iowa

Cody & I just got back from Iowa. I realize that it is a random vacation destination, but we had good reason -- he got accepted to the University of Iowa's Management & Organizations PhD program. What a smartie fartie! The department wanted him to come visit and said I could go too. Sometimes life just gives you lemonade & skips the lemon part :)

We left Saturday morning and flew through Denver to Cedar Rapids. The best part was hanging out in the Denver airport where my brother Dave used to work. I'm pretty sure our luggage was hauled around by some of his old buddies. One of the current students in the program that accepted Cody picked us up at the airport. He was very nice and took us around Iowa City to look at different neighborhoods. Iowa City reminded us a lot of Logan -- a quaint little town with a university (and not much else). We went to dinner with him & his wife at a fun local place with delicious food. The hotel they put us up in was super posh. The only downside was the drunken party going on outside and the unsupervised kids running around inside until 3 or 4-ish. Blah.

On Sunday, we went to church at the ward we will probably be going to. It is a married student ward and you get kicked out of it if you have kids over 3. I really liked everybody I met. And everybody I met really liked Iowa City. That was reassuring . . .

I had to come home on Sunday afternoon. The taxi driver that took me to the airport was quite the character -- he talked at me for the 30 - 35 minute drive about topics ranging from taxi drivers hitting deer, to carp, to the World Series of Poker, to Ireland, and my personal favorite : Sturgis. I probably liked hearing about Sturgis the best because it reminded me of Gillette and the time a motorcycle buddy stopped by my dad's store in IF on the way to Sturgis. But I digress!

Cody stayed Monday & Tuesday to meet the professors and students in his department. I haven't been able to get much out of him except that most everybody was nice and that he liked a lot of the research that was going on. Oh, and that his department will try to find a job for me :) I liked that part, because I am broken-hearted about leaving my current students (not the current parents -- but that is a rant for another post!).

Here are some random facts about Iowa City (hopefully our future home):
-There is a mall with an ice-skating rink inside.
-It is in Johnson County.
-There is a street named Mormon Trek Boulevard.
-Football games are WILD!
-They have a sweet outdoor mall with no streets running through it.
-It is about an hour and a half from Nauvoo.
-It is about three and a half hours from Chicago.
-I loved it! Just in case you didn't get that from this post :)