A few pictures to help illustrate where it is we live. The good, bad, strange, and different.
I've never lived anywhere that had deciduous trees at the tops of mountains. Either I lived near mountains that went above timberline (so no trees grew above a certain elevation and the tops were therefore rocky and rugged) or else they had pine trees. It gives the mountains an entirely different shape to see them without leaves!
We see these trucks occasionally. This was taken on the drive up to NYC for Thanksiving, and we really liked the mudflaps, too.
One night it "snowed" and they cancelled school for the county's public schools. This is what the snowstorm consisted of. (To be fair, people said it was icy elsewhere.)
You know you've in Kentucky when you use the bathroom at the movie theater and three of the four stalls look like this.
This is where James lives during school. It's one of the two buildings his classes are in.
This is where we actually live. I took the picture before we went inside the first time. It's our little duplex with no fences between the different yards. (Turns out that's how it is here. I don't know if it's a southern thing or a small town thing or just a Tennessee thing, but it's a thing.)
At a local taco joint* (Taco Casa, to be exact) they have a house special: The Beany Twins! You can get a hot dog in a taco or a hot dog in a burrito at little to no cost!
*Mexican food, it should be noted, is in extremely short supply here, both in number of restaurants and types of food available at grocery stores. I have seen exactly one Hispanic person since we moved here, and here I thought we were moving to a place with more diversity than Utah. It's a little strange to not have delicious aromas from various Mexican places tempting us. This is pretty much the highest quality option we have.
I guess someone has to be growing the tobacco people are smoking. Apparently it's where we live!
We live near Tri-State Peak, where you can sit in Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky all at the same time! With a strange family behind you! It's not the four corners (and no, it's not the three triangles either) but it's pretty cool.
We have nice pop choices here. (Fun fact: Dr. Pepper is a Coke product in TN, but in KY it's considered a Pepsi product. Who knew?!)
We got a new car and it lives here, too!
This is the view from our back door. There were horses in the field in summer, so hopefully they'll be back.
Look carefully at these two tree stumps just outside our front door (I'm standing on our front porch taking a picture that shows, in the background, the back porch of the owners of the four culrpits of this ) If this is where we live, than THIS (these two stumps) is where all the dog poop in our neighborhood lives.
Kentucky: where our closest movie theater only has four screens, so you have to catch something opening week to see it, but where the most expensive ticket you can buy (adult, weekend) is only $4.75.
The South: where even the canned mustard greens have a soulful heritage!
Semester #1 is done! I honestly don't know what else to say about it. It's over. Done. Terminado. I've learned more the last 5 months than I think that I have my whole last year of undergrad. I've made a few friends who have helped me get through this madness. I have been amazed at the level of support and commiseration that happens here. I always heard that med school was uber competitive with students even giving intentionally misleading study guides. Thankfully that hasn't happened here.
