The South will rise again!

We have arrived.

Well, not permanently, of course, but, as I write this, M. and I are in our hotel room in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. We've spent the day so far looking for a place to live; it's going fairly well, aside from the fact that not many apartment offices are open. The nerve!

Anyway, it was quite the trek getting here. Our plane was late leaving Salt Lake, but we arrived in Dallas with enough time to make our connection--however, the flight got canceled due to maintenance issues. American Airlines (Motto: "Buy your own ticket! Buy your own food! Buy your own freaking air to breathe!") trotted out another plane, but it wasn't big enough, so we had to jettison fifteen passengers. Somehow, Melanie and I were chosen and given the option of waiting for a later flight, in exchange for some vouchers. With some hesitation, we said yes, and it was a good thing we did--we actually arrived in Jackson, Mississippi earlier than the original flight did.

It took us about two hours to drive down to Hattiesburg from Jackson. I CAN'T TELL YOU HOW RURAL IT IS. I haven't seen this many trees since my time in Costa Rica. Everything down here is carved out of the forest. Here are some pictures of us driving around:

I'm not complaining, of course--I'm simply amazed. It's like in the movie "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves," where Robin and Azeem and the blind dude escape into Sherwood Forest, and Azeem exclaims, "Only in my dreams have I imagined such a place." Yeah. Places like this still exist, I guess.

We've found one apartment complex that looks promising, and a nice member of the local ward here let us take a look around her apartment there, since the office was closed. Here's the complex:




Just kidding--sorry, I couldn't resist. No, the apartment looked nice, and it's big, and it seems to have weathered Hurricane Katrina well. (Interestingly enough, the lady said that Hurricane Katrina didn't seem all that big--that is, until she went outside and all the roofs in the city were missing and trees were on top of everything.)

Well, I'm sure more posts will follow. Everyone say it with me, now: EM-EYE-ESS-ESS-EYE-ESS-ESS-EYE-PEE-PEE-EYE!!!