it's going to be a good life.

i returned from my epic road trip safe and sound. to recap the rest of our adventures....

- drank lots of wine and watched lots of movies at uncle doug's guest house
- petted horses and hiked around uncle doug's plethora of land (beautiful!)
- got stuck in traffic around san fran and sacramento (day before thanksgiving)
- had pizza and beer at caroline's aunt and uncle's (another uncle doug!)
- played the most entertaining game of life. ever.
- ate a vegan thanksgiving with lauren and her friends
- sang christmas carols for lauren's friends...delightful...
- explored caves at the pinnacles national monument
- got a calzone (delicious!) in this really bizarre town somewhere in the middle of nowhere
- lucked out on getting an executive suite at the best western...for $120!
- got to know my traveling companions really well and had the trip of a lifetime!

i've also had the past two days off from work! so i've pretty much been on break for a week and a half. i then work for 2 and a half weeks and then have another 3 weeks off. gotta love the holidays!

between buying my rail pass, getting new tires, getting my brakes repaired, going to the dentist and splurging a bit on some patagonia dresses (i couldn't resist!), i'm not excited to look at my bank account. but hey! that's what life is for.

i've been knitting and crocheting a lot lately. i've made a few things for folks here and am now thinking about gifty things for family. should be fun!

another week flies by.

last week flew by! i worked at our other site leading a great field group and teaching line dancing. it was interesting to work at another site and get a different perspective. my field group was a lot of fun at first, but at the end of the week, i think we had a little too much of each other.

it has started to get rather cold once the sun goes down (which is at 5pm!). crazy. i need to remember to bring more and more layers with me every day.

i think the highlight was teaching a solid orienteering class. i'd only taught it once before, so i wasn't sure how it would go. my goal this time was to teach a short class and let them loose with compasses. it worked and they had a blast!!

right now i am staying at the guest house of one of my coworker's rich uncles. apparently he invented online credit card transactions...so he has a guest house that he hosts people in! it has 4 bedrooms, a view of the ocean and the forest, a wood stove, full kitchen and projection tv. basically the opposite of where i live and where we've been staying (well, minus the views).

the past two nights we've been traveling up the coast. the first day we stopped for a delightful meal in ventura before meeting my friend kristy in santa barbara for a stroll along the pier. we camped out along the beach just north of santa barbara. it was spectacular. the next day, we ate brunch at the rock and roll diner. it was spectacular. we spent the day stopped at random spots along the way: the hearst castle (which we didn't tour because it was way too expensive), the elephant seal viewing area, and then finally we found our camping spot at limekiln creek. we set up our tents near the creek. the creek fed directly into the ocean...which was a 3 minute hike from our campsite. watching the sunset over the ocean horizon with the waves crashing against the cliffs was breathtaking.

today we drove up the coast some more...stopping to visit mcway falls, the only waterfall to pour directly into the ocean! pretty great. then we kept driving up along the coast to get to santa cruz!

off to enjoy the guest house.

i said a boom chica boom.

the ladies in my cabin LOVED that song last week. it doesn't help that i really like that song, so i have a tendency to sing it a lot.

this week was pretty great. i had a wonderful group of girls. no drama. they respected and listened to me and each other. they learned a lot from the night hikes. they seemed to gain a lot from the community in the cabin. i had fun and actually slept really, really well. all in all, a stellar week.

i filled in for one of the field instructors one day. that day wasn't so great...but i wasn't prepared, wasn't up in my discipline game and taught a few classes i'd never taught before. not to make excuses, but that explains why i wasn't so satisfied with the day.

one thing i didn't enjoy last week was plunging about 18 bazillion toilets (okay, maybe 10). since we live in the middle of the forest, our plumbing here is less than ideal (we have running water though...something to be thankful for). which means that our toilets clog a lot. ew.

i'm starting to get into the swing of things here at camp. a few of the support coordinator positions are opening up for the spring (one position higher than mine), but i think i want to just stick with being an instructor for now.

i feel like my life is finally reaching a healthy balance of work and fun. when i'm not working, i've been exercising more, feeding myself healthy (and delicious) food, and making progress on my various crafty projects. i've been able to go contra dancing a few times and even signed up for a weekend contra festival at the end of february! i'm pretty excited.

for thanksgiving, i'm going on a road trip with a few of my coworkers. our tentative stops are in santa maria for wine tasting, a few days in san fran, thanksgiving in sacramento, visiting my friend lauren, camping at yosemite seeing kings canyon and the sequoias and then returning home. can't wait!

i'm also planning out my winter break excursion. i'm almost completely set on getting an amtrak USA rail pass. it's not that much more expensive than a plane ticket, and i get 8-12 stops across the country. so far i'm planning to stop in colorado springs and denver to visit family, chicago to see my brother and his family, be home for a week (with a possible trip down to ohio to visit college friends), then spending new years in chicago, stopping in utah to see heidi, idaho to see amy and then making my way on the trains down through california to make it back home. all that in 3 weeks.

: )

that is so epic.

for some reason, all of the sixth graders kept saying that about everything. i don't blame them because i find myself saying that a lot about this place, but it got a little annoying.

"that view is so epic!"
"the rock wall is epic!"
"that tree is sooooo epic!"
"this sandwich is epic!"

you get the picture. my field group this week was rough. i had one students with ADHD who had been taken off his medication for camp. why? to make my week difficult probably. needless to say, he stirred up a lot of crazy energy in all of the students and halfway through the week was one step from being sent home. not ideal. we had some good times though and i'm pretty sure the students had a good time. i did have a few students ask if they could switch into different field groups though. oops.

fall is really beautiful now. the leaves have turned from a golden yellow to a burnt orange. i've been taking a lot of short hikes around to enjoy the fall splendor. on saturday i did some trail work up on the seven oaks trail. it was a lot of fun! then on sunday afternoon i went contra dancing : ) i've missed that part of my life quite a bit. there's a big weekend festival in february that i'm hoping to go to! that would be a lot of fun.

in other life news, i'm leaning towards staying here another year and finding something cool to do over the summer. any suggestions?