Well, I have some news to share.  I have a place to stay, and I have a job!  The place I'm staying in is a room in the basement of a house on the west side of the city.  The house is owned by a Ukrainian couple, who rent the top floor to a family in the Minot 2nd ward.  I haven't met the owners, but the family from the ward upstairs is really nice.  They have a son who's about ready to submit his missionary papers, and a daughter who's Elsa's age.  The apartment reminds me very much of a missionary apartment - much nicer than anything in Guatemala, but probably about average for missionaries in the states I would assume.  It's big, it's clean, it's warm, and my rent includes utilities and wi-fi.  I share the basement with a kid from Boise (of all places) who works for a tool rental place in town.  He seems nice but I don't know much about him yet.  Here's a pic of the outside of the house:

Not the greatest picture but I'll get better ones later.  Here's the kitchen:

And my room:

Also a washer/dryer:

One thing you get with a place with lots of snow, is lots of mud when the snow thaws.  All the streets are so muddy and filthy - cars, sidewalks, street signs, nothing is free from the sandy mud that cakes everything.  So I'm sure I'll be using that washer a lot.

Another thing they have a lot of here is something that George would appreciate:

Right, trains "hooked together going."

However, one thing that is conspicuously absent are beggars.  There are no beggars anywhere.  Anyone who wants to work, pretty much can.  Which brings me to my work situation.

I have a job as a van driver - we pick up railroad maintenance crews and take them out to the trains.  The crews have times that they need to service every car in a 2-mile long train, so we'll take them out to the train, drop them off at the first car, then take them to the second car, and so forth all down the line.  This is something that will be an interim until something better comes along.