How did I get here?

" I may not have gone where I intended to, but I think I ended up where I needed to be."~ Douglas Adams.

Today was the day my first ski season on a ski patroller was supposed to end.  That however was not the case.  We have two weeks left in the season still! This last year has been amazing!! I don't know if I will ever have another year like it! 

I keep saying that I am not the person I was a year ago and it's true but I'm also not the person I was 6 months ago.  Or he'll even 3 weeks ago I feel like sometimes.  I have figured out who I am and who I want to be more importantly.  To think that 4 months ago I was convinced that I was only going to be a patroller for one year that's if I made it home everyday without having quit like I considered so many time.  

And now I think I have a great job one that I love and am excited to come back to next year.  Which brings me to this summer... What I am I going to do.  I had accepted a position in Kentucky again this summer but the pay was a stipend and now that I'm trying to be an adult( scary I know!) that ended up not cutting it due to some financial issues.  

Drum roll please!!!! I am staying in Vermont! All summer!  I will working at Camp Plymouth State Park as a park attendant, I will also be in charge of the concession stand as part of this job.  I am so happy to be staying in Vermont!! As much as I love traveling I also love Vermont especially in the summer.  I still hope to visit Kentucky and would love to visit one of my friends I met while I was overseas last summer!! Time will tell of that happens but I'm working towards getting my current dream job.  

I am not sure how I got here but I am sure glad for the bumpy, painful and occasional down right awful road I've taken cause I am extremely happy! 

Yahooooo!

Life is what you make of it and apparently I have finally figured that out.  I am loving my job, have an amazing group of friends, a great boyfriend and the best family you could ever ask for.  Pretty much since I figured out that I actually wanted to use my degree I have been stressing about finding a job this summer.  Convinced that I would never get anything I have proven myself wrong!  It’s not exactly what I want but I have two interviews for Internships.  One is working on a team of six people interviewing visitors to USACE sights and the other is doing Environmental Education in New York City.  I would love either position and of course there are paying positions I would love to get more but it’s a start. 

This last week has been filled with some crazy ups and downs, long story short: a family emergency in my boyfriends family meant that I got to meet them all about two hours are officially starting to date, that whole getting a boyfriend thing and then finding out I got not one but two interviews in three days.  It’s been a great week and hopefully just keeps getting better! 

Off to Boston tomorrow with four kids and five adults hitting up the aquarium and children’s museum.  It should be a blast!  Hope everyone enjoys their weekend!

P.S. I have just shy of 60 ski days!

Causation for my Goggle Tan!

It’s been a little while since I posted mainly cause my butt has been handed to me by my job.  I started working at an on snow ski patroller a week ago today and it hasn’t been rainbows and fairy tales let me tell you!  Some aspects I am learning kinda quickly and it’s great then there are the parts that are kicking my ass!  Mainly it is about the handling or well stopping of the toboggan with some one in it. 

I passed my map test today so I officially know all the trails at Okemo.  I have to take my snowplow test again on Monday, which totally sucks but I understand.  Just trying to keep keeping on and hope that this is what I’m supposed to be doing and if it’s not that what I am supposed to be doing hits me in the face.  But until I will just keep pushing myself everyday and pray it works out.  

Do one thing every day that scares you. Eleanor Roosevelt

Decided to change it up a little this time.  Here are some of my favorite quotes with pictures from my adventure to the beach today!

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.  H. Jackson Brown Jr.

Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people. Eleanor Roosevelt

“If you don't stand for something you will fall for anything.” 
― Malcolm X

I could not at any age be content to take my place in a corner by the fireside and simply look on. I think that somehow, we learn who we really are and then live with that decision. Eleanor Roosevelt

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” 
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

Life was meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life. Eleanor Roosevelt

“Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.” 
― John Lennon

The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience. Eleanor Roosevelt

“Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened.” ― Dr. Seuss

 

“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.” ― Douglas Adams,

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. Eleanor Roosevelt

I know not what weapons world war III will be fought with, but world war IV will be fought with sticks and stones~ Albert Einstein

We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.~ Joseph Campbell

“You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You're on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one who'll decide where to go...” ― Dr. Seuss, 

“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.” ― Albert Einstein

“I believe in pink. I believe that laughing is the best calorie burner. I believe in kissing, kissing a lot. I believe in being strong when everything seems to be going wrong. I believe that happy girls are the prettiest girls. I believe that tomorrow is another day and I believe in miracles.” ― Audrey Hepburn

So you just graduated, you must be good at rejection..

I’ve been back in the states for about two weeks.  The main goal has been getting unjetlagged and then looking for a job.  When the whole job thing doesn’t work it usually means I help with sawing logs into lumber or moving said logs something along those lines.  One day last week I went and visited my college it was a very strange thing to be back there.  It’s strange in general to be not in college actually.

I was one of those confusing students for everyone in the science department. I ended up an environmental science major by default mainly because it was science and I figured I could find something I would like to do.  Boy was I wrong or at least until this summer.  Every aspect of my major that I was exposed to (with the exception of GIS) I could not see myself doing as a career.  To say confusion and a feeling of lost dominated my college experience when it came to finding a job would be an understatement.  Being back at Castleton knowing what I wanted to do was amazing!

