Walla Walla Again

I am back in Walla Walla, Washington. I got here yesterday after a day of flying from Portland to Seattle to Walla Walla. It is nice to be back in a familiar place, although its raining and windy here.

This chapter has a smaller amount of officers to meet with, so I will have some more free time and it is a shorter visit. I will be leaving here tomorrow and then spending a night in Seattle for Easter. It will be nice to have a mini-break and then I start up again at University of Puget Sound for a second time.

I am currently on school four of seven in this trip. Hard to believe I am almost done and close to ending my first year! I will plan on posting some pictures soon of my travels!

It finally stopped raining!

I am currently at Oregon State in Corvallis, Oregon. I have been here since Sunday and will be leaving tomorrow for Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington. I have already been to Whitman so it will be full of familiar faces and checking in on their progress.

This is my first time to Oregon and it has been enjoyable. It was raining for the first couple of days and would not stop! I got very tired due to the jet lag, but it seems to be wearing off. I have only been getting up at 6:30 am due to the time change instead of 4:30 a.m. so that's been good!

These visits have been flying by. It is hard to believe that I am on number three of seven that are left and about to do visit four! Hopefully I can keep up the energy. Time to go get coffee with some of the chapter women!

Princeton

So I arrived at Princeton yesterday afternoon. It was rather interesting getting here. I flew out of a very small airport, New Haven, which seemed to have its own idea of timing. My flight ended up leaving an hour after it was scheduled to. I was flying to Philly and then from Philly to Newark, with a 30 minute lay-over in Philly. Needless to say, I ended up landing at the time that my second flight was scheduled to depart. The next flight out was at 8 pm and all my one-on-one meetings had been scheduled for that afternoon. I ended up making it to my next flight because it was also delayed.

That flight was probably the worst flight I have ever taken. It was so bumpy due to the wind and it was like a roller coaster, up and down. The man behind me kept yelling that he was going to throw up and the flight attendant even got on the intercom to tell us where our sick bags were for the motion sickness. It was awful.

I finally landed and had a driver awaiting me. He picked me up and carried my luggage, it was a nice relief from the usual. The car he had was a really nice mercedes and he drove me to campus.

Today is my first day on campus. I have been enjoying my time and it is beautiful here. The flowers are beginning to bloom, the daffodils have already bloomed, but the trees are so pretty. I have more meetings today and then this evening I am going to see a belly-dancing group on campus. It should be pretty interesting!

QU!

I am currently at Quinnipiac Univ. in Hamden, CT. It has been a great visit! One of the ELCs went here, so the people are really welcoming and understand a lot about my position and how hard it can be. When I arrived I got a cute care package from them and have been taken care of very well throughout this whole visit. The president made me a blanket! It has been great.

The weather has been pretty rainy, which hasn't been so fun after the great weather we have had for the past week or so.

Tomorrow I go to Princeton. I have two flights, which is really a two hour drive but will take around five hours flying. That's okay though, it will help me transition from one school to the next. I am looking forward to it! Also, they have gotten me a limo service to bring me to their campus since it is about an hour away from the airport. I am excited about that!

That's all for now, not too much to report!

Back to Work

So I just had an amazing time in Seattle! I had never been to the city and explored with my Mom and it was great!

The first full day we walked around and explored Pike's Place (the local market). It was really neat and there was fresh produce and fish everywhere. I also got to see the first Starbucks ever, which was really neat!

The second day we decided to just take off and head to Vancouver for the 2010 Olympics. We went on a train, which took around three hours. The ride was really pretty and was all along the coast. Once we arrived, we found the Olympic village and walked around. It was so huge and really cool! We found the torch, which was also pretty awesome and exactly what I expected. Then we continued to walk around and found a place that was selling tickets to events. We ended up getting two tickets to the Women's Finals Hockey Game (Canada vs. US)!! It was so exciting and so unexpected! We began to walk to the stadium and it was a mad house, but so cool to be a part of. Once we got inside we realized our seats required an elevator to get to. As we boarded the elevator we noticed that it said Luxury Suite next to our number on the tickets. Turns out, we ended up in a Luxury Premiere Box that had around twenty people in it! It took up a quarter of the length of the rink and we had seats overlooking the end goalie area. It was an unobstructed view. Even crazier, they had free food and it was great! They had sushi and wonderful desserts... I couldn't believe our luck!

The US team ended up losing the game, which was too bad, but it was neat being in Canada when Canada won! Even more exciting, we were there for a gold medal event and they did the victory ceremony immediately following. I seriously couldn't believe we were there for all of that! We saw the ceremony, but had to leave right before the gave the gold medals to Canada. We got back to our train and headed back to Seattle. What a day!

The next day we got up and walked around Seattle. We headed to the space needle and went up. It was really neat to see the view from there, I had no idea Seattle was so diverse in it's landscape. Then we walked to Pioneer Village and had a great meal at the Metropolitan Grill. Finally, we headed back to Pike's Place (to get the best cheese ever made) and ended the day in the hotel.

It was a great trip and I am so glad it happened! Now it is back to the real world. I have two more visits before I am done with this round. I am feeling pretty exhausted, but also relaxed from a good vacation!

Off to Indy!

Today I left Walla Walla bright and early to head off to Indianapolis. I woke up at 5:00 a.m. Pacific Time and had my flight at 6:50 a.m. I am currently sitting in the Seattle airport waiting to board to go to Chicago and then on to Indianapolis this evening. It is a full day of traveling!

I had a great time at Whitman College and look forward to returning in April. It is currently dreary and raining outside (what I expected of Seattle) but the flight in was really neat. I was able to see Mt. Ranier in the distance it was very foggy everywhere, almost like a cauldron of boiling water fell onto the earth. It was really neat with the snowy mountains in the distance!

In Indianapolis I'll be seeing the other people I work with, which will be nice. We will be setting up everything for interviews and then on Sunday the candidates will all arrive. It is crazy to think that I was just doing this a year ago!

In Walla Walla!

After thirteen hours of traveling yesterday, I finally made it to Walla Walla, Washington. I am visiting Whitman College (1,300 students - a little smaller than OWU) and it is nice here. It is so warm (50 degrees) and not rainy, like I expected. Apparently the western side of the state rains but the eastern side isn't as rainy.

The chapter has a "section" of a dorm for the women to live in. The dorm feels like a bed and breakfast with rooms for the women. So it is really nice. I have my own room that conjoins with another chapter member, but I still have my privacy. It is pretty nice. Last night I went to bed so early, 10 p.m. here, while it was 1 a.m. EST so it was nice to just be able to go to sleep!

I have a lot of meetings today, but not as many as usual. This chapter is on the pilot program, which is a minimal officer structure. So instead of having 26 officers to meet with, I only have nine. There are still some committees I also have to meet with, but not as many as usual - so it is nice!

I am starting to feel more sick, which isn't fun. But it isn't horrible yet! Off to start the day...

I attached a picture of my time at Harvard. This is the building that I stayed in. The school rooms students by houses instead of by dorms, kind of like in Harry Potter. So every freshman writes down seven or so people she/he would like to live with and then they are given a spot in a house. There are twelve houses and every house has a dining hall, etc. so it is its own community within a community. I stayed in Lowell House, it was really pretty! I also attached a picture of the freshman's dining hall (the freshman live in the yard, they move into their house their sophomore year).