RA training. it's a thing.

a magical thing is happening right now at this very moment.

well, two things are happening.

1. i am eating a wildberry poptart and it's pretty much the best poptart i've ever had in my life and i am very excited about it.
2. I HAVE A WHOLE HOUR OF FREE TIME AND I DON'T NEED TO BE DOING ANYTHING VITAL.

i'm at RA training. that's why this hour of free time is so absolutely joyous.

i don't think i've blogged about RA training. i've blogged about aspects of RA training, but i don't think i've actually sat down and been like, "wow i want to blog about all the shenanigans that we get into at RA training that no one knows about".

so now i'm going to. WOOT.

I MOVED IN AND LOCKED MYSELF OUT 

if you were unaware, i am a senior and a third year RA. i'm also a female. that means that i get to be in wright hall, which is the apartment style dorms. i live with my fabulous SRA katie and two other girls who aren't here yet, which is just as well because katie and i have shit everywhere.

THE WHOLE APARTMENT IS COVERED IN STUFF.

so on saturday we moved all my stuff into my room which is on the west end of the apartment. and i'm moving from a large and spacious double into a single. so i'm trying to cut down on all of my crap. i haven't found room for my TV yet. while my mom is putting my clothes away in my closet which is now about three times as small as what i'm used to, my dad and my brother and i are running things from the storage closet in my old hall on the second floor, across the parking lot, into my dorm, up the stairs, and into my apartment.

so in the other dorms that aren't apartment style, to lock your door you have to actually lock your door. so if you're late to class and realise that you can't physically lock your door, that means that you left your keys inside and then you say some words that aren't really approriate and you grab your keys and move with your day.

my apartment door (and my bedroom door inside my apartment) locks itself behind me. so halfway through moving in and i locked myself out of my apartment.

when you lock yourself out, you whine to the RA. i am the RA.

i found another RA and got the master key. the master key didn't work. (also, when we put in a work order to get a new one, all they did was oil it. that oil consequently got all over my hands when i had to key into the laundry room at midnight. FOR A LEGIT REASON.)

so then i had to track down katie and my hall director, willard, made fun of me mercilessly.

then i had to run to walmart. and i'm like, morally against walmart. which sucked.

BUT LOOK I GOT ALL MOVED IN AND STUFF.

(the england is strong in this room.)

THEN THERE WERE LOTS OF PRESENTATIONS

RA training has a lot of presentations. like, you don't think that RA training is that hard, but it's two weeks of like, eight in the morning to midnight stuff. every day.

ERRRRYDAY.

and then you'd think that we'd get sundays off, but NOPE, sunday is one of our longest days because sunday has the most boring presentations. i should be more generous because my fellow RAs give some of those presentations and they work hard on them. and they make them interesting. and they're fantastic.

but there is just no getting around that hearing about what facilities and management does for the third time is boring as hell.

but even though we sat through like... seven hours of presentations on sunday and it was really boring and we knew that lots more were coming, we managed to make it a fun time for south staff.

so we went to coldstone, made inappropriate jokes about the sweet cream ice cream (we are not mature.) and then we had a super smash brothers tournament at willard's.

me. cas. john. on a team. against willard.

he kicked our asses.

so i gave up and went to play bullshit with the rest of my female staff members, and i won both times and i thought that katie was going to rage quit on me. legitimately.

