Before Arizona

This week, I'm writing from the great state of Iowa. I flew up here on Wednesday (which is a whole other story itself, since the first flight was delayed four hours and making me miss the second connecting flight) and got here about 5 in the afternoon. The last 20 minutes of the plane ride, I just spent watching out the window at all the green farm fields. It'd been 3 years since the last time I was up here.

For those that know me, you probably know I wasn't always an Arizona girl. Right before I started 7th grade, we found out that we'd be moving to Arizona for my dad's job so that he could work out of Winslow, Arizona. So midway through the school year, we moved in January of 2004. It was -4 degrees in the morning that we left with a -15 to -20 degree windchill. By the time we made it to Arizona the next day, they were having nice weather and it was somewhere in the 60s. That was probably the nicest part of the move.

I was born in Greenfield, Iowa and had lived in the same house ever since. We lived in a house out in the country 5 miles from town. We lived just a mile down the road from my grandparents (whose house I'm staying at now) and 3 quarters of a mile away from my uncle's and his family's house. We left lots of relatives (from both sides of the family) here in Iowa who are all still here, so its fun to come and visit for a few weeks every once in a while.

I think it was a hard move for all of us, but at the time, it was the best for my dad's job and allowed him to be home so we could see him a lot more. Regardless, it took probably over a year for me to get used to where we were. I'd been used to green and rolling hills all my life. I knew everyone in my class in Iowa as well as the rest of the whole school. So when I got picked up and moved to Arizona, the land was brown and had little vegetation and my school was 3 times the size of what I was used to (even though is still considered small by today's standards) and even to the day I graduated high school, I probably only knew the names of one tenth of the school.

I think a lot of it was culture shock. Once I finally got to high school and out of junior high, I was a lot happier in Arizona. Part of that was probably due to being a part of the several choirs and bands there and finally sort of having a "place" where I felt I belonged. I also really liked having all of the AP classes available and getting to know my classmates since we all tended to be in the same AP classes.

I guess to make this post "optometry" related, I will mention that the night I got here, my grandma mentioned she had an eye doctor appointment the next morning and wanted to know if I wanted to accompany her. Since she sees the same optometrist that I saw as a kid when I lived, here, I didn't hesitate to say yes.

So yesterday, I sat in on her appointment and got to talk to my old optometrist and had a lot of fun asking her questions after I'd told her what my plans were for the fall. Additionally, I even got to see my grandma's slight cataracts through the slit lamp as well as the optic nerves in the back of her eyes with another machine.

For now, I'm enjoying not having any responsibilities and seeing as many family members and people as I can up here in Iowa. Getting to see my old class mates and catch up is always fun too. Seeing as I have almost exactly a month left until orientation at my new school, I should probably use this time to relax as much as possible. :)

The night we got here, a mama raccoon and 2 of her half grown babies showed up to eat the cat food and food scraps in the back yard. We had fun watching them from her sun room windows.