Texas Forever!

We have finally arrived in Texas! David, Lucy, and I settled into our apartment on Tuesday evening. This week has been incredibly busy. For the next two weeks we will continue to live out of our suitcases waiting for the rest of our belongings to arrive.

Lucy enjoying some fresh Texas air

One of the first things we did was to purchase a car. We shared one car for two years in Chicago, however this would be impossible to continue here due to the lack of public transportation. We did plenty of test driving this summer before we went to Costa Rica, and already knew that we wanted to buy a VW Passat. We found the model we wanted online and put a deposit on it, and were able to pick it up the day after we arrived. So far we love it, it is a TDI (clean diesel) and are told it will have better gas mileage than a hybrid, between 800-1000 miles to each tank of gas.

A photo of the car right after purchase, the extra tint has already proven great at keeping out the hot sun!

We chose to rent furniture and put the bulk of our belongings and larger items into long-term storage while we look for a house. The apartment is great so far, it is a really nice sized one-bedroom and even includes a full-size washer and dryer. It is nice enough to last a few months, but not so nice that we will get comfortable and never leave. The complex is just ok, the facilities are well-kept for the most part...although our neighbor has decided to use our doorway as her personal ashtray and the man across the way walks around shirtless with his pit bulls in tow. Overall just the normal characters you will probably find in most rental facilities I would imagine.

Some photographs of the apartment

Our house search is in full swing---much more quickly than we imagined! We interviewed realtors this summer so we had an appointment scheduled when we arrived. Much to our surprise we visited 24 houses on the first day alone. We went out again Sunday and revisited a few and saw about 5 new. David asked me not to fall in love with any one particular house, because apparently that kills your BATNA. But I did anyways, and I am pretty sure he did too--however he won't admit it. We asked our realtor to do a market analysis on a few different places that we are interested in and we will see where is goes from there.

Saturday morning we went to the Coppell Farmer's Market, which was really cute and dog-friendly, so Lucy had a chance to meet some nice little dog friends. Saturday night we attended a Kellogg Alumni charity auction event at the Granada Theatre in Dallas. It was a lot of fun and we met some potential new friends. Sunday morning we went to the church we plan to attend and participated in a event for newcomers in the evening. We are very excited about the church (which is the same one David attended last summer while interning, and was recommended to us by the clergy at our church in D.C.) it is very similar to our previous church. However it is much larger, an average Sunday has about 1200 in attendance. Again, we met some nice young people and look forward to meeting more in the weeks to come.

Today was David's first day of work and we had an eventful start--without power. I had to use the flashlight app on my iphone in the bathroom to shine on his face so he could shave in the dark. Despite that he was very excited and I am sure he is having a great first day. I start school tomorrow morning and am looking forward to it. I met with my advisor last week and started preparations for the class I am assisting on. In addition to my doctoral classes, to receive full tuition funding I must complete a graduate assistantship. This semester I will be working with a professor to teach an undergraduate course in Infant and Toddler Development, and I will be teaching several classes on my own which is exciting.

I hope everyone has a great week!

*"Texas Forever", is another quote from Friday Night Lights, similarly to "Clear Eyes, Full Hearts"