Painting a picture with a keyboard

So, Albert Lea is SO weiirrddd. I sometimes dont leave our little townhome for days (literally - and can you blame me? Today it was ONE degree Fahrenheit - not Celcius, mind you, FAHRENHEIT and Lucy's little cheeks got wind burnt last time we went out. And we literally dashed from the townhome to the car and were only outside 3 minutes! So I forget. But when I do leave, I am quickly reminded how weird it is.

We went to the mall today - HILARIOUS. So weird - the kind of mall where the town's insurance agency is in it. The only store you have ever even heard of before (excluding Hallmark) is Claire's. They do have a handmade mini golf course run by the 'Rock of Christ' youth group though that is open from 6:30 PM to 9 PM on Fridays and Saturdays, which was our primary purpose in going to the mall. Pretty sweet mini golfing - they had one hole that was made of hockey goals and pucks - very innovative and creative! Howeverm the guy running it was bored out of his mind and is now our new best friend. I definitely could use some friends in this town, but still...

Ryan wanted to bring in our camcorder into Walmart the other day because, according to him, the whole store was especially full of 'crazy old zombies.' All of them Christmas shopping slow as molasses, not moving out of his way, and almost backing up into him as he tried to get back to the car. Everyone in this town is old, REALLY old (the population of this city literally keeps decreasing because people keep dying). Or fat. Like very fat. Or old and fat. I dont mean to be rude, it is just SUCH a weird population dynamic and I have never seen anything like it before!

And nobody seems very stoked to be here, yet my impression is that people generally are not very successful when it comes to escaping this town. The story of so so many of the people that Ryan and I have met here is that the town is boring and there is NOTHING to do, so people have sex and get pregant when they're still teenagers. And they have no money so they get stuck in this tiny, sad little town with no education, no skills, and no prospects. Their parents help raise the kid, and the kid grown up and the same thing happens to the kid. I am not exaggerating - the people who grow up here stay here and never get out, although they all want to. Its really pretty depressing. My model is pro-abortion just because that happened to her parents and her older sister. yikes! When we voted, the lady who registered me to vote was all 'a passport? That is the 1st time I have ever seen anybody register with a passport!' They dont get out much.

I feel like I SHOULD have a lot of life experience by now. Ryan and I have moved 9 times in our 4.5 years of marriage. We lived in England. We went to BYU-H. We have both traveled, thanks to our dad's jobs. We have the Gospel perspective. But I really feel like my time here is schooling me as to what so much of America is like that I have never seen before. Poor - quite downtrodden. It has absolutely come as a shock to me and helped me realize how grateful I should be for the insane amount of blessings I have in my life. And I am hoping it will help me learn how to be a more charitable person.