It’s a very new place for me to be in.  Now almost four months behind the rest of my friends I am joining the job search, and it sucks!!  I have gotten so used to rejection that I don’t even want to apply for jobs anymore for the fact I know I will get rejected.  Luckily it’s winter hiring for summer rangers, temp employees and the like isn’t very high so I get to enjoy what will hopefully be my last winter not being a full time permanent employee doing something I love.  I know that my ambition will likely go down before it climbs again but I will eventually get a job as a ranger some how.  It may be years from now but I will do it! 

My Failure as a Blogger

I have failed miserably at bloging this trip like I had planned.  Every time I went to sit down and actually create a post I would have nothing I really wanted to say.  But now I guess I finally have something to say.

Me and the view from Margret Bridge in Budapest

While nothing this summer has gone according to the plan I made over the winter I am 100% okay with that!  Maybe plans are over rated.  I didn’t plan this trip beyond a couple of cities I may want to go to, Budapest, Salzburg, Prague and Vienna where on that list.  I made it to half of them and I’m not upset about that at all.  Actually if I had stuck to that plan I wouldn’t have met some of the people I got to meet. 

While the places I saw were amazing this trip has had more to do with the people I’ve been able to meet and what I have been able to accomplish on my own.  With the exception of Berlin and Amsterdam I was on my own each time I entered a new city yet by the time I left I wasn’t anymore. 

I started in Munich, completely lost and convinced that this trip was a gigantic mistake until the second day I was there these two guys (Marcus and Johnny) started talking to me then around the fire someone else started talking to me.  Before I knew it I had met the English Leprechauns and we were laughing hysterically!  By the time I left Munich I was convinced I had made the right choice and everything would be okay.

One of our Sound of Music shots, we got photobombed by a nun.

So off to Salzburg I went, no clue what I actually wanted to see there I’d figure that out when I got there.  And after I slept, the night I left Munich I didn’t sleep I did however fall off a very strange playground thing. Once I woke up I met my roomies!  Alice, Joe and Jenny (and while she wasn’t a roomie) Lily.  Without you guys I don’t think I would have had as much fun.  The Sound of Music Tour, recreating as many pictures as we could through out Maribell Gardens and Salzburg.  The political talks with Alice, I had a great time in Salzburg!!!

Johnny showing me how gracefully I fell the night before. 

Budapest was the city I was most excited to see from the time I started reading the book I bought about it, yet it was also the place I was most nervous about.  Germany I had under control I could read enough signs, knew how things worked I was calm cool and collected there but Hungary… yeah not so much.  And boy was I lost that first hour.  I had no idea where to get my bus ticket, exactly where I was going, no idea what the signs said.  I made it to the hostel and was talked into going on a pub crawl.  I am happy that I did that I have blast!  It was a great group of people and we all laughed a ton.  I definitely want to go back to Budapest since I was sick for part of my stay there.  I can’t complain though, I spent 2 months in Kentucky and then a month in Europe and it was the first time I was sick.

Now I am heading to Munich to close out my trip.  Hopefully this time I won’t be such a mess I will actually see some of the city.  I can’t believe that my trip is days from being over.  In some ways I don’t even recognize who I was when I graduated in May.  I know that I’m still that girl but I’m different more adventurous maybe.  More willing to try things I know that much.  But I’m calmer in a lot of ways, I don’t need to plan every day of my life if I have an idea what my next week will look like I’m good with that.  Hopefully this continues I like the freedom, the peace. 

I have loved being in Europe but I am soooo ready to be back in Vermont.  It is where I belong and where I really want to be.  Hopefully whatever job I finally do get allows me to stay there. 

Amsterdam

Canal in Amsterdam

After a nerve wrecking last hour driving to JFK and missing my flight I got on a plane to Berlin, Germany!  Once I got to Berlin it took a little to figure out how to get to the metro station I was meeting Tonya and Dave at and then actually find them! 

I spent three days in Amsterdam and it is a great city!  The first night that we were there we walked around had dinner at Hard Rock Café on the canal then I went back to the hotel and crashed!  I was so tired and I slept most of the way here from Berlin.

The second day we woke up and went to Anne Frank House.  I read the book when I was in sixth grade because I wanted to not because I was told to by a teacher.  I loved the book so much!  It was definitely a hard read for me since I hadn’t been reading that long at grade level and also because it was a hard subject as well.  While reading the book I even had nightmares that I was living in the annex and mom wouldn’t let me read the book at night.

The tour was amazing, it cost 9 euro and you went through the whole place.  The tour started in the new museum/ visitors center then brings you into the warehouse that Otto Frank had his spice and pectin company in.  In every room there were quotes from Anne’s Diary on the walls and some pictures or posters from the company.  Then you headed up the stairs into the office that Kruger had who ran the company while Otto was hiding.  Behind that was Meip’s office that she shared with another women that helped hide the families. 

The train station in Amsterdam

The entire house is empty exactly like it was left following the discovery of the families exactly how Otto wanted it.  To give you an idea of what the annex looked like however a model was built to the exact specifications of Otto Frank.  To get into the annex you had to climb up the front set of stairs and wow they are steep! I hit my knee on the step just walking normally.  Once at the top of the stairs you walk through a room not really sure what it was for and find yourself In front of the movable bookcase.  Seeing that bookcase being in that space was crazy.  I had imagined what it looked like for the last 10 years of my life and to actually be inside of the annex was mind boggling.  Anne’s room was so much smaller than I imagined it to be.  It was also surprising to see how well the window shades really did blackout the rooms. 

To be in a place that I had spent so much time imagining was crazy to see what I thought it looked like compared to the real thing was amazing.  It is something I wish more people could do.