CAMP HENRY IS ALWAYS THE BEST (AND GOOD FOR FOOT SLICING)

on monday we always go to camp henry, which is like a cool leadership summer camp on lake kimball. and we have five stations that we rotate through as a staff. and since willard is the hall director with the most experience, he makes the schedule so we don't have to kayak in the morning when it's cold.

way to go, willard.

our group leader was this awesome guy named david who was from london, and i was like, i totally spent three weeks there and he was like, well that's nice i totally grew up there and i was like, i love london and he was like, i like bandana tag and that was pretty much the end of that conversation.

we did play bandana tag. which was fun. and willard got really into it and i'm pretty sure i'll be playing it again sometime before training is over because willard misses it.

after we played that and this weird dodgeball game in a hunger games arena called gaga, we went to the low ropes course. i swung on a rope swing, which was kind of a big deal because rope swings freak me out. all eleven of us balanced on a seesaw and nobody got hurt (unlike last year) and then we did that thing where you have to fit everyone through a spider web. so you're like, lifting people up and funnelling them through between pieces of rope and stuff like that.

well we kind of took cas and flipped him over backwards over the entire thing and caught him on the other side and i may have screamed the whole time.

after that we did this huge jacob's ladder. which was fifty feet tall. and it looked like this.

if you can't tell, those huge beams are about five feet apart.

I CLIMBED THE WHOLE THING.

i didn't realise how high it was until i was sitting on the top like, aww yeah i'm a bamf and i'm really out of breath and then i looked down and it was like

HOLY MOTHER OF PEARLS THIS IS REALLY HIGH GET ME DOWN RIGHT NOW.

after we climbed the ladder, we went to archery. last year i missed all the targets and shot them off into the woods. this year they had barricades so you couldn't do that.

guess who shot all of her arrows over the barricade and back into the woods?

archery is not my friend.

after that we went kayaking, which is totally my thing. i love kayaking. it makes me feel closer to god. we all went out onto kimball lake and through a tunnel onto a different lake and we rammed into each other and tried to tip each other over and it was a good time. on the way in, our instructor told us that we could "accidentally" tip ourselves and swim the kayaks in.

i tipped myself. stepped on something and it hurt. then my foot sank ankle deep in silt.

i pushed my kayak in. foot still hurt. walked across the beach. left a trail of blood. found some other RA staff members. they noticed the blood. cue panic.

it turns out that camp henry doesn't have a first aid kit and i was like, "well that's strange" so i sat on a picnic table while taylor poured water all over my foot and dug into my cut with a q-tip. and it hurt through my whole entire foot so i could only walk on my tip toes. and it bled the whole way home and barbara was like, wow that's probably infected so she took me to her room and went into lifeguard mode. she cleaned it off and then scrubbed it out with disinfectant wipes and then attempted to cut the extra skin off with scissors.

obviously, while this was happening i was hugging a pillow with my eyes squeezed shut and when i wasn't making terrible noises of pain, i was yelling words that would have made my mother hit me with a frying pan.

i still have gauze all over the bottom of my foot and it's all taped up. and it's still bleeding through the gauze. and it's thursday. (my foot is also still swollen.)

BATTLE WOUNDS.

YOU KNOW NOTHING JON SNOW, AND NEITHER DO I

tuesday was another long day of presentations. like, a RULLL LONG DAY. we were in the CSO, the centre for student opportunity, and we sat through three hours of presentations from them.

which was helpful and not boring because i hadn't heard it twice already. the CSO is pretty new.

here's what i got from it:

1. they have a lot of sub offices.

2. a lot of the sub offices don't apply to me because i'm too old for internships and i have my major and stuff.

3. IPHS and the IPHS institute are different?

4. FREE SWAG.

then i sat on a bag full of thumb tacks, but that's a different story.

the thing i most took away from the presentation was the last presenter, laurie. she was there for the new students, like the freshman. her basic message was, "if you have no idea what you want to do with your life, come talk to me!"

my name is emily, i am a twenty-two year old senior, and i need to make an appointment with laurie.

it was that night that i decided that i was going to make my bulletin board about big kid life. and of course, game of thrones. all of my residents but like... two are seniors. so i made a bulletin board called "real life is coming". (see what i did there?)

this is my favourite part of my bulletin board.

well, that's the whole thing.

ignore the fact that this is sideways. my phone is stupid. but it's the best slide. just tilt your head or something.

