The Saga of What's Happening.

Hello friends.

After long and laborious deliberation, I've decided that I'm going to shout out my small adventures into the ethereal wilderness that is the internet in this vainglorious idiotic probably narcissistic (definitely poorly-articulated) blog and hope that someone hears and sends a postcard saying hello. Idiotic as that sentence was, I do love postcards, especially the ones that come on the same day as bills, because then we can spread our mail out on the dining room table and make ratios that please us: this much correspondence to this many utilities. Who loves us and who just wants our money? Who will read this blog? What will we have for dinner? Has Rob fallen in a hole on his nightly bike ride? Will my father Google me and discover this digital diary? What kind of father Googles their daughter anyway?

One of my favorite lines from a favorite poem that I'll put right here because it seems relevant:

Forgive me. I simply do not know what I am doing.

This is my second foray into blog-land, only now I am doubly self-conscious about it; last time I was a lost little American scrambling around Germany and Austria, drinking too much beer, spending too much money, and generally being confused but having an adventure so epic it plagues me to this day with memories that are so vast I sometimes wonder if they're really mine.

Actually, not much has changed. I still drink too much beer, spend too much money, and I am generally confused pretty much perpetually, only this time I'm a graduate student with loans that hover over me like one of those cartoon 16-TON anvils, rope strands unraveling, no job to speak of, no agenda from day-to-day besides keeping myself fed, and, truthfully, it's kind of awesome.

My name is Rachel, I'm 22, I live in a housepartment in a town by the ocean with Rob, the boy I picked up in Austria though he's American as baseball and cobbler combined, who may or may not have fallen in a hole on his nightly bike ride around our dreamy neighborhood, a stately place to say the least: giant old houses with wide front porches, interlocking oak trees hung with Spanish moss, railroad tracks with one lonesome train whistle, a brick-and-ivy elementary school.

I've been here in Wilmington (NC, not DE) for approximately 20 days. In that time, I've been to two disorienting Orientations, two intimidating graduate-level classes, a handful of meet-and-greets where I just got nervous and twisted my shirt hem a lot, and Wal-Mart. Around sixty times. The housepartment has gone from barren to burgeoning, my parents have come and gone, Rob's parents have come and gone, and now here we are. There's plenty to tell, and I plan on telling it, if only for the practice of words-per-minute, which I've sorely missed.

If you're out there, wave. More than likely I miss you. But things are pretty grand down here, and I hope you want to know about as much as I want to tell you about it. Yes? All right.