Week 2

This week was a little less hectic than last with no trips to Oklahoma City or Edmonds.  We taught our Old Testament classes, and had a successful Soup Tuesday (spinach cheese soup and Parmesan cheesy rolls).  We're still getting used to our responsibilities and trying to establish a routine in our little apartment.  We spoke in Sacrament Meeting today about gratitude--which reminded us of all the blessings we enjoy, including the gospel and the chance to serve a mission together.  Then we had the sister missionaries over for dinner, followed by ward prayer. The YSA ward is small but the members are strong in spirit and firm in the faith.

This week's coincidences:  One of the YSAs (here on a wrestling scholarship) is from Cedar City, UT, and he went to high school with my niece, Catherine.  The other was while grocery shopping on Saturday.  We went to the other grocery store (Walmart being the big player in Stillwater), and a woman said rather tentatively, "Nora??".  It was the dietetics program director at Oklahoma State University (OSU), whom I've known for several years from professional meetings.  It was a great surprise for both of us.

Here's a little information about Stillwater and OSU.  In the musical Oklahoma, there is a line that says, "Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweepin' down the plain. . . "  Well, they didn't make that up; it is really windy here.  It's not as flat as much of Kansas or Nebraska, but there are no mountains (or tall buildings) to help us tell North from South. We've seen deer a few times grazing along the side of the road, and there is a blue heron living (or at least feeding) on the little pond in our apartment complex. Stillwater has about 47,000 residents (plus about 25,000 students at OSU), and the town was devastated by the tragedy when the woman drove into the homecoming parade crowd in October killing three and injuring several others.  The corner where that happened has lots of crosses, flowers, and candles, and many of the businesses have "Stillwater Strong" on their marques or in their windows.

OSU is a beautiful campus with lots of trees and red brick buildings.  The student union is quite new and a student told me it had been selected as the best student union in the nation.

Fall leaves against one of the buildings on campus

No purple pansies here--just orange!

Big O in the brick sidewalk

The Student Union--the Christmas decorations have orange balls and orange lights

The institute is situated in the midst of the fraternity and sorority houses--most of them are very big and very lovely.  They are already decorated for Christmas.  We need to brush up on our Greek letters!

One of the many sorority houses

And another sorority

The OSU teams are the Cowboys (or Cowgirls) and the mascot is Pistol Pete.  The school colors are orange and black, and virtually everyone wears orange and black on game days, as well as any other day of the week.  It sort of seems like perpetual Halloween, but we're getting used to it.  Yesterday they played Baylor in football at 6:30 pm.  One of our YSA girls is in the drum line in the marching band so we went near the stadium at about 3 pm to see them do their run through.  It was crazy! There were hundreds of tents set up for tailgating parties--many had generators and had TVs, crock pots, and orange lights, and some had big BarBQ smokers outside the tents.  Most also seemed to have a large supply of beer.

The drum line of the OSU marching band

The weather is getting colder (snow in the forecast for next Saturday), but we are comfortable, safe, and blessed.