Juneau

Hey all. Joe here. Well, we're in Alaska. What an adventure!

We started off yesterday at about 4:30AM, waking up for an 8:00 flight. I'm not sure if I bought it because it was the cheapest or if I just didn't look at the particulars but I got us on a 6 hour flight with three stops before Juneau. We were a bit worn out when we finally arrived, but we did get to see some nice scenery up front.



That's a picture from the Juneau airport. Very nice views all around here.


So, for some reason our shuttle to housing fell through and we had to take a taxi to get here. Got a nice driver though and it wasn't too far. We checked into our room. It's like a spacious two bedroom apartment; we have one bedroom and someone else has the other. Above is a view from one of our windows.

So, we decided we had to hit up Fred Meyers and the taxi was definitely too expensive to keep taking around. We figured out the bus system with a bit of trial and error and made it into town. We got a comforter, a couple pillows, and a minimum of supplies we'd need for a couple of days.

We got back to UAS and started setting the place up. You can see the pictures below:




We've got a pretty beautiful campus. It's about a 10 minute walk along a foot trail from housing to the classrooms. It's about the same out to the rec center. They've got free weights so I can continue my program. For those in San Diego that don't know I put on 10 pounds in about a month in Oregon. Here are some pics of our walk to school:




We went out to do some more shopping today on the bus and had a little adventure. We accidentally got on the express and went right past Fred Meyer. We got to see some of Juneau proper and it's a nice looking city. We've also been blessed with some good weather during our first few days while we're running around with heavy bags trying to get set up.

And finally, here are some pictures from the campus and from housing:



If you want to see more pictures you can check out our album at http://picasaweb.google.com/MeinGolem/Juneau. We'll try to get some captions up soon.

Thanks for all your well wishes,
Jenny and Joe

We're in Tacoma, Washington

And the sound is beautiful. I mean "the sound" being a body of water, not something one hears.

Jenny here. Joe and I are staying with Joe's dad Rod and stepmom Georgia. We're having a relaxing time studying, reading, cooking, knitting, and watching movies. We're going to be here until August 27, when we fly from Seattle to Juneau and move in to our apartment!

We're really excited. We have our four bags packed to the hilt, or to the 50 pounds limit - whichever came first. We shipped a big box of our favorite books up already. Then a couple of carry-ons each and we're good to go. We'll be buying everything else that we need up there, cheap as we can, then ship a few things and donate the rest to goodwill when we go home. Sounds fantastic to me. Less to carry!

We'll be going on some trips around here and we'll post pictures :)

Almost time to go!

Jenny here.

We're almost to the end of our summer. The time went so fast! In just a few weeks we will be moving to Alaska for the school year. We got accepted into student housing, so we will be living on campus. We will have a roommate in the two bedroom apartment but we've been sharing living space with other people for a year now and have gotten used to it, though it will be nice to finally have our own place to ourselves again someday! We move in on August 27.

Now we're wrapping up summer projects. We're almost done with the truck! I got my hands dirty this time, sat in the engine bay and torque wrenched the heads back on. 65 pounds of pressure is harder than it sounds. I'm pretty strong and I'm not a wimpy girl, but this was difficult. It's cool to tell about it though :) Just a couple more things to finish, then we let 'er rip and pray that it works! I can't yet comprehend that everything we took apart will most likely work beautifully now. I've been staring at static pieces for so long that my brain isn't accepting that they're going to move very fast, very soon.

I learned a lot from this summer project. For instance, I didn't know that replacing a head gasket meant taking apart almost the whole engine!! I also learned exactly what a gasket is... it's a sealer that goes between parts to keep air and liquids in their respective places... not a large metal part that I now know to be the distributer - hehe.

Last on our list in Albany is Nita and Paul's wedding. We've been helping them plan it all summer and it goes off this weekend, August 11. It's going to be a real nice event. Then we'll head to Washington to hang out with Joe's dad and stepmom, Rod and Georgia.

Hope everyone is well and is having a good summer :)