I hope that everyone had a wonderful thanksgiving weekend. I am sad that I missed celebrating with my family this year, but I was able to instead spend it in the desert with a wonderful group of people, which I am so thankful for.
Last week we had school on Monday and Tuesday with a half day Wednesday. It was nice to have a short week of work and have an opportunity to relax. On Monday we had our faculty/staff thanksgiving party following classes. I sat at a table with six female faculty members and it may have been the most
entertaining table conversation I have been a part of in my time here. I sat next to Brandi, who is the dean of students at Verb, and she could make a Buckingham palace guard laugh. The entire conversation revolved around one of the faculty members who was going to be spending thanksgiving with her boyfriend's family for the first time and what she should/shouldn’t do. Have heard this conversation before, but it was almost always from a male perspective. Even though it was only an hour of my day, it just made me appreciate how wonderful the staff at the school really is and how lucky I am to be a part of this organization for an entire year!
Mashanda’s husband had surgery on Tuesday, so I took the early shift on Tuesday so that she could take him to the hospital. The best way to observe a class is by spending the mornings with them. Most of the guys are so used to a routine that the smallest change throws them off. Some of them just seemed shocked to see me in the morning shaking their hands as they walked in the door! It was as if they had never seen me before and was entertaining watching their reactions. The only problem with switching shifts was that I had two early days last week on back-to-back days. Needless to say working 7 to 6 can be rather tiring, so Wednesday afternoon couldn’t come soon enough. We picked up all the students from work at one Wednesday due to the holiday, so we were all able to get home by 3:15 or so to pack up the car for our drive to Phoenix. The traffic was better than I thought it was going to be, but it still took us over 8 hours to get to the JV houses. There are two houses there, and we were lucky enough to stay at the one house that had carpet (even though it was not very thick). We all went to bed pretty much right away when we got there.
It was quite odd waking up in Phoenix for thanksgiving. I am used to 20 degree weather, so when I walked outside and it was 60/sunny it really dawned on me that I am not going to be having a typical holiday season this year. The phoenix houses were wonderful hosts and pretty much did everything for us in terms of dinner preparation. All we had to do was pay 7 dollars and come ready to eat! Dinner was outside in the backyard, and it was just a great way for so many of us to still celebrate thanksgiving away from our families. That night we just hung out at their house after dinner and went to a dive bar that was four blocks away from their house.
Friday morning we decided to explore Phoenix a little bit and went hiking to a park called North Mountain. We managed to get 8 of us to go, which turned out to be a pretty good number. There are essentially 3 peaks at this park, and from the top of them you can see almost all of Phoenix. I have seen large cities before, but Phoenix is massive! In almost every direction I looked I couldn’t see the end of the city.
As I said there are 3 peaks at this park, as we neared the top of the third one there was a dog at the top barking at us. I couldn’t see the owner, but I figured that he/she was just sitting somewhere we couldn’t see. However, once we got to the top there was no one to be found, only this dog. At first I was worried it might attack one of us, but then I realized that her tail was in between her legs and she was shaking. She wasn’t mad she was scared. I went over and sat near her, and after a few minutes she slowly walked over to me and let me pet her. She had no tags and clearly had some sort of an eye infection, but besides that she seemed healthy. John and I immediately named her Mariposa, which means butterfly in Spanish, and decided that we needed to carry her down the mountain. Even though she wasn’t barking anymore, I did not know if she was going to let me pick her up. I slowly grabbed her and she let me pick her up with no sort of a struggle. For the next half hour John and I took turns carrying the dog (she peed on me twice…) and spotting each other since it was a pretty steep hike. One of the other guys called an animal shelter in the area and arranged for them to meet us at the bottom. Near the bottom we decided to set her down and see if she would follow us. She walked the rest of the way and even followed us when the path split up! At the bottom of the hill we ran into some park rangers who were going to watch over her until the shelter arrived. They said that stray dogs get released at the park all of the time, which is really too bad. We gave her some water and in any other situation but this one I would have a new dog at my house. Unfortunately that wasn’t an option, so we were forced to part ways there. I am not sure where she is now, but she made my weekend so much better!
My girl: Mariposa
That night we hung out that the other house again and managed to get to bed at a decent time. The three girls in our house and I woke up at 7 the next morning to drive back to LA. This time the drive took less than six hours without all of the traffic. You may wonder why we left so early? The reason was clear: IRISH! A JVC agency in Atlanta had tickets to the Notre Dame-USC game and donated them to JVC headquarters who passed them along to us because we are the closest house to USC. I have watched USC wipe Notre Dame clean for the passed 8 years, but I knew that this night was going to be different. So I proudly threw on a green shirt and joined in the tailgating! Carolyn and I won the house drawing for the tickets, so we found ourselves in row 93 of 93 when the game kicked off at 5. Luckily our seats were in the Notre Dame section, so my yelling was more than welcomed (I think….) by all of the fans around me. It started pouring around halftime, but that did nothing to dampen my spirits. After a long scoring drive with only 2 minutes to play, Notre Dame ended a near decade of agony with a 20-16 victory! It was a wonderful way to end my season of watching USC football.
I don’t have much of a voice today, but it was all worth it for a great weekend. I miss all of you and wish that I could have spent the holidays with my friends and family back home. I am sending lots of love from the West coast and I will see you all soon!
