So, it's Tuesday night. We've been in Austin for five days now- it feels like so much longer than that. I've done so much everyday. Right now I am sitting in a really cute internet cafe/bar that is open until 2:00am.
     So far I have absolutely loved Austin.  It felt pretty weird the first night sleeping in a completely empty apartment though.  I'm trying to remember what we've done since then.  First day Kristin and I went out and bought a ton of cleaning supplies and essentials and we cleaned the heck out of our apartments.  It was really satisfying, and made it feel a lot more like my own place.  I also went to a bicycle shop and got a serious lock and some night time lights.  I plan on biking everywhere and I'm so excited about it.  Our apartment is so close to everything I will ever need too. 
     Since our bike purchases I've been doing various errands like setting up my new bank account- I'm really loving Chase so far.  The thing that has taken up most of our time has been searching on Craigs list for furniture and then picking stuff up.  It's been super fun furnishing our apartments. Dylan and I are almost done with the basic furnishing.  We've got some great stuff; a great maroonish couch, really nice swivel chairs, a great desk for my room, a futon donated by Mac, a mattress donated by our apartment dumpster, two desk chairs, and we're waiting on two dressers and one more desk.  Then we've got Dylan's carpet and we hung up his prayer flags.  It looks really great, and I love being there.  On the way home from picking up my desk chair we noticed that someone was going to throw out tons of bamboo, so we asked if we could take some, and carried a bunch of it home- we plan on making an awesome two-tiered coffee table for our last living room piece.  Hopefully I can put some pictures up soon on this site or on Facebook.
     The last major things to take care of are: getting the internet in our apartment, figuring out our car situation, and changing driver's licenses.  It's been really frustrating not having internet.  We set up an account for it which took forever, and then we had to call a different number to set up an installation appointment, and the soonest available time was the 29th of August.  We ordered a router at the same time which will get here in a couple of days, and I talked to my neighbors today and asked if we could borrow their internet once our router got here, and they were more than happy to help us out.  The guy was really nice.  I invited him and his wife to come to dinner sometime when our apartment is more set up, and he told me he's in culinary school, and he'll be trying recipes out on us also. 
     One of these nights Mac and Jill had us over for dinner which was really nice.  Their house is amazing.  I can't wait to start working- I believe we might have a meeting later this week!  The Frazier kids were really cute.  Their two youngest taught me how to play poison ball on their trampoline which was super fun.
     This morning we returned our U-haul truck.  I'm glad to be done with that thing- it reminded me too much of the hellish trip out here.  Although it was nice for picking up our couches.
     Oh, two things I'm excited about; one is that I have a working pull up bar in my apartment!  I'm going to get so huge! I also like hanging upside down from it.  The other thing I'm super excited about is buying some potting soil and plants.  Our balcony is in a great spot where we can pretty much control how much sunlight a plant would get depending on where we put it.  I might start that task tomorrow- we'll see.
     Alright, I'm getting a bit tired, and I think I want to put my desk together before I go to bed.
I love you all,
                   -Ethan