Over the River(s) and Thru the Woods

For those of you who are wondering about the gap in my otherwise prolific blogging habit, it is because I am in the midst of a cross-country drive. My mom and I started the long drive from PA to MT on Friday afternoon after filling every square inch of my car with my stuff. I do not exaggerate. It's mostly books, but man, I have a lot of stuff!

Observations along the way:

• Turnpike driving generally gets cheaper the further West you go.
• I never thought I'd see the day I was excited about gas under $2, but it was under $2 in parts of Ohio and we were amazed.
• McDonalds salads are better than Burger King salads.
• We're spending two nights in Chicago with my brother. Chicago is such a fun city - big city life style, but the people still have traces of midwest friendliness. Since I spent 4 years in MI, this feels comfortably familiar to me.
  
• Along similar lines, drivers here are much less aggressive than they are in PA. I find myself being a very rude driver, but I'm just doing the things I've been doing in Philly for the last 3 years.
• He lives one block from Wrigley field, so as I relaxed on the couch this afternoon, I could hear the crowds cheering the Cubs to victory over Colorado. Cool.
• Enough of our trip has reminded me of specific songs that I'm going to try to make a "soundtrack" of our trip using songs that mention places through which I've driven.
• As I was looking for a church to attend this morning, I automatically went to the PCA homepage; 5 years ago, I'd barely heard of the PCA! What is more, the church we went to was multi-ethnic (predominantly Korean), a church plant (Redeemer model), and one of the pastors was a WTS grad. 3 years ago, none of those would have meant anything to me, but now each of those factors was significant.

Upon reflection, I find it hard to believe that it was so simple to just get up and leave behind my life in Philly -- my friends, my school, my dwelling place. The fact that those things are so far away seems like an abstraction. Many thanks, however, to those people who sent me well-wishes on the event of my graduation. I had a wonderful time and felt very blessed all last week. I shall treasure those memories for many years to come.