Public Service Announcement. And Niagara Falls.

Look what I did for Memorial Day weekend!

Yup, definitely went to Niagara Falls. I wish we would have had more time to hang out at the park there and do the boat ride or trolley ride and go to the aquarium and stuff, but we were on a really tight schedule. We actually went to Rochester to check out a long-term boarding place for our cats where they don't use cages-- difficult to find! It was a really cool place, run by two of the neatest people we had ever met. Even though we're in SC, it's totally worth it to take the cats up there because we know they'll be well cared for.

No outfit post today, and probably none for quite a while. Why? Because most of my clothes are packed away! The evening we arrived in Rochester, we did four phone interviews. Let me tell you, I just wanted to tell them all to shut up and let me sleep... but in the end it paid off, because we were offered jobs with all four! We had been planning to go to Korea at the end of August during the big foreign teacher intake time for public schools, but our financial situation started demanding we do something sooner than that. So after poking around for a while and then doing lots of interviews, we were offered positions at public schools in a small city. My position starts in mid-July, but K's is an ASAP position and they ideally wanted him to start on June 11. June 11!! It doesn't look like we can be there by June 11 because we're waiting for our Notices of Approval to arrive in the mail and then we have to wait for the embassy in Atlanta to process our visas. But it looks like we'll probably end up getting there the 13th or 14th. That's less than two weeks. Good lord.

Our apartment went from tidy and quaint to a hurricane of boxes almost the minute we got back from Rochester. I'm really tired of packing up and moving, ugh. This will be the.... I don't even know.... 23rd time I've moved in my life? The longest I've ever lived in one place is five years, when I was a kid. I can't even imagine what that would feel like now. Our landlord is already trying to screw us over. I. Hate. Landlords. They are the scum of the earth. I've only rented with ONE that has not screwed me over.

There is something else I want to mention. I know this post is kind of a downer, but I don't care. I've been trying to look on the bright side and find the good in people for the last year and I've only gotten burned. There is no good in people, deep down. At least not in Americans.

When we were driving back from New York, we were on a multi-lane interstate in Pennsylvania around dinner time, with quite a bit of traffic around. Suddenly, K notices a deer at the edge of the road and intuitively knows the thing is going to try to cross. It does. K swerves off the road as the deer runs into the side of our car (yes, it hit us, we didn't hit it). We go over the gravel shoulder and into a ditch. This all happened at around 75 m.p.h. I was screaming my head off and bracing myself when we finally came to a stop in the ditch. We sat there, shell-shocked, for a minute, and then made sure our body parts were all still attached. Other than some cuts, we were fine. But here's the thing that gnaws at me:

Not one person stopped. No one called the police for us.

We could have been unconscious in that car, and not a single person who witnessed the accident (and trust me there were plenty) gave enough of a shit to see if we were all right. I fucking hate people. I hate the apathy of this pathetic country. No wonder it's on a downswing. I was beside myself about this when we finally were on the road again, and then K told me that when a work buddy of his had had a really nasty accident and flipped his car after hydroplaning on an interstate in SC, no one even stopped then. The man flipped his car and rolled it into the woods next to the road, and no one even stopped. He was trapped in the car upside down and had to somehow call the cops himself.

What the FUCK is wrong with Americans?

I am sick of moving and I am bitter as hell that I have to go to another country to find a job that pays enough to live on and has health benefits and that I can't even finish my Master's degree even though I only need two more classes. But you know what? If it means that I can be away from a country full of such apathetic, self-centered assholes, I'm getting the better deal.

You want to help your country? Try looking at what's going on around you and actually help someone once in a while. I know I would, and in fact I have before, but I'm being forced to leave this land of selfish bastards. Whoever is out there reading this, if you see someone crash their car, for god's sake STOP and see if they're all right and see if you need to call a fucking ambulance for them. It's not that hard. It's really not.