Louisville, KY 40220

So, we have officially lived in Kentucky for about seven months and although it will never feel like home there are probably worse places we could be. It has been nice in the sense that we live in what we call "Mini Utah." There are probably twenty other couples from Utah who are going to dental school out here and live in the same apartment complexes as we do so it made it pretty easy to make friends and everyone here is shockingly really cool (I know that makes me sound awful but, honestly, it is kind of hard to find that many people you mesh with). Anyway, for the most part, life has been pretty mundane. Nate literally studies from sunup until sundown almost everyday. He wakes up at 6:30 am and gets in a car with four other guys from school that live in our complex to make it to the school by 8:00 am. He is usually home by 5:30 pm, eats dinner, and then sits on the couch and stares at his ipad going over slides until about 10:30 pm when he goes to bed. Even on weekends he studies basically from the time he wakes up until the time he goes to bed but Friday nights we usually find something else to do for a few hours (and by something else to do I mean that we go out to eat since that's basically the only thing there is to do in the city). As for me, I had a struggle the first few months living here. I didn't find the job I wanted until the end of September which meant my only purpose in life for the first few months was to sleep, workout, grocery shop, nap, and make dinner. It honestly was so depressing. I just sat at home by myself with no real priorities for a few months. I always say you're only bored if you're a boring person and I truly was a boring person during that time ha. But I finally ended up getting a job at Norton Suburban hospital which is part of the biggest hospital chain in Kentucky and it happened to be only about a fifteen minute drive from our apartment. I chose to work on the oncology floor PRN and it has been the best thing for me. It's a really depressing floor and I find myself constantly paranoid that me or someone in my family has cancer but it's a really fulfilling place to work and I am learning new things as a nurse which is always nice. I am obviously loving PRN status because it allows me to not have to work when Nate has breaks from school and we can go home which is huge to me. But, it still forces me to work at least one shift every two weeks which gets me out of the house and allows me to keep my skills so it has been awesome. The people at work have been so nice I can't even believe it but man, you realize once you get out of Utah how vulgar the rest of the world is and how often they use the "F" word. I can handle some swearing, I swear myself on occasion, but these Kentuckians have taken it to a new level so it has been hard adjusting to hearing it full-time at work. Nate says the same thing about school, we're just not in Utah anymore ha but Nate has used it as an opportunity for missionary work. He is always having conversations with people about the church and handing out Books of Mormon, I should learn to be better about that. Anyway, here is our list of things we like about Kentucky: Nate thinks the dental school is a really good school He loves that they have good sports teams The weather stays pretty mild (most of the time) The people are really nice here We like that we live near other Utahns We like that there's grass everywhere We like how close we are to other cities we'd probably never go to otherwise Missionary opportunities are everywhere and so many people are converts in our ward Things we hate about Kentucky: Eastern time because all the games are televised so late and our families forget about the change and call us when we're sleeping haha They don't have shoulders on the roads here and the roads are SO narrow There are medians everywhere It's a city and we hate traffic and stoplights The humidity in the summer is bad enough to make us drop $600 on a flight just to get out of it The church is a 15-20 minute drive away It's forever away from Utah and we don't get to go home much There is a train right by our house that sounds like it's going to take us out about eight times a day There are so many trees it makes you feel suffocated because you can't see further than 0.5 miles at a time There are no mountains or landmarks and you never know which way you're going We have yet to find anywhere to fish or hunt near Louisville Nate has a long drive to the school everyday People are so hard to understand with their hickish accent and then they ask YOU where your accent is from and they guess Minnesota or Germany before you get the chance to tell them Utah (what the heck??) So, obviously we have a lot more on our "hate" list than our "like" list but, like I said, I'm sure there are worse places. We figure we can handle anything as long as we know it's not our forever. We did get out and do a few things when Nate had a little break from school though...

These are pictures of us on The Belle of Louisville which is the oldest running steamboat to run on the Mississippi/Ohio River. I wish I would have gotten a picture of us in front of the boat but these will have to do. We did this our first week in Louisville for Nate's dental school's opening social.

This was Kirk, Mariah, and I at the Louisville Bats game which is Louisville's minor league baseball team.

Nate and I at the Bats game.

Here are pictures of us at the Cincinnati Reds game. It was such a cool stadium that overlooked the river and we had tons of fun, it's definitely something we need to do again. The day before that we went to King's Island water and theme park (though I just did the water park because I was pregnant at the time) but Nate went on a few rides at the theme park and it looked awesome, we'll need to go back and do that again for sure. I didn't get any pictures there though which I'm bummed about. Then we stayed overnight in Cincinnati, (which we never just get a hotel and stay overnight somewhere so it was fun to just relax) then woke up the next day and went downtown to eat at Nada's Mexican Restaurant which was supposed to be THE place to eat in Cincinnati and it was way good. Their chips and salsa were like nothing we'd every tasted before. We way overpaid as far as quantity goes but it was fun to splurge and eat at one of the best places in Cincinnati. That's all we've really been able to do so far with Nate's school schedule but we're hoping to do a lot more around here in the next three years!