Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania

This state is just beautiful. Hard to describe really, the short mountains covered with deep green trees, the houses squashed together with loads of history in each piece of wood, and the people walking out and about at all times of the day and/or night. I've tried to keep up with the pictures, but sometimes there's just not that spunk of a little "burough" in the side of a mountain that you can see with your own two eyes. The trip up to Kittanning, PA was a long one, to say the least. I think it took us about nine hours. Crazy amount of time to be in a car. It wasn't too bad though, me and Kayla (Luke's wife) stayed in the car for the most part and we had tons of fun. Lots to talk about and such. I'm pretty sure that we talked almost the entire time we rode together. I've decided that me and Kayla are crazy alike, which is awesome!

I'm not sure how to describe the rest of our trip. From day one we were cleaning and unpacking and cleaning some more. Sometimes it felt like the girls did all the work, and the guys worked slower. I know by the end of the day all three of us girls, Kayla, Mom, and me were very very tired and went to sleep whenever we climbed into bed. But maybe that's just because it I saw it from our point of view, who knows. We made a huge dent in their empire of cardboard boxes, but by the time we left this morning they still had a long way to go to finish moving in.

We walked last night around town to go see Luke's "Youth Center" for the youth group. It's a really nice building, about three and a half blocks away from the apartment, and the main church building is just down the street from the center. The youth center actually has a little kitchen area that the youth run, and they sell things like drinks and candy there. Luke's office is just upstairs, and its nice and spacious. (It does have a Steelers football flag on the window though. I'm surprised he hadn't already taken that down.) That was pretty cool to see.

This entire trip, ever since Monday morning, I have been trying and trying to be happy and upbeat, to try and have fun while I'm having a great experience in a state that I've never been in before or dreamt of being here. But it's so hard to do that when the entire time John complains about being here, and not helping out when asked to do something totally simple, something that would take probably ten minutes at the most. But he complains and complains and then it takes about asking him twenty times before he gets up off the coach and does it. I'm not sure how he does that, sits around and plays video games or watches tv all day. If I'm inside for just a few hours, I get snippy and have to go outside and get some fresh air. I can't even imagine wanting to be inside doing nothing all day. I'd be fidgeting and crabby and jumpy all day. Maybe I don't always understand what goes on in that brain of his, but goodness.

Gettysburg. That's where we are right now, and I wouldn't say it's as beautiful as Kittanning, but it's pretty dang close. Here, there's an air of something (I haven't quite been able to name it yet). Like, you know some pretty big crap went down on the very land that you're walking on. It's pretty neat-o. We're taking a tour tomorrow of the battlegrounds, and then we'll walk around and look in on the museums and some of the other places we've heard are good to go to. Apparently, we're staying in the first modern hotel that was built in Gettysburg, which, is pretty cool because it was our last resort to finding a hotel room last minute. I'm pretty excited about being here, because it's one thing to read about a hugely historical battle, but a totally different learning experience being here at the same exact place that those men were hundreds of years ago.