oh. my. god. (Part I)

So I disappeared for a few days. My friends know my crack addiction to email/FB, so imagine what horrific events must have taken place to keep me offline for a whole four days.

Now triple them. This is part one.

I'd like to preface by saying that Philadelphia is kind of really awesome. Seriously, it's really great. But I freaked out hardcore when I got here and this is the story of my first 24 hours in a big city.

Philadelphia downtown = urban city, and Temple University is an urban campus. Check. Somehow I was not prepared for the culture shock. For example: Walking around campus at W&M, you could see every academic building in a good hour, whereas I will probably never see all of Temple. Also, city blocks do not look like the movies. I mean, some of them downtown definitely do, but you have to go through others to get there. It's really scary at first.

And different. We finally got here Saturday night, and I started bawling right away. I refused to unpack anything; I decided to give up and go home the next day instead. Liza kept handing me tissues and picking me up off the floor, and the few people I talked to on the phone got extended sobbing when I think they anticipated excited-ness. On Saturday night I was already on my way back to Virginia.

The tide finally started to turn when Mom, Dad, and Josh came up on Sunday. They gave their seal of approval on my apartment and Temple and jump-started my transition. I spent two days with my family finding the grocery stores, setting up more of the apartment, and checking out Center City. We spent some time in museums, walked the Historic District, saw Rittenhouse Square, took pictures of the LOVE park... I even ate a special-order chicken cheesesteak, which was delicious if full of meat.

Mom and I found a Farmer's Market downtown and discovered Anderson Hall tucked away on a pretty part of campus. I saw tons of student tour groups, the B&N Temple bookstore, and met some of the other students moving in. We found parks and trees and cafes and museums and colonial interpreters. I have a full card of pictures to upload ASAP. And in the end I'm okay. I'm excited and I'm having fun and I have so many museums and shows and galleries and musicians and people to see.

And so much to unpack.