule here people! A time schedule that wasn’t prepared for a disaster as big as this. A time schedule that deemed it absolutely necessary to stay on track minute by minute so that we didn’t repeat our seating mistake in July! SO I had to turn the power fuse back on. But I don’t know where the power box is!!! Don’t forget it’s 7 o’clock in the morning and still incredibly dark for Marion. Luckily, we still had power in the bathroom and our microwave table (which holds our precious coffee maker and toaster) has wheels which allow us to transport our precious coffee to a nearby plug so that we can both have our coffee fix on the way to our first day of school! If we ever make it!! But we were. We had to! Here we go – - Good thing we know how to share the bathroom! (For those of you who have trouble sharing and want to talk dial 1800 wildcat. we’re here to help) ha just kidding, but seriously. So 10 minutes before we have to walk out the door. Elisabeth was on breakfast duty and I was scrambling to find my books in the dark. Both of our hands were full of food and books and keys and coffee. As we trot down the stairs, Elisabeth is quick to pick up the trail of things I drop on my way out the door. Keys in the ignition – we pass a nursing friend walking to school – All we can think about is the chorus from the newsies which repeats “SEIZE THE DAY!” And so we did… friends – we did it. We got the best assigned seats for the whole semester/six weeks.

Marion

So this is how our life in Marion goes:

We go to Starbucks (thank goodness!) and the baristas know everyone! including us:) Sometimes we think they are flirty, but mostly we think they are not. The best way we can describe Marionites (we did not make up that name) is that there just is not a lot of perspective. For instance, this woman told me that she lived in Gas City because she didn’t want to raise her kids in “the city.” I was at a loss for words because I couldn’t figure out what city she was talking about. Then, she says that she just is careful about only making a trip to Walmart every couple of weeks. And others have replied “You’re going all the way over there?!” when we say we are headed to Gas City. Gas City is FOUR miles away. I lived more than four miles away from my workout facility last year. However, in defense to “the city” comment, Marion is not the best kept, not the safest, and not very welcoming. However, not wanting to raise your kids there because it’s a city is a slight stretch.

We see people we know everywhere. Granted, we don’t know anyone! The first day we moved to Marion we saw our secretary at Subway, which is funny because we always wanted to have lunch with her because we think she thinks we’re great and we definitely think she is great. We went to the grocery store yesterday and saw a lab instructor, and last month, we went to the College Church and saw TONS of people we knew — from school, from Bible Study (more obvious), from Starbucks. Crazy. Which reminds me, at Starbucks, lots and lots of people read their Bibles. Which is just interesting that we only had to move a few hours away to live in a Bible Belt. I thought it was farther south. I just have never experienced that in EL or Northville.

We like to go to Fajita-Rita Mondays at Chili’s. We have to drive 30 minutes for it but it’s really really! good! Which brings me to Muncie which has lots of signs like “This is where you should eat!” and “This is a tanning place!” and “You should sleep here!” It’s very simply written everywhere you go there. Or we can drive to Kokomo for Chili’s. Kokomo is great because it has a Target and Meijer and since this is the first Target and Meijer we found in Indiana we were SO excited! Either city, 30 minutes for some good Chili’s. Plus, the Coons go there.

There are these crazy tractors here! They look like caterpillars with antenna! Absolutely crazy looking. We took a picture but it’s on my phone so I don’t think I can put it on here. When Hallene and Kait came to visit me, they saw it too and also took a picture. It’s not like any tractor I have ever seen.

Alexandria (only about 20 minutes away) is this quaint little town and the reason it makes it into the blog is because we were as close as Phelps’s amazing stretch in the Olympics to living there. Not kidding. Also, when we were there we went to this privately owned little restaurant called Lincoln Square. It has a huge teal triangle roof and a few little Latinos working there. And the food was really! good. Who would have thought. Other than that, Alexandria has nothing. Corporate food is limited to McDonald’s and I think Burger King there and they have a CVS. So funny. One of the girls from our class is from there and she has said several positive things about it. Plus it’s cute.

Another part of our lives down here is that we lived in a hotel for a week! It was great but got very old very quickly! So, this was our first experience in Marion and we had to lug everything we needed for a month up to our hotel room because apparently the parking lot wasn’t safe. This in itself got a lot of looks from the front desk help. Then we asked if there were any restaurants she would suggest or that we should go to (or you know, just what are some restaurants for dinner… we’re not from here… we need to eat…) and she makes three suggestions: 3 nasty restaurants that are practically in the hotel they are so close. And I asked her if there was anywhere else and she just told me that I would have to go all the way into Upland or Marion. Another perfect example of how they think that Gas City and Marion are separate worlds, but really they are only 4 miles away from each other (and I am not making that up — this is what the mile marker sign on the road says).

