We Made It! One Week Complete

Well we’re here! After over 33 hours of driving more than 2000 miles across 10 states of the country on just 15 hours of sleep, we made it to Charlottesville, VA. And it is beautiful here! You can’t see to the next street over (or really any distance for that matter) because lush green trees line the sides of every road. It is amazing. It feels like we get to drive through Provo Canyon when we’re just trying to get to the Post Office or somewhere simple…it’s like Provo Canyon but better.

The road trip across the United States was actually really fun, and really pretty. Yep, we even thought the flat, never-ending drive through Wyoming and Nebraska was pretty (it’s probably a good thing we saw those on the first day though). Kentucky was really pretty. St. Louis was fun with the bustle of the big city and we road the metro to the Gateway Arch. That thing is massive and way cool! We tried to get a ride to the top but by the time we made it (blame a crazy, scam artist taxi driver…I am ;)) we’d just missed the last tram by 10 minutes. That’s okay though. We got to walk along the Mississippi River and get out of the motel. Plus, now we have a reason to go back: The Gateway Arch and Buttercake.

Before we got to St. Louis, we did a Church History tour that second day. We saw Adam-Ondi-Ahman, Liberty Jail, Far West, and the RLDS Temple. The first three were absolutely amazing! We sat at Adam-Ondi-Ahman and read scriptures about this beautiful place that Christ will come to during the Second Coming. I thought Adam-Ondi-Ahman was going to just be like a hill, but it’s not. It’s like a valley—it’s huge! And so green! There were butterflies everywhere, too. As we sat and read scriptures about Adam blessing his posterity here, butterflies would come rest on our legs and sit and lick our fingers. (The licking kind of freaked me out).

Far West was absolutely amazing. There is no temple there, but there is dedicated ground for a temple. The saints got as far as dedicating the ground and laying the cornerstones before mobs forced them out. The temple at Far West will be built again for the Second Coming though. Even though there wasn’t a physical temple on that ground, it was a very spiritual experience. A quiet, peaceful hush filled the area. It was amazing, and really interesting because the big RLDS temple did not have that type of peaceful spirit despite the large, expensive structure. It was the quiet, peaceful spirit that filled up the ground at Far West.

Liberty Jail was awesome too. The missionaries there walked us through the history and then showed us the jail where the basement is still the exact same basement, except for a few wall boards, that Joseph Smith and others were locked in for so long. All three places we visited were places that the Prophet Joseph Smith once stood in. It was an awesome experience.

Despite the occasional smell of secondhand smoke drifting into our apartment from around the poorly sealed door, the baseboards, and possibly the pipes, our apartment here in Virginia is pretty nice. It didn’t used to be…when we arrived the white carpets were stained with black and yellow spots, the cupboards were left with food (I found a Chewy bar) and crumbs everywhere, even some sticky residue in the cupboards. Food and grease splattered the outside of the cupboards and we immediately thought, “What are we doing?”

Both Justin and I have known that us coming to Virginia wasn't just to study at UVA but that there was something else that we both need to learn and need to do by doing this. We've only been here three days and we've already learned a ton!

There wasn’t much else we could do so we got to work. We vacuumed the carpets as best we could, scrubbed every inch of the kitchen, even on top of the fridge and cupboards, washed the bathroom, and cleaned walls until it felt a little bit cleaner. Justin, and his handy toolbox, fixed a broken closet door, rogue screws poking through the cupboards, and rogue cables extending from what feels like every corner of the room. We then started the process of unpacking. Today is day 3…or maybe 4 and we still haven't unpacked all the way. This is a HUGE job, especially when there’s only one closet for clothes to go and the coat closet is too risky of a place to put things you don’t want to smell like smoke :/. Yesterday we assembled our bed, dresser, kitchen table, office desk, and set up our couch and TV. It’s really starting to look like home.

We bought a TV stand, contact paper for inside the kitchen cupboards, a 5-shelf storage unit to put all our big appliances on since the cupboards are too small for such things, a super cute area rug to hide some spots and to bring in color, and some more.

Although I didn’t like the place when we first moved in, I really like it now. All except that pesky smoke smell coming from the neighbors. When the smell came in the other night while we were trying to relax and watch TV, we were both super disheartened. We didn’t want to have to get rid of all of our stuff when we’re done here because it and us smell like smoke. We didn't know what to do. We’ve narrowed the smoke smell coming from the hallway (which always smells heavily of smoke) and then possibly through the baseboards.

The only thing we can think to do is to get to work. Today we’re going shopping and going to look into getting weather stripping to put around the door so that hallway smoke can’t come in. I’m hoping that with that and some Wallflower plug ins throughout our home, it’ll stop smelling like smoke and stop letting the smoke in.

Do you have any suggestion for what we should do??  We could use some ideas!