we're not dead

friends and followers,

i (it's still ashley) know that this blog has been severely neglected lately, but I wanted to assure you that we are alive and well and missing all of you so so much.

I am sitting in Nashville, TN across from Matt who is SO CLOSE to submitting his first, second, and third application to grad schools. He will soon, officially, be on his way to figuring out what happens in our brains. We've been working on his applications quite a bit for the last few days.

last night we did make it out to the Grand Ole Opry! We we're the youngest people in the audience by AT LEAST 120 years - actually, you can include the performers in that as well. It was a fun show though, lots of old country music. The Christmas parade in Nashville was at the same time which was a little sad. We've been in the Homestead Studio Suites - long term hotel rooms with kitchens and work spaces - it's been great for productivity!

Before we got to Nashville we went on quite a Civil Rights tour - from Memphis where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel before a Sanitation workers strike, to Little Rock and central High school, to Jackson, MS, to Selma, Al where we drove the 50 mile Voting Rights March to Montgomery, where we saw where Rosa Parks was arrested, the home of Martin Luther King Jr, and the Civil Rights monument to Birmingham and 16th st. baptist church where the Birmingham marches took place and thousands of young black marchers were attacked with water hoses and police dogs.

I couldn't blog during those visits and days. I hope that the next few days I will write more - we met wonderful people and have great stories and learned SO much - it was just an awful lot to take in at once. Yea. So - more about that to come.

We're headed now to KY to visit Matt's cousin and his wife and two little boys. After that we're headed to Asheville to visit my cousin and then to Hillsboro, WV to visit a college friend. We'll in Philly/NY on the 10th!