To the Raspberry!

We finally did it.  We bought a car.  When moving to the US, we made the conscious decision to not purchase a car.  We thought we wouldn't need one for daily activities, Rexburg is small enough to walk, and for the weekend we could rent.  Plus we would save a bunch of money this way.  And we were right.  We did just fine.  But now, after seven months, we've realized that having a car would be advantageous for weekend activities.  Eastern Idaho has lots to offer for people who like the outdoors, but unfortunately not within walking distance.  Kristina recognized that we are travel people.  In Germany, we enjoyed heading out somewhere for the weekend, even if it was just a day trip.  She recognized that is something that we've been missing here, and owning a car would greatly facilitate that kind of activity.  She still wanted to put it off for a couple months, but with semester break coming up, I thought now was the perfect time.

I went to work searching online, and made a trip to a local dealer.  After a lengthy search of two weeks, I finally found the Raspberry.  I had gone with our friend Gary to Idaho Falls, and it was the fourth car we test-drove that day.  The others had been nice, but not very exciting.  Then the saleswoman suggested this little Scion xA.  I opened it up, and the first thing I noticed was the manual transmission.  It would be an understatement to say that that excited me just a little.  We took her out for a drive, and from the first moment, she was just fun to drive.  We came back and bantered for a bit, but I admitted to Gary that I was going to buy that car.  When another salesman came by with some customers, I decided that it was enough with the games, and we moved on to getting it done.  It was such a long process, but interesting.  Gary had never before purchased a car, and I think he found it interesting what all went into it.  I was really pleased with the choice, and got done in time to make it back to Rexburg to attend the temple with Kristina (she was working there that afternoon).

I was pretty confident that Kristina would like the car, and had talked to her about it on the phone, but was still kind of nervous about how she'd react.  But she liked it and that made me feel better.  Then came the issue of naming her.  Kristina started with "strawberry", but I countered that the color was more like a cranberry.  Kristina was okay with that, but wasn't excited about it, because there's no German word for cranberry.  Then we came to raspberry, and we both got excited.  In our favorite TV show, Psych, the main characters, Shawn & Gus, drive around in this little blue car they call "The Blueberry", so it's kind of fun to now call our car "The Raspberry".

As you can tell from the lapse between this post and our last one, we've been pretty busy lately, but then again, so is everyone.  We had a great first half year here.  I kept busy as a new professor, preparing lectures and homework and everything else.  Kristina has been busy working with the Relief Society, singing in a community choir (they gave a Christmas concert, pictured right), applying to finish her studies at BYU-I (she was accepted last month!), making friends, and completing the home study for an adoption.

We've enjoyed our first seven months here.  We've made good friends and had good experiences.  We've been blessed to set up a beautiful, comfortable apartment where we feel at home.  We enjoy having friends over for dinner, and organized our first Thanksgiving at home.  We had a great time visiting my family for Christmas, and look forward to some great trip in the months ahead.