ALSO, YOU WILL NOT BELIEVE THE TROUBLE I JUST WENT THROUGH TO TAKE THESE PICTURES OF YOU. I LITERALLY STOOD UP IN THE MIDDLE OF THIS POST TO TAKE THE PICTURE AND MY APARTMENT DOOR SHUT BEHIND ME AND I WAS LOCKED OUT AGAIN. SO I TEXTED KATIE AND RAN TO THE STUDENT LIFE OFFICE, GRABBED HER KEYS, RAN BACK, UNLOCKED MY APARTMENT, GRABBED MY KEYS, RAN HERS BACK TO HER AT THE STUDENT LIFE OFFICE, AND NOW I'M HERE ALL SWEATY AND OUT OF BREATH FOR YOU, READER. FOR YOU.

i did meet the new chaplain while i was run/walking. so that was neat.

I PRESENTED ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH

about halfway through the summer barbara and i decided that it would be a good idea to present on mental illness, so we brought it up with the hall directors and they graciously said yes.

to know about my struggle with my mental illness called trich, click here.

to know about my struggle with generalised anxiety disorder, click here.

to represent the statistical 350 students at alma that struggle with mental illness, we made 350 yellow ribbons. 20 of them were purple to denote the statistical 20 people attending the presentation that were struggling.

we got up early and spent an hour taping them to the chalkboard in SAC 113 and covering them up so no one would see them. then after our first session, roommate mediation, the hall directors informed us that we were moving venues.

i legitimately cried. i was already nervous as hell and now we had to move all the stuff.

so willard, bless his heart, brought us lunch and we spent another hour moving all 350 ribbons and putting them in dow L1 while everyone was at lunch. then we somehow managed to eat jimmy johns without puking.

(we had just come from a two hours presentation about campus violence and sexual assault. which is always hard. and we were nervous. puking was totally in the realm of possibility.)

the first part of our presentation was just to have the RAs look at all the ribbons. and then we shared our own stories.

obviously because of the links i just gave you, i've talked about my struggles before. i've talked to lots of small groups about trich, but not a large group of people that i'm close to and that i work with.

i've never given a public presentation on my anxiety. 

i was terrified. 

but i managed to get through the whole thing. everyone was very receptive. they were very interactive with the group activity that we did, and we had a great discussion about hot button words and not using mental health terms as adjectives. (that weather is so bipolar! they didn't have a dress in my size and i almost had a panic attack!) 

we had a greater discussion about why it's important to talk about mental health because nobody does. and we talked about creating a safe environment in our halls for students struggling with mental health issues.

the support that barbara and i received for sharing our own personal stories with the group were overwhelming. i spent most of the afternoon crying. it was terrifying, it was wonderful.

I GOT A NEW LIBRARY CARD

this morning i had the morning free to finish my bulletin board and my door decs. so i allowed myself to sleep in before i set to work making my games of thrones magnicifence. 

it's not magnificent. my board is ugly. you can say it. UGLY BOARD.

hannah came over. we spent all summer on the internet fighting the patriarchy. i was excited that she was here. and i was like, "let's go to the SAC lab and print off my stuff!"

we go to SAC. awkwardly run into dr. aspinall who i haven't seen since i left england. and he's like, "you made my whole summer because you loved york so much" and inside i was like "i don't have you for a future class so i didn't really spend much time thinking about you" and i actually said "aw that's so sweet i really did love york" and then we found out that printing lab was locked.

the hall directors' office was closed. so was the library.

so hannah and i got in my ghetto van and drove to the public library, a place where i had never been in alma.

we applied for library cards to use the printer. we had to give the lady our driver's licenses and she was like, "oh you're not from michigan, i need your social security number" and i was like, "say what" and she was like, "do you want the card or not" and i was like, "fiiiine" and i felt skeevy.

the alma public library cards are really pretty. i actually took the time to put four of the ten letters of my last name in the signature instead of just the h and the scribble, it was that pretty.

we get on a computer. download my bulletin board info. click print.

it's one dollar per page.

i pay the lady seven bucks in cash. watch as my bulletin board comes out of the printer. and hannah says, "you'll get reibursed for this, right?"

ha. haha. hahahaha. HAHAHA. AAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

NO.

we drove back merrily and taped the bulletin board up. we hung out for a while. we talked about my cactus who sits in the window sill of my room and you can see him all the way from the chapel. 

we fought the patriarchy.

