And it's already a love/hate relationship. It's so GREEN out here. Everything is green, and there are miles and miles of corn and soybean fields. But the towns are so small, there's nothing to DO. And it definitely has a different atmosphere than Utah, where practically everyone is LDS. Here, almost no one is. We have on other family in the whole town who is LDS like us. It's crazy.
Sunday was alright. We drove for twenty minutes to get to church, and there were less than thirty people there. It's a branch that covers a wide area, and most of the members are inactive. I met a lot of new people, saw one cute single guy, and missed the Utah ward. I missed there being lots of people and lots of kids. It was depressingly sad how few people came to church on Sunday.
After church there really wasn't anything to do so I worked on my story. Thankfully almost everything is working out on that front. My main romantic interest is being stubborn, but nothing I can't fix with a daily dose of The Dresden Files.
Monday was a new experience. As the first normal day in the small town, I got a taste of what life will be like until I leave for Texas. Let me tell you, it was boring. We have no dishwasher and very few dishes so we have to wash the dishes by hand after every meal. That's not bad, since there isn't too much. But the worst of the day came when my parents left after lunch to go shopping and forgot to tell me that they were going to be an hour away and that they'd be shopping until evening. So I had no one to talk to and nothing to do but write. You'd think that was a good thing, but I need distractions some times when the words aren't coming.
Not too much distraction, mind you. Because as soon as my little brothers came home from spending time with friends I couldn't write anymore. I had been typing on my mom's desk top computer because I hate laptop keyboards and because I don't have a desk yet, and as soon as the boys got home they began a constant barrage of bugging me into letting them use the computer. So I couldn't concentrate and didn't get much writing done.
I stayed up late Monday night so that I could finish the scene I was working on, and around midnight I realized that it was starting to storm outside. I got ready for bed and planned to go to sleep, but the storm wouldn't let me.
You don't know the power of nature until you've been in the center of an Iowa thunderstorm. You know how when you turn a bucket of water upside down all the water comes out? Well it rained like that FOR A FULL HOUR! It rained like it the storm was trying to drown the world. And the LIGHTNING! Holy Poodles (as my friend says) the lightning was cool. If you've lived in a place like Utah, which I did, then you expect lightning to be, you know, every once in a while. I can probably count on two hands how many thunderstorms there were during the EIGHT years I'd lived in Utah.
Here? Lightning strikes EVERY SECOND! I stayed up until after one in the morning just watching the lighting and rain. The world was lit outside by the lightning flashing every second, sometimes multiple times. And I couldn't actually see the lightning because it was RIGHT OVERHEAD. I've never been so happy. I love rain and storms so much, and this was the MOTHER of all storms. It was flooding in the streets and sidewalks and yards, there was so much water coming down. It was a truly amazing sight. I had my eyes open as wide as they go the entire time I watched, and I walked around the house the entire hour, trying to find the best view.
The bad thing about it was our basement leaks. We had water coming in through the walls. The WALLS. Thankfully there's nothing down there.
So those were my first experiences out here in the Heartland.
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