Thanks for getting through this long post. We’ll try to keep them shorter!

Carlos

Carlos is our neighbor. 50ish, LPN (so he thinks we’re great), works at a nursing home on nights, has a broken down car in his driveway and it never seems to do anything, lost his wife just a couple of months ago, helped us move our stuff in, loves to pray. These are the funny parts of Carlos: he always runs. Every time we see him, he is running. And it’s more of a prance perhaps. He wears scrub pants VERY high. Oddly high. I can’t figure it all out high. He is one of those conversationalists that no matter what he says, he expects you to reply. So there are MANY awkward moments with Carlos. But I think if we ever needed a thing, Carlos would help us out.

Our other neighbors, as promised, are Dixie and Jim. Not too much to say about them. And Vince lives underneath us on the first floor of our house. He is VERY socially awkward, but he mows our lawn and is quiet and fine. He just starts conversations and then expects us to finish them. And in between those two things, he just stares at us a lot. And then there is Old Man in Overalls. Old Man in Overalls is one of the older people on this earth. He wears overalls (many and most times JUST overalls) and a straw hat. His lawn is covered with contraptions from Walmart no doubt like figurines, statues, signs, knick knacks, etc. Here are a few examples of the signs: “Welcome Neighbors,” “The Lord is my Shepherd,” “God is love.” Then there is a big one that says “KEEP OFF.” and that just makes me laugh. Anyway, Old Man makes SO much noise and is awake ALWAYS. He is constantly fixing his gutter or roof, shoveling the dirt off the street (and therefore scraping the cement with the shovel), blowing leaves, etc. I certainly do not know how one old man can make so much noise. He also stares into our windows. Super creepy if he wasn’t so old. He is the father of Crystal or married Carlos’ son, btw. Crystal will probably pop up again. Those are the neighbors for now. chau

and now you know why I am luckier than you

We are sitting in our afternoon class probably 3 weeks into the semester and we usually have to listen to lecture and then go learn something in the lab. On this day, the professor asks three people to go into the hallway and then calls someone else up, who ends up being Allison. The professor tells her that she has to “communicate” that she is chasing a chicken and then ends up catching it, but she cannot use any words to communicate this. So:

Person #1: Allison begins to awkwardly squat and run around the front of the classroom. Reddest I have ever seen a human face. Oh, and she has “chicken arms.” I can’t think of another way to say that but it’s like if you were doing the chicken dance. And then once the guy guessed “chicken running around” Allison stands up like a normal person and then “chases” the chicken that she just was. He got the point.

Person #2: Allison calls on someone else and makes them pretend to be the chicken and then chases that girl around the front of the classroom. This person also got the point.

Person #3 (by far my favorite): The professor tells Allison to have the person do as she does. So THEN this woman (40something, mother, not easily read, not always easy to converse with) is following Allison around in the squatting/running chicken position around the front of the classroom. It was so great. And then Allison “picks” up the chicken and starts waving it around over her head. Oh geez, I hope you all get how funny this was. Everyone was dying, but I was just wishing that I had a video camera because it was priceless.

First Impressions

Nursing School @ IWU

• No rape lights
• View the entire campus, no matter where you are standing
• No parking structures
• No rock
• Intense, Super cool and exciting, Small
• Devotions before class
• Seize the Day
• Creative Dinners
• Snacks!!

Marion (our city)

• Shootings on 38th (our) street
• Walmart
• Starbucks!
• Car accidents
• Neighbors! Carlos (more to come), Jim & Dixie, NoName in Overalls

Our Apartment

• Perfect
• Little and big windows and perfect
• Tons of bugs! and perfect

Our class

• Mostly from Marion
• Mostly married with children
• We are sore thumbs
• Long days of lecture
• Apical Pulse = No Personal Space

Welcome to Marion!

If you are viewing this blog, chances are you have never been to Marion, you love us, and you are about to experience a whole new world through our eyes. We are excited about nursing school — thanks to all of you who supported us for the past few years. We hope you enjoy our experience with us and laugh at our lives in our new home off Highway 69.