being away from home can be lonely sometimes. the first two weeks, josh and i were pretty busy... preparing for work, finding where to eat our food, where to check our email, sleeping on the floor until we finished painting, screwing and unscrewing things, finding a rug to wipe our shoes on... putting a home together for the first time is challenging, and it seemed every moment we spent together (usually only a couple hours at night) was spent working on our home.

then, the loneliness seeped in. we stared at each other one sunday night, feeling sad together. i remember we just said to each other, "we need friends..." what a revelation. it's funny that only after visiting a church that morning, we realized how much we missed our church. we missed getting phone calls from friends to play bang or dominoes, we missed the chans, we missed our normal routines of driving by kirkwood, or going to 24 hour fitness (ok, i confess i don't really miss 24 that much...) we missed our room!

it was funny when josh stuck this ugly blue halogen light on his nightstand (the same one he'd used in houston), and sounded an "ahhh" of satisfaction... i never knew familiarity was ever that important to us. in the same way, i'm happy every time i think that there's a cheesecake factory not too far away, and familiar shops and places on our street. one of the funniest moments, though, was when we walked into chinatown (it's more like china half-a-block). we stepped into the typical dried-fish, oldish, stinky-smelly chinese market, and josh took this really deeeep breath and gave me this goofy grin. that made me laugh.

we're praying for new friends. still church-hopping, but really praying for a few friends to help us pass the time, and make this place more like home. josh is working hard, and getting used to the q4 schedule. i get to drive him to work at 6am in the mornings... but i don't mind so much. (besides, i get to go back to sleep if i want...) our home is coming together, and we already had our first real visitor!! i'll post a picture later. all in all, we're having a good time together, and life will be better with internet and tv. i never thought i'd say that, but we were pretty disconnected from the outside for awhile. and hooray! God is already staring to answer our prayers for friends...