I'm Back...Maybe...

Hello all!

I admit I kind of forgot about the blog and without Danny pestering me about it I haven't written in a while. Which mostly means you get to listen to Danny drone on and on about his life which is cool and all but I think a little more pizazz is needed. Not to get your hopes up that this entry will be amazing or anything, it could very well flop and be epically boring. But that's the risk you take in reading this ridiculous thing so hold on to your seats as you hear about..... Grad school! Food! Breathing! Air! And other such exciting things that are a part of my every day life :)

So grad school; it's pretty great so far! I loved the University of Minnesota where I did my undergrad but being out here at Lewis and Clark is a totally different experience. At Minnesota all of my classes (except Spanish) were usually 50+ people and averaged more towards the 75-100 range. I never minded this, I loved my education at the U and really enjoyed the massive amount of diversity I encountered all the time. BUT, Lewis and Clark definitely has offered a more tight knit community feel as there are only about 25-30 people in my cohort for my program. I've mentioned before how awesome so many of these people are and I continue to enjoy hearing their thoughts and opinions each class. My faculty is also quite amazing at well and in itself it quite diverse. They had a game night/social thing last week after one of our night classes and of course only 15ish people showed up (out of all 3 cohorts for our program!) but through playing Taboo with them and the faculty I'm so glad I stayed for a bit.

I'll be getting to know some of the faculty a lot better soon as I'm headed to Uganda for a trip at the end of April that will be led by two of them. I'm so pumped for the trip!! It will be two weeks at a school in Uganda that trains counselors and we'll be leading a seminar on some of our Western counseling techniques. I know that probably sounds bad to some of you because given the history of the Western world impeding on other cultures by introducing what we think is better/best has been quite negative. With all of that in mind, the two faculty members leading the trip have definitely put a lot of work in developing a seminar that will focus more on the basic techniques of Western counseling skills rather than on Western theories. There is still a risk of overstepping and bringing back a lot of those negative aspects of colonialism but we have a lot of work left to do (we will begin meeting once every two weeks or so until we leave) to hopefully develop a non-culturally-invasive curriculum. I'm so excited to be a part of this and to go to Africa! It'll be my third continent (fourth if you count the layover I had in Australia to go see Danny when he was in Fiji) that I'll have traveled to. Woop!

Ok so enough about that part of life. Danny has made it sound like our lives are super boring but I think that may just be his life... :) We've been pretty consistently occupied on weekends, nothing crazy but fun things nonetheless. I went to a Timbers game a few weekends ago (the local soccer team). It was so much more fun than any Gophers game I ever attended! No lie! People love soccer here and they have a huge cheering section. Amazing! Danny wasn't able to come as I went with my friend Catherine who has an position on campus for the student activities board (I think) so she helps organize things for the underclassmen and got free tickets to the game. Danny and I have also been hanging out with my friend Skylar and her boyfriend Bryan pretty frequently. Skylar, like Catherine, is in my program so we all see each other frequently. It's nice to have another couple as friends and Skylar and Bryan are just full of fun activities so I don't mind saying that I plan to cling to that like velcro.

Oh and we bought a waffle maker off of craigslist! Danny has been pestering me about that since we moved here. Apparently waffles have been on his mind for months and he has been trolling craigslist in search of the perfect one. Of course craigslist brings with it a whole slew of weird events when you have to go pick up what you're buying. This one brought us out to Beaverton (suburbish place) and we got really lost looking for the house. The address was marked waaaaayy far away from where the house actually was so we ended up driving around for much longer than anticipated. When we finally found the house the girl we bought it from wasn't home but her roommate was. He was in the midst of cooking up some ground beef and wasn't very informed about the waffle maker at all. He had no idea if it worked, how it worked, if you could wash it, how much it cost, etc. This led to a series of phone calls to the girl we were buying it from and we ended up buying it. BUT I have learned my lesson about what kind of money you bring to a craigslist deal. BRING CHANGE! Danny is usually the only one of us that usually has cash and it's always a $20 so when the guy said the waffle maker was $20 and it was a very dirty waffle maker, I wanted to bargain it down. Of course, though, we only had a $20 so there wasn't much use in bargaining. Next time we will bring all of our money in $1's. I hope.

Hmm so the waffle maker story definitely took up a greater amount of space than I anticipated.... I told you this whole thing can get really lame so you were forewarned.

Other interesting things:
-We have discovered WinCo Foods which is kind of like Woodman's but you can buy everything from bulk bins. Score!
-My school will be opening up its own counseling clinic where I will do my internship in my third year. It's going to offer Spanish counseling as well so I will have my chance to fulfill my dream of speaking Spanish with clients!
-It's rainy here...a lot. But it doesn't seem as bad as you might think. It just seems kind of normal.
-Biking is still hard. I keep thinking it will get easier. Lies.
-I will be home on the 20th of December and will be heading up to Minneapolis on the 31st/1st until the 3rd. I hope to see ALL of you!
-You know about Occupy Wall Street? We have Occupy Portland. They're in a park downtown and so far it's been pretty peaceful, especially compared to Oakland.

Well that's it! I think I have sufficiently attempted murder by boredom at this point. Hopefully you've survived but if you haven't I apologize! But if you haven't survived you're already dead and I have no way of apologizing so... Yep. On that note, I hope those of you still left breathing are doing great and I'll be seeing you soon enough!