Arrival

This has been one long day!  Gordon and Sandy were flying out this morning so we left about 5:40am.  It was good to get on the road early.  I could have stayed later, but I was anxious to get to Columbia to see what I shall see.  The trip was uneventful, the best kind.  Overall it took me about 9 1/2 hours to get here.  It could be worse, but definitely not a go home for the weekend kind of thing. 

Columbia is a cool town.  I like it so far.  I signed my paperwork and got my dorm room keys about 11:30.  Drove over to the dorm building and parked in front.  Now remember there are only 161 students here total and maybe only 15(a guess?) in the dorms.  The first person I saw was Peter from our church.  It was great to see him again!  I met Blake, yes there are now two Blakes in my life.  Both of them helped me unload the car(not both Blakes, Blake and Peter).  It is a good thing too.  If I had to unload it myself it might have gotten done this weekend but then again maybe not.  There are stairs everywhere here!  The dorm building is an old building with very high ceilings.  There are 25 stairs between floors 1 and 2.  The guys are on the second floor.  There are 7 more steps just to get to the door of the building.  Remember Florida is flat.  I do walk 3-4 times a week, but that did nothing to prepare me for the stairs!  When Blake was bringing up the last load I physically could not have gone down and gotten anything else.  My legs were refusing to go up the steps.  I went into my dorm room, laid on the bed, turned on the ceiling fan and tried to cool down while my legs were jelly.  Thankfully Sandy had made me a care package bag.  I grabbed the fruit and nuts and tried to get some energy.  As I write this at almost 12 hours later, my legs are still worn out.  Thank God they helped me unload.

It didn't take too long to unpack once I was able to get upright again.  I actually have my own room.  That deserves double smiley faces. :)  :)  If you look past the steps, and in a couple of weeks it will be no big deal, this has worked out great.  I have a study room that is about 12' X 18' with built in bookshelves and a very large window.  I will work on posting some pictures over the next couple of days.  My bedroom is about the same size less the space for closets, of which I have two, at the one end of the room.  The room comes with a dresser, twin bed (yes my feet hang out over the end, but at least I have a bed), a chair and a night stand.  The study room has a desk a small table for a printer, a couple of cushion chairs, and a couple of desk type chairs, and an end table.  I think I could hold a Bible Study in here.  It is really a pretty nice set up.  I got to meet Jason from down the hall, he is also on the computer lab tech team.  He was on the conference call yesterday so it was good to meet him.  He is from Jacksonville, small world.

I made a list and went to the Super WalMart, which was packed, to pick up a few things I needed.  One of which was a webcam so that I can talk and see everyone at home when I call.  If you have a webcam and a skyp account let me know what it is and I can add you to my contacts list so we can do a webcam call. 

We have a kitchen behind my room.  Small, just for heating stuff up.  I brought my refrigerator from work and my coffee pot so things are looking pretty good.  We have the ability to buy a hot meal at lunch, but that is the only meal they offer.  Remember there are not enough students here to justify full kitchen and three meals as most of the students live in the apartments or townhomes. I think this will be good anyway.  I want to get to eating lighter at the end of the day, maybe a sandwich or fruit or some yougurt nothing too heavy.  At home, I ate too much in the evening.  I am going to try and get away from that.  I bought some soups and Ramen.  You can't go to college without Ramen Noodlles! 

We watched the last of the Matrix movies tonight in the common room.  Love those Matrix movies.  Keanu Reeves is one of my favorites along with Will Smith.  If they are in a movie I will watch it.  Those of you that know me well will look at this posting time and wonder what the heck happened?  I am usually in bed by 10:00. Well I got a 2 hour nap today and after getting a shower late decided to update everyone as I know you all knew this was the arrival day.  Don't know how many of you would be up to read it at this hour, but it will be there tomorrow.  If you are from church and you read the updates if you could tell anyone that asks how things are going I would be grateful.  Somehow I get the feeling that my early to bed and early to rise thing might be on the way out.  We will see. By the way, when you see the posting time on here it is posted in Pacific time. I don't know why it is doing that and I have not been able to figure out why I can't change it. It is only on my home page with Yahoo. The computer is set to the right time. There is an edit on Yahoo for this, but nothing shows up when I go into change it. Anyway the real time is now 12:17am on Saturday.

That's all for tonight.  Thanks for all the prayers to get here safely.  They worked.  God bless you all.
Steve