(i'm sorry that it's been a while, so i'm adding tons of photos.)

i like living in arkansas. i really do.

part of that might simply be that i never get the sense that any single place will be the last place in which i live and i know that i will not be here forever. (intellectually, i know that someday some place will be The Last Place, but i am twenty years old and thus have a very dull sense of my own mortality.)

mostly, i like arkansas because most of the people here are decent, genuinely nice people.

on thursday, beth and i went to beebe, arkansas, to look around the ASU beebe campus. at the student center there, we ran into a man who gave us a ride in the back of his truck from one side of campus to the other. at the admissions office, we told the counselor that we wanted to sit in on some classes. she directed us to an english class, but we ended up interrupting a test when we showed up. that teacher sent us to the next class over, which was a grammar class. beth and i posed as seniors at searcy high school, and got some advice from a friendly freshman about how much studying i should do for the ACT and SAT.

see? nice people. i got a letter the very next day that thanked me for visiting the campus. i wonder how the secretary felt about sending the letter to my harding university mailbox.

also, i went to missouri a few weekends ago with katie, austin, and megan. we visited katie's family and spent some time hanging around springfield. the town is lovely. my favorite site was the moxie, an independent film theater. we saw the puffy chair, which was actually a beautiful movie. the story was emotionally difficult, but that made it worthwhile.

i get restless on road trips when i'm not driving, which usually results in a lot of ridiculous pictures.

katie and i in our normal pose:


austin and i in what will probably become our normal pose:


normal pose, etc etc:


later, megan pointed out that she and i didn't have any pictures today (she was driving, and i know better than to antagonize the driver), so we took these pictures at the dorm:




did you note that i'm wearing a dress?:



i also wanted to share some pictures of our apartment. katie hates it when i call it an apartment--it's on-campus housing, so i suppose we should be calling it a dorm. but if this is a dorm, it's one heck of an amazing dorm room.

we made fewer holes in the wall by hanging up fabric and pinning posters directly to the fabric. our television is bordered by bunnies jumping into the ocean.


the kitchen isn't always so creepily lit. i didn't use a flash.


our dining room is this blurry in person, too. beth studying is a permanent fixture.


katie and i always have a messy room. this photograph was taken mere hours after she cleaned up (that is not a joke - you usually can't see so much of the floor.)


beth and pa nhia have a comparatively cleaner room. by the way, this is pa. she's my new suitemate. she's unlike anybody i've ever met before.


the wall beside my desk is covered with pictures. perhaps you're there? further left, there's a picture of my mother. i love that woman.


on the back of our door, we leave encouraging messages for each other. today's message reads "big gay kt h8s u"!



that is all.

today, as i was making spaghetti...

karyn: "this is fun. i'm going to be a mom someday."

beth: "really?"

"probably."

"is that a chopstick you're stirring the noodles with?"

"yes."

"you're not going to be a mom, karyn."

it's been a pretty rough semester so far in that i do not want to talk to boys or be around boys or sit in classrooms with boys. i just don't like them, i don't trust them, i'm having a difficult time with that, etc.

on monday, wednesday, and friday, i have an american literature class at 10:00 a.m. there's a boy in that class with whom i've had a few other english classes in previous semesters. he sits in my row a few seats down, so he has to walk behind my chair to get to his chair. when i make it to class before him, he puts his hand on my shoulder as he's walking by and squeezes my shoulder in a gentle, affirming way.

this is just standard practice for him, but it really affects my life. not at all in a YOU'RE MY DESTINY LET'S GET MARRIED sort of way, but in a you-remind-me-that-people-can-be-really-beautiful sort of way. i need that. it's nice to have contact with a boy and be able not to perceive it as directly threatening.

that's the end of that.

classes themselves seem to be shaping up nicely. i've been active in the creative writing group on campus this semester, and i've been actually leaving my dorm once in a while to spend time with other human beings.

i got pulled over for the first time since i got my license, which results in me having my first court date. october 19th.

i bought my own plane ticket and booked my own hotel room for the first time. i'm meeting ellen in november for a kol convention.

i stopped biting my fingernails and i think i'm going to be able to actually stop for good this time. i've already trimmed them down twice since i quit.

i've been preparing legitimate meals for myself and sometimes for others, and i've come to actually enjoy washing dishes.

i stay up late, wake up early, and take afternoon naps. i spend 6 hours a week in night classes.

i haven't blown off chapel by leaving early this semester. i'm pretty proud of that, especially considering that today was the special chapel where they get political science professors to discuss how great the american constitution is. the speaker managed to integrate the events of september 11, 2001, into his presentation. (the idea of self-rule somehow moved into a description of how the passengers of flight 93 democratically decided to try to take the plane back. it was both a fascinating rhetorical maneuver and awkward emotional appeal.)

i went to a sufjan stevens concert in nashville and drove all night to get back for classes the next morning. the concert was beautiful, and it made me seriously consider whether or not i believe in god.

i do believe in god, by the way. that's where i landed. i've actually been putting a lot of thought into that, and it seems to me that if i did not believe in god, i would not have any reason to do anything. the fact that i wake up in the morning, get out of bed, go to chapel, go to class, work, give the day a shot--it means that i believe in god.

that's how my life has been. how has your life been?

p.s. i get to see kerry in november for the first time in over four years. i'm excited.

p.p.s. apparently, stealing from the dead has no consequences.

beth, katie, and i made a pilgrimage to petit jean state park yesterday.



i stole $.80 off of this grave,



and i used it to buy two packs of these cookies at a gas station.



the moral of the story is that gas was only $2.57 per gallon at that gas station, which makes rural arkansas a pretty great place to live.

(also, if bad things start happening to me, at least now everybody can understand why i'm being haunted by the spirit of petit jean. katie and beth and i split the cookies, so they might be under some sort of curse also.)