Scrub boy John

Here are some pictures of John sporting his school scrubs. He wears these scrubs to school for his labs and he'll wear them in the future when he does clinical rounds.

Tornado Tales

Saturday was a windy but lovely afternoon. The sun was shining, there wasn't a cloud in the sky. We discovered that there is a turtle family that lives in the pond outside our apartment and watched them sun themselves. We almost didn't believe the evening forecast for severe thunderstorms. That night we watched the lightening storm in the distance from our deck. It was kind of pretty. The lightning never let up for a second so the night sky was constantly bright. We heard that there was a tornado warning but we thought that it was just because of the tornado that had hit Atlanta that morning. The sky above us was clear and we couldn't even hear thunder from the distant storm.
John and I were watching Batman Begins when the power went out at 11:00 that night. Soon we heard the tornado siren alerting the entire city to seek shelter. John and I prepared our laundry room (the innermost and safest room in our apartment) with blankets, extra batteries for our only flashlight, a lighter, candles, powerbars, and a deck of cards. I was kicking myself that we didn't have 72 hour kits or any bottled water. We then waited in the dark for the tornado. There was no power across the whole city, not even the traffic lights were working. (I would just like to mention that this was the day after Savannah's famous St. Patrick's Day Parade, the second largest celebration in the nation, and thousands of drunk people were still celebrating downtown in the dark.)
We were told that a tornado sounds like a freight train driving into your livingroom. Lucky for us we live right beside the train tracks. There were 3 trains while we waited for the tornado. John insisted on waiting on our deck so that we knew when it was coming instead of sitting in our laundry room not knowing what was going on. Every time we heard the train we ran into our laundry room until we decided that it wasn't a tornado. It was kind of scary at the time, but looking back it's actually quite comical. At midnight we were really starting to get tired but we were afraid to go to sleep in our bed since our room is on an outside wall, we have a window, and we're on the third floor. Three no-no's for tornados. We decided to sleep in our laundry room until 1am when the tornado was supposed to have passed.
Well no tornado ever came to our corner of Savannah but one did touch down about 45 minutes away in Rincon, GA. It took out 13 electrical towers, which is why we and 150,000 others lost power, and a few mobile homes. We were awoken the next morning at 9am to our lights turning on after the power outage. We were grateful that we were preserved but a little disappointed that we didn't have a better story to tell. Maybe next time we'll just make it up and no one will know the difference.

Our Georgian Apartment

Moving to Georgia was a really scary thing for us. It was so far from anyone or anything familiar to us. Not to mention that we found our apartment online and we were feeling a little anxiety over it. It turned out to be really nice, and its a great price. The only downside is that its by the train tracks and we feel a small earthquake every so often. We've gotten used to it though and we hardly notice it. We've tried to turn it into our home and we're very happy in it. Here are some pictures of it so you can get an idea of where we're living.


This is the lizard that we found camped out on our balcony. You can find these little guys all over the place here in Georgia.

This is John studying on the balcony. He's a school boy, what can I say? It was Feb 4 and 76 F outside the day this picture was taken!



This is the view from our balcony. We live on the third floor. You can see the pond, the pool, and the tennis courts. We like the third floor because there's no noise above us and we'll be safe from flooding. But we still hear the people below us fighting and we've been told the that third floor isn't good for tornados.

Here is our humble living room. Nothing fancy but they did give us new carpet and we have vaulted ceilings. The picture above our couch is of the Salt Lake Temple, we got it for ourselves for Christmas.

This is a picture of our lovely kitchen. As you can see it has red walls and a breakfast bar. We really like our stools.

Birthday Celebrations

Saturday was my birthday and I received many emails, phone calls, and cards from people wishing me a happy birthday. I felt very loved. John made surprise plans for us to spend the day together. He took me downtown to the historic district. We walked down River street and stopped at a candle shop where we watched a candlemaker dip and cut fancy candles. Next we went to the Savannah Candy Kitchen where we got some pralines and watched them pull the taffy. We had dinner at a really nice restaurant in the City Market and then went to a musical production at the Historic Savannah Theatre. The production was called "Hooray for Hollywood" and was a tribute to 75 years of movie music. It was really good, we really enjoyed it. The best part (in other words most embarassing) of the evening was when I was called up on stage to be part of the silent movie comedy routine. It was a really fun day, I love spending time with John. Oh and he also made me a cake, all by himself, it was two layers and iced to perfection. We ate it for breakfast.

Southern Weather

Hi Everyone
John and I decided that starting a blog would be the best way to keep in contact with our friends and family now that we're living so far away from anyone we know. We're adjusting to our new life here in Savannah, Georgia. John is enjoying PA school and excited about getting into the clinics next quarter. I am getting used to my job as a nanny for a baby girl. We both really like the ward here and are slowing finding our way around the area.
One things that is new to us about this area is the weather. In the mornings there is often dense fog and when it rains it pours. Today we had severe thunderstorms and even a tornado warning. In the library where John was studying they weren't allowed to study in the main part of the library where there were windows. They were asked to go into the smaller rooms that were safer and didn't have windows. I was working in the home where I nanny on one of the islands, which just happened to be the exact spot where the tornado was supposed to hit. We had a lot of heavy rain and I watched the weather channel the whole morning but as far as I could tell, no tornado. So we're all safe but it was exciting to be at the heart of the storm.
This picture is of the fog in the morning