(GOAT SCREAM GOAT SCREAM) TROUBLEEE TROUBLEEEE

this afternoon we had some fun RA sessions before some serious stuff this evening, like the game of life (which i've blogged about before) and the privilege exercise that makes me feel like an asshole for being a middle class white female. we started off with an inclusion/exclusion activity and the past two years i've always been in the excluded group.

this year was no different. i have that luck.

after that we talked about balance and boundaries and that's always fun. because i have no balance and no boundaries and i laugh.

then the new RAs went to their own session and we went to a returners session called staying motivated.

we were in the lab room in dow where my brother's spider research from the past two years is being carried on by a senior named adam. so there was a bunch of spider sex on the board.

i am not kidding. my brother spent two years studying spider mating behaviour. 

HORNY SPIDERS.

so we all settled down and katie and barbara are presenting but barbara was doing something important, so we started watching videos on youtube.

and we watched the goats screaming like humans video.

(along with the trouble goat scream.)

so THAT was awesome.

once we were done laughing our asses off, barbara came in and we started their powerpoint.

and the ironic thing was, we were in a presentation about being motivated, and i think every single one of us was about three hundred percent DONE and no one was paying attention and barbara got sassy with us.

which we totally deserved.

then we flew paper airplanes for a while as a really cool metaphor about being a motivated RA.

oh, and we watched kid president. and marie and i were sitting next to each other and tweeting all the good quotes from it to each other like "NOT COOL ROBERT FROST" which i wrote on a piece of paper to hang in my room but marie wrote "pshhh" on it and ruined it.

and we spent a lot of time hitting each other with paper airplanes.

IN CONCLUSION

i wanted to write this post because throwing paper airplanes at marie while watching goats scream at people made me laugh and i wanted to do more than tweet about it and put it on facebook.

it's a pretty popular status.

but in conclusion, RA training isn't just us sitting through boring presentations and watching videos of screaming goats and stuff.

we have hours of staff time where we bond and share our stories and cry and laugh together. we team build. we learn how to take care of each other and take care of our residents. we laugh and sing and scream and cry and learn about a lot of really tough shit, like how to deal with suicide and depression and what to do when we are too overwhelmed.

we talk about privilege and diversity. we get uncomfortable.

but we also build each other up and play games and have skipping contests and eat lots of ice cream.

i wouldn't trade being an RA for anything, i wouldn't trade my staff for anything, and i wouldn't skip RA training for the world.

(even though i get no sleep and i get hangry a lot.)

I LOVE RA TRAINING, OKAY?

here's a cute picture of me and barbara while i was getting the cut in my foot scraped out at camp henry.

... THE END.

so while i wasn't blogging i went to oregon and watched a lot of people get beheaded. oh, and i played my cello.

guys, it's been so long since i've blogged that when i clicked on my little blogger icon, it was like, WHERE YOU BEEN, LOG BACK IN, GURRRL.

it's been that long.

this post is going to be like, the mother post. the post of "the rest of emily's summer, which is really a month and a half because that's how long it's been since emily last blogged". so let's just dive right in, yeah?

