Cherry flavored anything.

I'm sitting in my room, alone, doing absolutely nothing for the first time in about a week. It's niiiiice. I love spending time with people here like you wouldn't believe but it's hard sometimes getting used to being non introverted. :)

I have officially been here for four weeks. One month. It feels like a week. The next three months are going to go by way too fast. I've really gotten to know people and such in the last week though, before that I spent most of my time alone.

I love the people here. They are all so friendly and nice, it's like a gigantic family. Everyone knows everyone...and everything. :P The only people I have troubles with are the ones I have to be extra polite to. But that's just me and my issues with patience.

I've found out recently that I really don't like being treated hmm, how do I say this...like, a lady? All the chivalry crap is not only lost on me but it bugs the crap out of me. I want to be treated like an equal, like a friend, nothing more. It makes me uncomfortable to be a special case. This one guy in the kitchen (nice thai guy from previous posts) tries to do everything for me and I just want to slap him upside the head. It's such a relief when I am around people who don't treat me like this.

I finally get to go make chocolate chip cookies with my friend Karen!! You have no idea how excited I am!!! NO IDEA! Really. Seriously. You couldn't possibly imagine. Ever. really. don't even try.

Last night I had the best dinner since I've gotten here. Turkey, sweet potatoes, stuffing, gravy, and apple cobbler. I almost died. Tonight though, it shall be cookie dough. :P

My friend, Sean, pointed out to me that if you work in the Snow Mountain Ranch Food Services, you are one of the many SMRFS. :P Wearing a blue work shirt with a white apron only accentuates the awesomeness of this factoid.

I'm eating an apple right now off the core. I haven't done that pretty much ever. I hate eating fruit like that.

I have discovered Sack Lunches. Best idea ever. You sign up for a lunch, it's ready by 1:00 and I don't have to starve when I don't have any food to eat after my 4:30 dinner! It's awesoommme.

Apparently I will be working in The Grill this summer. It's like a little...grill..thing up in the main building. Yea, descriptive, I know. But I get to avoid the hundreds of people going through commons this summer, which sounds good to me.

I miss Seattle. The waterfront, the saltwater, the energy...mmm. I do not, however, miss Covington. At all. :P I wish I had my car too.

I'm very much enjoying my life here. I would say that I miss everyone out there but to be honest, I don't. I know that's a horrible thing to say and I pretty much constantly feel like a jerk

but I'm not going to lie to peoples' faces and say "ohhh I miss you too!!!" It's such a relief to be free. I have a hard time hiding that. I used to care about people's feelings too much but I think I jumped to the other side of the ditch too quickly and don't care enough anymore. I'm working on it though, don't worry. I'm trying to learn to live in moderation instead of the all or nothing, hot/cold mentality I'm used to. It's sloooowww going in some ways but I'm also doing pretty well in other ways.

All of those years of American Sign Language have paid off. I never realized before I got here how skilled I am at reading body language. It's especially helpful around the Thai people when I can't understand what the heck they're trying to tell me. I pick up on non verbal cues and can almost always tell what's going on. It's nice around people I don't know very well, to be able to pick up on what someone isn't saying to me. I always leave room for error and correction so I don't make an assumption that isn't true.

I have two days off, tomorrow and Thursday. Sweeeeet. I'm going to hopefully spend most of Thursday in the Craft Shop here because it's the bomb. I have a bunch of creative energy building up in me. Steve-O showed me how to wood burn and I loved it. Must. do. more. :)

Time to go make cookies! Peace!

Update 4-15-10

It's been a Fleet Foxes kind of day today. Well, afternoon perhaps, it was a Phoenix kind of morning while I was exercising.

Work is hectic! They are painting the entire gigantic dining room so all of the tables, dishes and buffet lines had to be moved in to one of the conference rooms. It makes setting up, breaking down and doing dishes ridiculous. :P It's alright though, it's a change of pace and takes more time to do everything so there is less standing around being bored. :)

I'm making a lot of friends here all of the sudden. I LOVE it. :) I'm getting invited places now to hang out. Tonight after work I went to the KIVA (gym) to watch a bunch of people play basketball. While I was there we got a group of people together to (hopefully) play volleyball after I get off work tomorrow night. I'm excited! I think it's been almost a year since I've played but people have promised me that they aren't that great either. :P

Tomorrow I work my 12 hour shift from 6-2:30 and then 5-9pm. It should be fun. I really, really like the people I work with so going to work is something I look forward to. It's an interesting dynamic here because everyone works 40 + hours a week so no one complains about having to go to work. Occasionally there are things that you can't do if you're working, but usually the people you would hang out with anyway are working with you at the same time.

The people here seem to really like me and the feeling is definitely mutual. I actually haven't particularly met anyone here that I can't stand. It's pretty awesome. I really love the dynamic here...it's like college but without the stress of school work. It's really, really neat.

The weather here is beautiful! I went on a 2 hour walk with my friend Melissa yesterday and the fresh air was soooooo incredible! Gah! I still can't believe I LIVE in COLORADO! I have always wanted to come here and then one day I do an internet search for jobs in Colorado, this one pops up, I apply and then a week and half later I'm here! I can't WAIT to go hiking.

