One Month Later

Well, it has been a month since I last blogged. And apparently I'm a compulsive liar, as well. How many times have I promised to be better about writing? Oh, only three million. Alas, here I am. And here is a glimpse into life so far on our side of town.....

Med School
It is finally official! After longggggg months of applications, essays, money on the Visa, interviews, anxiety, disappointment, and literal insanity, we finally know where we will be for the next four years. Do you remember that post I did referring to the place with the cows? You know it. We are headed to Lebanon, Oregon, people! (As in the town, not the country.)

Western University of Health Sciences

His soon-to-be outfit

And you may find it fascinating to know that Lebanon (the town, not the country) is home of the World's Largest Strawberry Shortcake. Does it really get any better than that? The University of Utah, who so ignorantly rejected the one and only Dr. Curly, has nothing on the shortcake. I also read that the annual Strawberry Festival features the Strawberry Royalty Court. I'm hoping that my stint as homecoming queen (in my pre-grey haired days) gives me the added edge I need...

What I aspire to...

But in all seriousness, we are extremely excited to be moving to Oregon. If you were to read back through my blog, you would sort of notice that I am an Oregon freak. And by marriage, so is Tyler. We look forward to many long days hiking, running through the tide at the Coast, shopping in downtown Portland, and -- wait a minute. Let's get real. Tyler will spend his life in a lab dissecting bodies and memorizing antibiotics. And I will be preparing for the Royal Strawberry Court. We are planning on going out there the first weekend of June to find a place to live, and then come back to Utah for a short stint, before loading up the U-Haul and making the long Oregon Trail trek to the boonies. And we could not be happier. Tyler will do an intensive anatomy course from June 18 to August 3, which will potentially -- and hopefully -- lead to a TA position in the Fall. I will be working at the world famous Body of Health Clinic under the skilled, back cracking Doctor Jason Young, and then seeing where life takes me. Our future is as open as the cow pastures we will soon be running through.

Festival of Colors
We made like Hindus and went to Spanish Fork for the Hare Krishna Temple's annual Festival of Colors! It was my first time and Tyler's second. Our friends Bethany and Christopher joined us and we had a dandy time pelting each other with perfume-scented corn starch and partaking in the love fest. If only for a second, I thought I had experienced, even in just a small, Utah way, what Woodstock must have been like. And I loved it.

Pre-party

Post-party

Hare Krishna Temple, Spanish Fork

St. George
We recently went on an "Earley" vacation (haha -- get it? yeah...) to St. George over Easter Weekend with Kelly, Annie, and the always fabulous Brady-licious. We got to visit the St. George temple and then the next day explored Snow Canyon Park. It was warm, it was pretty, we played tennis, and it was a much needed break to the insanity that is our life right now. Thanks for the great trip, In-Laws!

Argentina
We continue to inch forward towards our impending adventure to the South. Yesterday we finally bought our backpacks, and a couple of weeks back we made our painful purchase of the domestic flights between Cordoba and Ushuaia. And we continue to eat Top Ramen.

School
Tyler is in the midst of his finals and has already taken two! He has three more to go and then can finally be done with his undergraduate education FOR-E-VER. We're gonna party like it's 1999. Today as we were walking in the park, he looked pensive and suddenly said, "I think I'm nostalgic right now." I asked him what about and he replied, "About BYU." Thinking back to my own graduation last year, and how I mulled over my unforgettable experiences prior to picking up my diploma (N'SYNC music videos in the bathrooms of the dorms at 3 in the morning while high on NyQuil, sleeping soundly in the chair by the window in the library every day of my freshman year, meeting random men in the parking lot and proclaiming them to be Harry Potter for the day, complete with the lighting bolt on their forehead drawn in eyeliner) I replied with a sigh, "Oh yeah. It's definitely a time to be nostalgic. What are you nostalgic about, exactly?" He paused, and then looking a little sheepish, said (and he was completely serious by the way), "Not getting to access peer reviewed articles on Pub-Med." Ladies and gentlemen. This is my husband. And he is a nerd.

Human Trafficking Conference
I just spent the last week at an international conference on Human Trafficking here at the Salt Lake City Hilton. We were invited by the Department of Justice to attend, not because we were experts on the subject, but more because there was no one else in Utah who could go. Nevertheless, we felt extremely humbled to be at a conference boasting such bigwigs as Cindy McCain (in her Prada suit, no less), attorney generals, federal prosecutors, lieutenants of vice units of major cities, famous social workers and highly renowned academics. The Department of Justice paid for them to all come to to Salt Lake City for the week (to which every single person we met asked, "Why Salt Lake??" and we could only respond, "They have bowling conventions here, too. We don't know.") in order to pick their brains about what to do about human trafficking in the United States. We just tried to be as fly-like on the walls as possible as passionate people spoke about the issue and brainstormed solutions. Nevertheless, it was an amazing conference and I learned more than I bargained for. It was one of those events in life that you experience and then feel under obligation to never let your life go back to exactly the way it was before. I'll be looking for ways to get involved in the fight in Oregon.

Right Now
Well, right now Tyler is making spaghetti and my stomach is making disgusting noises, so I will bid the blog goodbye and devour the meal so graciously prepared (seriously, he was dancing while he was stirring the pot. Unfortunately, it was not actually graceful -- I would say it was more...a la William Hung. But that's a story for another day.) Goodbye blog. And may I write more frequently.