EMILY GOES TO OREGON FOR A WEDDING AND SOME LAKE STUFF

so on july eleventh i was sitting in my room on tumblr and i just kept thinking, mannnn i need to pack. because my cousin picks me up in an hour and then i'm off to oregon with her, my uncle, and my grandma for my second cousin kyle's wedding, and have i actually decided on what i'm going to wear to that wedding? because i have like, eighty dresses.

it's twenty. but now it's seventeen because i got rid of three of them today.

so like i always do, i packed literally an hour beforehand and i managed to remember my pull n' peel licorice because i do not leave the state without pull n' peel licorice. and then my uncle is pulling up and my grandma's in the front seat and she's yelling at me that i didn't answer my phone and somehow we fit four suitcases and two carry-ons in the back of my uncle's car and we're rolling to indianapolis.

TO OREGON AND BEYOND!

and yes, that's my badass avengers backpack. it'll come in later.

so we drive to indy, which is always a boring drive, minus the nestle bunny from hell that's about halfway between indy and fort wayne.

and i mean. it is a nestle bunny. from hell.

it is NOT okay at night. i mean, even during the day it's not okay. but at night it fuggin' glows, man.

we have a quick dinner at panera, which is never quick because we're with my grandmother. i love her with all of my heart, but as you will soon learn, my grandma can be very irritable, and she also can't walk very well because her feet have neuropathy.

so anything that we do with my grandmother is slow.

we spent the night at a pretty legit hotel that jessica (my cousin) found and we decide to swim in the pool even though it's outdoors, it's freezing, the sun has set, and there are about fifty sorority girls wearing strange dresses having some sort of secret meeting in the pool area.

i don't know why you'd want a secret meeting in the swimming pool part of an airport hotel, but there you have it.

the next morning we leave the hotel at four thirty. which means we got up at three thirty because my grandma had to do her make up. we get to the indy airport at like... five. dragging our luggage and stuff. we get my grandma a wheelchair. i'm handling two suitcases and my grandma's suitcase i swear has more stuff in it than my entire house has and all i can think is... starbucks.

we get starbucks.

we're atractive at five in the morning.

my grandmother scoffs at my huge starbucks and then we're boarding a plane and we get priority boarding because my grandma's in a wheelchair. awww yeahhhhh. perks.

our flight to denver is pretty boring. two and a half hours. i sleep against the window until some nights comes on my ipod.

have you ever noticed that when you purchase a song, it's like, EIGHT TIMES LOUDER THAN THE OTHER ONES?

so i'm listening to my top 25 most played and some nights is number five. number four is florence and the machine dog days are over and i'm just like, half asleep and then suddenly

SOME NIGHTS I STAYYY UPPPPP CASHING IN MY BAAAAD LUUUUUCKKKK

so that happened.

we had an hour layover in denver where my grandma sat in her wheelchair and ate licorice with me even though it was only seven in the morning. while we were chowing down i look over at the bar next to us.

there's a dude. at the bar. at seven in the morning. 

THEN. THE FLIGHT TO PORTLAND.

we're in a small-ish plane. jessica and i don't get to board with my grandma so we get seats way in the back because we're flying southwest where everyone just kind of... boards wherever. we're way in the back. 

all of a sudden the southwest flight attendants come on the PA. it's some guy's birthday, his name is mike. and they're like, SING OR DIE, but really it was more like, "everyone sing mike happy birthday so we can take off to portland!' so we all sing him happy birthday. it turns out that mike is this really attractive guy sitting behind jessica and they present him with this huge botle of champagne. but it's hard to see him because he is so embarrassed that he has crawled under jessica's seat.

after they present him with the champagne and he's crawled out from under jessica's seat, he starts drinking it. at eight in the morning.

then, while the flight attendants are doing the final check of the plane, we hear barking and a woman screaming.

THERE IS A LOOSE DOG ON OUR AIRPLANE. THERE IS A DOG. WANDERING AROUND. ON OUR AIRPLANE.

and this wasn't even the best part about the flight. our flight attendant was absolutely insanely hysterical.

