[Carol-Ann] Wow!  We've been in North Carolina now for almost 2 months, can you believe it?!  Our weeks are packed full, and most days it feels like we live a week in a day.  I've caught myself talking about something we did "last week" and realized that it was actually just yesterday!  Here's what a typical day looks like for me - class from 8-5pm, exercise in the form of racquetball, ultimate frisbee, biking or running, late dinner with a few hours of studying, then sleep!  We live only 1 mile from the Duke rec center, and since Ethan has a spouse membership, we have a lot of fun biking down there to play racquetball twice a week.  We found two ultimate frisbee pickup games in Durham, and I actually joined the Duke women's ultimate team!  My team will have 2 tournaments this fall and several more in the Spring.  The weather pattern is so different out here, the big season for outdoor sports is winter!  We've heard that we should get a little snow over the winter, but we're still sweating through 90degree days, so snow looks a long way off.

A few weeks after arriving, we headed out to the Outer Banks, one of the most popular beach areas on the east coast.  It is an incredible place, with several-mile-long bridges joining peninsulas and islands, in total spanning over 40 miles long!  Their bridges are long, flat, and seem to be only a few feet off the water - a big contrast to the bridges we're used to driving in Portland!  The drive from Durham to the Outer Banks is about 4 hours, and we were excited to visit some of the quaint, historic towns along the way.  However, it turned out that nearly every town shuts down for the weekend - not quite sure how that works for tourism, since the weekend is the only time most of us can travel!  But the outer banks was amazing, and we enjoyed the weekend camping, driving on the beach (yes, people drive out and set up tents, with bbqs, beer, lounge chairs...so fun!), and the water is WARM!  We were running into the ocean with Reya, and wading in up to our waists.  There are strong riptides, so we decided not to test our swimming skills this time.  Here are a few pictures of our trip:

on the beach!



one of the long bridges going to the Outer Banks





crab dinner!