Monday, July 21, 2008

Life in a Nutshell!

Well, obviously I have been extremely bad about keeping up on my website. The last time I wrote was 3 months ago! Ahhhhhhhh!!!!!! Guess you can tell that life has been a little crazy, huh?

Let’s see here… I think the best way to catch you up on my life would be to do this in sections. So here it goes.

Summer and Job Hunting!

After over 2 weeks in Europe, it was great to see my family!! I had not been home since Christmas and missed them so much!! I spent the next 2 weeks catching up, showing them my pictures, playing with my dogs, catching up on sleep, seeing friends, and looking for a job. I applied to a few but didn’t have any luck. My mom and sister and I drove to the lower peninsula of Michigan to visit my grandparents on both sides. During our trip I got a call about a job interview. They wanted me for a phone interview the next day. So I did my phone interview from the bathroom of my grandparents’ assisted living center!! The job was as an admissions counselor at Northland College in Ashland, Wisconsin. At the end of the interview they asked me if I could come to the college the next week for a campus interview. We got back from my grandparents on a Sunday night and Tuesday I drove to Ashland for the interview. Well, it went great and I was offered the job that day and was asked to start work on a week!! So I stayed the night in Ashland with my mom and we found an apartment, drove back that night and bought a car, the next day I packed and bought a cell phone and 2 days later I moved!! It has been crazy!!
I have now been in Ashland for just under 2 weeks. I like my job and know I will like it even more as I get busier working with students. Summer is a slow time in the job and I am adjusting to working in a cubicle. But it is nice to be only 3 hours from home and only 1 hour from Duluth, where I went to college.

It has been a wild few months, but I think I covered the big things and will try and be better about keeping up!

Trip to Europe

In the middle of May, right after school got out I went to Europe for over 2 weeks! It was amazing!!! I loved it all so much! My friend Sean and I had been planning the trip for a few months and I didn’t really feel like it was actually going to happen until we hopped on our flight to Dublin. We had so much to catch up on and were so excited about our trip that the flight went by quickly. We arrived in Dublin for our 7 hour layover. At this time Sean’s mom met us at the airport (she lives in Dublin). We hung out there and caught up with her and then hopped on our next flight to Valencia, Spain. By the time we got there it was like 1 a.m. and we were exhausted. We had a few issues finding our rental car using the very little bit of Spanish I know, but we finally figured it out. We drove the hour drive to Denia and checked in to our hotel. The apartment we rented was really nice and our view of the pool court yard below was fantastic. We spent the week relaxing in the sun, testing out the Spanish cuisine, catching up on much needed sleep, going to the shops in town, and swimming at the beach. The week flew by and before we knew it we were headed out to the airport for the second leg of our journey.
Here is a good story for you. So, we left our hotel at around 4 a.m. and drove to Valencia. Once at the Valencia airport, we grabbed a light breakfast to hold us over until we got to Madrid; I had a muffin and Sean had a mayo and ham sandwich. We then flew to Madrid, took a bus to the other terminal, which was a 15 minute ride away, and had to wait an hour and a half before we could check in. Because we were there so early, we were the first in line and wanted to make sure we could make our flight from Athens to Heraklion with a one hour layover. When the desk opened Sean handed the lady our paper work and he got his ticket. I handed her mine and she said she couldn’t find me on her computer. She said there was no record of a ticket for me. She then asked me to stand to the side while her manager came to help her and pretty soon 4 other people had the same issue. Funny thing was, we all had last names that were at the end of the alphabet. Apparently, the second page of passenger names was never put into the airport computer! The lady at the desk showed me where the cut off was between people who made it one and people who didn’t. Sean was the last person to make the flight (his last name is Wall) and I was the first to not make it! So… after all this, we finally got my ticket, but only as far as Athens and once there I would have to check in again to get my ticket to Heraklion. We were both really frustrated and freaked out that we wouldn’t have enough time at the airport. But we got on the plane and made a plan to run through the airport, get this ticket ASAP and sprint to our gate. We touched the ground in Greece and followed our plan. Things went smooth and we made it to our gate just when we were supposed to board. Luckily, we had a 10 minute delay, so we could sit and catch our breath. At this time, Sean said he was feeling sick and I told him I was sure it was all the stress and running around and to sit back and relax. Well, he ran to the bathroom and had his first experience with food poisoning! He threw up in the airport and the whole flight to Crete. Once we got our bags and rental car in Heraklion, we learned it was almost a 3 hour drive to our hotel!!! I drove and Sean slept. I was so worried about him and knew the sooner we made it to the hotel, the better it would be. Well, after about 2 and ½ hours of driving on dark, winding roads Sean woke up and asked if we were lost. I said “of course not! We’re almost there.” Well, not so much. I guess I had missed a turn and somehow we ended up on the north tip of Greece instead of the south. Opps! So, I turned around and headed another 45 minutes back to where the correct turn was. Sean, fell back asleep and I was exhausted by this point. We were only 30 K from our hotel, when I saw flashing lights ahead and a man standing in the road. The closer I got I realized it was a police officer. He points me over to the side of the road and comes over speaking Greek. I shook my head and said that I don’t speak Greek. He switched to English and asked if I had been drinking anything. I said no ( I hadn’t had so much as a drink of water in 4 hours!). He made me take a breath-a-lizer test and when I passed it he said, “alright, have a good night.” And that was that! I guess they have a lot of random check points around the cities on Crete. FINALLY, we got to our hotel at about 1 a.m.! I swear sometimes, I have the craziest luck!
Anywho, Sean was sick for the next few days. So I explored town on my own and laid by the pool in between checking on Sean. Greece was fantastic!!! I absolutely loved it there! I went to a Greek dancing lesson, laid on the beach, went on an herbal hike, had a huge traditional Greek meal and hiked around the beaches. It was a dream and the food was awesome! I think I was Greek in another lifetime. I could live there! After another wonderfully amazing week, and with Sean in recovery, we headed back to Ireland to spend 3 days with Sean’s mom. We stayed in Dublin for the 3 days and did sight-seeing. We saw a Shakespeare play at Trinity College, went on a double-decker bus tour, toured the Guinness Brewery, went on a ghost bus tour and did some shopping. After 2 and ½ weeks of travel, we were spent by the time we flew home. We had one day in Boston (where Sean lives) before I headed back to see my family. It was the trip of a lifetime!

