Day One: "All Aboard!"

The Train
So, boarding the train was just like it is on the mkovies: hugging the family good-bye, waving to them out the window until it's impossible to see them, mom crying. . . But the best part was bounding up the stairs (giggling with Natalie because I had turned left when the attendant said to turn right) only to find that we were intruding on the passengers' sleep. If we can hit an AmTrak train car with this kind of a bang, we can certainly leave our mark on Nauvoo -- or maybe Nauvoo on us, as has been my past experience. But I digress.

About our neilghbors here on the train. . . I consider it a blessing to have been seated near several families with small children. But right across from us is this man (from NY, I gather) who is kind of scary. He immediately asked if the ten kids outside the train in matching red Nauvoo shirts were "students" or how they were related to me. When I told him they were my siblings, he dubbed me the "luckiest girl on Earth." While I normally appreciate such positive feedback about my big family, I was a little uncomfortable with how friendly he was. it was then that Natalie and I turned out the lights to, as she put it, "fake sleep." Since then, all has been well -- minus the mystery bottle of who-knows-what he emptied into a thermos. . .

First things first
When the sun rose, Natalie and I immediately got down to the business of the morning, as dectated by Jana's envelope of "things to do." First priority: describe our future husbands (which then broadened out to describing our whole lives). Describing our future husbands in detail was a fairly easy task when you consider that one of us is taken and the other has a strong "flavor of the week," as one observer of my rotating crush list put it. (Just to clarify, Natalie is the first girl; I am the second.)

You get what you ask for
Our next adventure was in figuring out how our seats work. They were reclined when we got here. Natalie posed the foreboding question: "Do these seats come up?" She soon experienced a high-speed jerking sensation of the seat ratcheting forward. I was too in shock to say anything, but she responded calmly to her own question: "yep." Similar responses have been exhibited by our fellow passengers, such as "I knew that was going to happen!" and "Ahhh!" It's a phenomenon that I like to call 'train seats on steroids.'

Random
Well, Natalie and I are in the process of overhearing a conversation from two brothers (sitting behind us) that we believe to be our male counterparts in some ways. They talk a lot (like us), and one of them said something very familiar: "I'm hyper, and I don't even know why!" Enough said.

Are ya Feelin' it?
Being the graceful two that we are, we broke out the Hershey kisses and promptly (and accidentally) dropped two down the seat. I hope the people behind us don't think we're trying to litter. Maybe they'll take it as an act of charity. The dining car is closed, after all.

"A Little Bit Country". . . . but only sometimes
So, this guy sitting behind us keeps going in and out of a Texan/country accent. It leaves when he's talking normally to his brother, but when he pulls his let-me-show-everyone-how-much-I-know-about-everything conversations, he goes cowboy. Disenchanting, as Natalie calls him.