an update on the life

Well my goodness a lot has happened since my last post. Most of the people who actually read this blog (my mom, my sister, maybe maggie and rachel...maybe...any other consistent readers I don't know about?) will already know, but I decided not to take the fellowship in boston. yadda yadda but it wasn't the right choice for me this year. After looking into things, and flying to Chicago unsure of where I would go once I picked up Shayna's car, I got a voicemail upon landing from Kim at the Olympic Park Institute (OPI), who I had called the week before to inquire about any staff openings (and left a message...so had never actually spoken person-to-person), to let me know a couple positions had opened up and she would like to speak with me. Long story short(er) - I sent her my resume etc, we spoke the next day on the phone, I got an offer the next morning, and the next morning (last saturday) I left chicago to drive west.

4 full days of driving (and 2,269 miles) later, I was at Kim's house for a welcome dinner where I met new and returning staff, and then went to the house - Le Sage, as it's called - across the lake from OPI where I'll be living this fall. And discovered I have no cell phone reception or internet out there (but do have a landline phone). Definitely felt like I'd regressed 12 years back to the mid-90s. But it's absolutely gorgeous, right on glacier-fed Crescent Lake, with an enormous deck, dock and boathouse, and I share it with 2-4 other staffers (depending on whether Margaret and Chris, a staff couple, are sleeping there or at the house in town).

The next morning, I caught a ride in to the OPI campus with one of my housemates (Claire) and saw it for the first time, just 20 minutes before new staff training started. Hard to believe that just a week earlier at roughly the same time I was boarding a plane to Chicago without any idea what I would be doing, and now I was starting a new job. Oh, what is this job, exactly? Excellent question, and I suppose one that would have been good to answer a couple paragraphs ago. I'll be a field science educator here at OPI; essentially a field instructor, very similar to the environmental education work I was doing at MOSS, but teaching a wider range of ages and topics.

So far, staff training has been going well. The new staff get along really well, and the older staff are all very open and enthusiastic. Right now I'm at the staff house in town (port angeles) where they just got internet installed. Tonight we'll probably head to Le Sage for dinner, which none of the other new staff have seen yet, and tomorrow we're hoping to go to Port Townsend for the wooden boat festival, which should be fun.

So that's about it for now. I'm sure I'll update more later as more happens, but I'm super excited to continue staff training and then start teaching in a week. It seems like a great community, and I think I'll have the opportunity to learn a heck of a lot. Righteous.