I really don't have anything to complain about. Well, except that my hands are about to jump ship because I'm mistreating them so badly. :P Dishes, dishes, dishes. No, there aren't any rubber gloves to wear because we have to transition between washing dirty dishes to putting away clean ones every few minutes. It's just a hassle. But there's nothing to complain about. :)

I'm super excited! April 20th is the Thai New Year and next Wednesday, the 21st, the Thai's are throwing a huge party and cooking Thai food for everyone. I get off work in time to go which is awesome. :)

Just in case you were wondering, I have met people from South Africa (Melissa), Paraguay (Mercedes), Brazil (Andre), Thailand (Jane, Shane, Champ, Pongsak, etc etc), Um...That's all I can think of for now. The guys from America that I've met come from Kansas, Arizona, Michigan, Indiana, Georgia... It's really awesome to meet so many people from so many back grounds. I love getting to know new people. :)

Well, goodnight All! I'll probably be keeping myself up for a while longer just so I can actually sleep tonight. I've found that's the trick. I can either go to sleep early and wake up every hour or so and wake up feeling gross or I can get about 5 hours of really great sleep and wake up feeling good! The hard part is finding things to entertain me this late at night. :P

I'm loving life!

Rachel :)

Hello fellow inhabitants of the Earth

Thoughts from the shallow marine environment in my mind. Coal could be found if it were a lagoon...

I went to the itty, bitty, over priced grocery (which I get a discount at, woot!) and bought food for my room! I don't have to go hungry anymore. My metabolism was complaining about only eating 3 times a day. I would try to stuff myself as full as possible to make it last until the next meal. That's pretty tough to do when I'm used to my mom's AMAZING home cooking and this is..um..anyway. :P

I'm out of toilet paper. I don't exactly know where to get more. Well I do, but the RA is pretty much never here when I am.

I found an awesome mutant pretzel in my pretzel bag! I wonder what its powers are...

My phone's T9 dictionary does not have the word pretzel in it.

I MISS GEOLOGY!!! Holy Cow, like SERIOUSLY. I yeeearn for more information! Diagrams on the board, textbooks, notes, fellow smarty pants Geology nerds. This is SO the major for me. :)

I met a guy here who minored in Geology. He overheard that I was majoring in it and he got excited. No one here understands what he's talking about. I hope we get more chances to talk!

The guy who lives in the room directly above me was the source of the irritating bass vibes being pounded into my brain the first few days I was here. He's my supervisor at work (supervisor really isn't a big deal here) and he told me today that someone clued him in that I was living in the room under him. Thank you whoever that was!! Music was at a much more reasonable level today. :)

People enjoy slamming doors here. I was wondering why, in particular, they were slamming the one closest to me. Turns out it's a stairwell and when people push through the door really quickly it rams into the wall...a mere 3 inches through the wall where my pillow rests. :P

We had a staff meeting last night, we're starting to do a staff assigned cleaning schedule of this building! Woohoo! Those showers were *shudder* hopefully they will be clean soon! (I wasn't brave enough to do it).

Hmm...the snow here is powdery and beautiful. I saw REAL icicles for the first time in a long time! Pretty epic daggers. :)

I walked to work this morning in the moonlight and saw some really cool, fresh animal tracks in the snow. It's so neat living here. I'm apprecitating the scenery much more than a few days ago. I'm lucky I got to be here when it snowed! Sometimes I'll be walking somewhere and I'll just stop, look around and think. "Woah. I'm IN the Rockies. IN them. The surround me on all sides and their splendor is SO magnificent. I especially love the cloud shadows on them. It really is very beautiful here. I feel at home amongst such incredible geological structures. I can't wait to explore them this summer. :)

Apparently Seattle is THE place to be from. I hear other people say, "I'm from Georgia" "I'm from Michigan" and they don't get any reaction. I say, "I'm from Seattle" and immediately whoever I am talking to, their face lights up and they exclaim, "I LOVE Seattle!" "I've always wanted to go there!" "I loved visiting there!" "Does it really rain 9 months of the year?" Seriously. I love it. I love saying "Oh man, Seattle is the greatest! You would love it!"

I've also heard many a time, "Oh you're majoring in Geology? Well Colorado is the place to be!" :)

The people here are so nice to me. I feel like I've known them all for a lot longer than 2 days.

God is working wonders in my life. I'm really beginning to deeply acknowledge how much he loves me and how much he wants an intimate relationship with me. Bare bones, no mess, that's what he wants. It's so not complicated once I really got down to it. I feel like the complications are just there to confuse me and draw me away from my real potential in a relationship. He created me to be with him! Nothing else. He just wants me to love him and accept his love. I feel like this time in Colorado is really accentuating all of this. God's got something really cool planned and I know that if I can grasp it, I will change for the better and never be the same again. I hope beyond a hope. :)

I love talking to God about Geology. I feel like he's the only one who really understands me. I mean, he must love my nerdiness because this is the way he created me! :P I sit at the dining table a lot and just babble silently to him about "compressional forces" this and "original horizontality" that. It makes me smile that I have someone who gets exactly what I'm saying!

Whew. That was all rolling around in my mind at once. :) Good to get it spelled out and written down.

Work every day until next Wednesday. I have a double shift on Easter... 6-2:30 and then 5-9. It will be a long day. I'll just get to celebrate Jesus' resurrection by..chopping lettuce? :P

Man, this whole eternal perspective thing is soooo nice.

It's 10:00! Time to get to bed!

Rachel