| Oops...I slipped off the face of the earth...again. But this time I had an excuse...I got married!
My dress turned out perfectly and I am the only girl in the world with a dress like that, which is a perk of being picky  they took the design and lace I liked and made it out of ivory silk and it was gorgeous.  I wore my hair mostly down with loose ringlets and a long veil over the back of my dress. I did go with the purplely-bluish theme, with the bridesmaids in periwinkle blue and the flowers blue delphiniums, purple and pink tulips, blue hydrangeas and purple and pink larkspur. My bouquet was beautiful with white versions of all those flowers in addition to ivory roses. I absolutely adored those flowers though and was sad that I didn't get to take them with me. Dr. Bates (former theology professor at PHC) married us and I'm sure he gave a great message, but I must confess that I hardly heard a word he said. Mr. McPeak gave a charge to Izzy and knighted him with a sword and that was so special. Izzy and I had our vows memorized (to avoid the repeat-after-me stuff) and it was so much more meaningful that way. The music was incredible with Mrs. Nicolet (Elizabeth's mom) on the pipe organ and Daniel Watson (friend from PHC) and Wayne Cameron (Izzy's trumpet teacher) playing trumpets for the processional and recessional. The sound filled the whole church and I felt like royalty. And Samuel rung the bell up in the bell tower as we were leaving the church and that was a really neat touch. Everything went smoothly and nothing went wrong. The only thing that was slightly less than ideal was that it was pretty windy for part of the time we were shooting pictures outside, but actually we got some awesome dramatic shots of my veil flying up in the air, so it wasn't bad. The reception went well too and we had our first dance to Michael Buble's "You and I" (which I picked out the night before) and I had a waltz with my dad, and then I changed into my flouncy turquoise dress to swing dance. It was so much fun, even though I didn't eat more than the bite of wedding cake that Izzy fed me and I could hardly walk on my feet by the end of the day. All in all, I could not have asked for a more perfect wedding, or a more perfect groom.
(Unfortunately, the wedding pictures are all still at my parents' house in Chicago and I haven't gotten to see any of them. I will post some as soon as I can though.)
Then we were off to Aruba for our honeymoon, which was a blast. Our hotel was awesome and had its own private island where we could swim in the lagoons and lounge around on hammocks and be lazy (and after PHC finals and all the wedding planning we were overdo for a good dose of laziness ) And we also got to go snorkeling with cute little (and big) fishies and sailing into the sunset and parasailing hundreds of feet into the air and waverunner-ing waaayy out into the ocean It was so much fun - aside from the fact that I got motion sick doing half of those things.  Izzy got to eat all kinds of cool seafood, while I sampled the island's wide variety of varriations on the good old BLT and Club Sandwich - once I had a Mahi-Mahi BLT. And the drinking age there was 18, so I learned that Strawberry Daquiris and Pina Coladas were yummy things, but that pretty much anything else alcoholic was not...
But unfortunately honeymoons don't last forever and we had to come back to real life. Real life, however is much nicer when you get to be with the person you love 24/7 *grin*. God provided us with a perfectly adorable townhouse on an inlet of the Chesapeake Bay for half of what we were expecting to pay for rent of an apartment 1/3 its size. It was a nice place to live for the summer and it was close to Izzy's parents so we had lots of fun with them. Izzy's original intelligence contracting job that he had lined up since last year ended up not working out, so he had to take up being a delivery person for a carry-out service instead. I spent the summer working on the NATO sourcebook, and being a good little housewife, but I got kinda lonely with Izzy gone all the time (he was working from 10-10 some days).
Now we are moved into a little apartment in Virginia. It's slightly ghetto (not like DC ghetto, but not as nice as what we're used to). For one thing I think we are the only white people in the entire complex... And we were slightly shocked and amused when the apartment people tell us with a completely straight face as if it is perfectly normal that the washing machine has to be hooked up to the kitchen sink with this hose in order for it to run. ^_o So much for doing dishes and laundry at the same time, eh? But all in all it's a good little house and will be fine for the next year or so.
Now Izzy is working in DC for, ironically, CTC again (a different office) three days a week and taking classes two days a week. I, for many reasons, decided not to come back to PHC. I don't feel like it's where I'm supposed to be anymore. For now I plan on transfering in the spring to somewhere in DC that has a foreign affairs major. I'm hoping for George Washington University because they have the most flexible core curriculum (so I can pick something I find interesting for all the required courses...and they even have "science for the non-science major" classes, hallelujah!) and I like their foreign policy program the best. They are really really expensive though so I'd have to qualify for some major financial aid...but since I am a poor newlywed I should have no problem with that. The trick is getting accepted...My ACT score is about average for GWU (never thought that evil thing would come back to haunt me!) and I'm doubting that PHC credits will transfer, but we'll see.
So for right now I'm working about 5 hours a day at the Gap Outlet, which is alright because I talked them into paying me way more than I really quallify for. But it is hard on the feet standing up all that time, but oh well. The worst part is that half of the people (or more than half) that come into the store don't speak english...whether they're mexicans that live here or international travlers. I don't really understand how people expect me to be able to help them find the right size jeans to buy when all they can say is "for my seeester...she not here but she about *gestures* size..." riiight... "well ma'am, my magic powers are telling me that this pair of jeans will definitely fit your sister in india who I've never seen" So I end up having a conversation with gestures about how tall the girl is and how wide and whether or not they want flared jeans or low rise jeans or what. It's been rather interesting...I've helped people from Morocco, Turkey, Russia, France, Paraguay, India - the list goes on. I don't understand why all these people come to our store for their one week in the US, but I guess it is good deals on clothes.
Oh yes, and I am nineteen now... |
something like this: 