Denia, Spain



Pictures of Greece





Pictures of Ireland


Wasilla


School/ Rose Urban Exchange:

The last few months of school flew by like the rest of the year. I took part in the Rose Urban Rural Exchange at the end of April. Five middle school students from Wasilla, AK came to Saint Paul Island for the week to experience life in a rural part of Alaska. I was in charge of organizing and planning the week. We had lots of great hang out time where the kids from Wasilla got to meet our students. We had a wonderful Halibut and King Crab dinner for students and host families. We even had a traditional dinner with Sea Lion meatballs! The students got to see all the different areas of life on our island and what it was like to go to a small school. One week after they came to visit us, I took four of our middle schoolers to Wasilla. It was such an amazing experience! Watching my students have one eye-opening experience to another was indescribable! They got to go to school in Wasilla where there are 800 kids in the middle school. That’s double the population of our island! We also got to go to Martin Buser’s Kennel. He has won the Iditarod on numerous occasions and told us all about it. We even got to hold his puppies. One of my students had never pet a dog before (we don’t have them on our island)! We went to a farm and got to see baby calves and even spent a day in Anchorage checking out a movie, dinner at a restaurant, a water park and native youth Olympics. I even saw a few moose! In fact I almost hit one!
The last few weeks of the school year are a blur. They sprinted right in front of me. And after having completed my first year of teaching and A LOT of thinking, I decided not to accept the contract for the following school year. Although I can honestly say it was one of the best experiences of my life, I was ready to be closer to home. It was a really hard decision to make, especially when I looked at my students. I truly cared for them so much, but I knew it was not fair to them, if I knew that I couldn’t give them all they deserved. So, I entered into one of the scariest moments in my life… the unknown. I had no clue what I was going to do, where I was going to live, when I would find a job! But I knew that I made the right decision and that something, somewhere would work out. I finished out the school year, cleaned my classroom, said a teary good-bye to my wonderful students and awesome school staff and headed once again for the lower 48.