"smoking is prohibited in all lavatories. if you break a smoke detector in the bathrooms, there's a thousand dollar fine, and if you could afford that, you'd be flying delta today. smoking is permitted on the wing; if you can light it there, you can smoke it there. in the case of a cabin pressure change, please use the oxygen mask. put yours on first, then help your husband. if there is a chance that we need to do a water landing, then we are probably lost."

when we landed she said, "welcome to the bahamas! unfortunately, it looks a lot like portland, oregon."

now, portland is one of my favourite cities. in fact, it's probably my favourite city in america. so i was stoked.

unfortunately, we drove straight through portland and south to salem, where my second cousin's family all lives. and we got to our hotel and i crashed.

my parents got the hotel after driving down from washington state around two hours after i did and my mom showed me all of their biking adventure pictures and we all took showers and got ready for kristin and kyle's rehearsal dinner barbecue... thing.

kyle is the second cousin, by the way.

so my WHOLE family and by that i mean my great aunts and great uncles and my other second cousins that are kyle's first cousins and my cousin and my uncle and my grandparents, ALL OF US, squeezed into rental cars and we went to this old cool barn mill place for the barbecue dinner and it was pleasant. we all got little name tags that said "hi i'm kyle's..."

my dad wrote "hi i'm kyle's first cousin once removed in law" and my mother hit him.

hanna is my second cousin. i don't see her very often, but we have a lot in common. we both go to a small school, we're both vocal feminists, and we're all about world peace. so hanna, jessica, and i kind of snuck off into a different part of the barn mill place.

and walked straight into a wedding reception.

we were polite and signed the guestbook.

the next day my parents and i took my grandpa's twenty year old truck, big red, to downtown salem and we walked around. it was super neat and fantastic. we saw a huge national guard shindig going down at the capitol, we ate at a very scary malaysian restaurant that had really good spinach pie, we went antiquing, we found the river and a motorcycle rally, and walked through willamette college.

SALEM PICTURES? SALEM PICTURES.

THEN IT WAS WEDDING TIME.

i was stoked. i'd been waiting for this wedding for like, two years. seriously. we all had been. so we all took showers and got fancy.

then my mom was like, "emily i can see your underwear through that dress" and i was like "why do bad things happen to good people" so i had to wear my backup dress, the one i didn't really want to wear. 

then we crammed in the back seat of my great uncle's rental car and we drove out of salem to a beautiful vineyard for kristin and kyle's wedding.

i think i could get married in an oregon vineyard, don't you?

we sat in the second row and i took the greatest picture of my grandmother in the history of existence.

i mean, that's my mom. and her mother.
CHECK OUT MY GRANDMA'S FACE, YO.

that look on my grandma's face was pretty much permanent the rest of the trip.

kyle and kristin's wedding was short, sweet, and beautiful. when kristin walked down the aisle, kyle cried and then i cried because let's face it, it was such a beautiful moment.

and the guy who married them was also totally one hundred percent HOT.

all in all, it was a ten minute wedding. and it was absolutely gorgeous.

ALL THE TEARS.

then the reception started. awww yeahhhh.

the food was delicious. we managed to squeeze most of the family at a round table and we all enjoyed the espressor bar. the dinner music was absolutely perfect. and by perfect i mean it was like, mumford and sons and regina spektor and florence and the machine and bon iver.

it was so perfect that i actually stopped eating to go find kyle and congratulate him on his musical tastes. to which kristin responded by hiking up her huge wedding gown and saying, "that's my taste in music."

i wish i could do the evening justice, but it was honestly a blur of good food, great music, family, and dancing. 

it was pretty awesome. 

the next day myself, my parents, my grandparents, and jessica and her dad had a nice hotel breakfast and then we loaded ourselves into big red (my dad and my mom and me all squeezing into the front) and the rest of us into our rental cadillac, and we headed for the oregon coast.

if you want to know what sitting in the front of the truck was like, it was like this.

and this.

my mother is a most beautimous creature.

after driving for an hour, we found the oregon coast. you'd think it would be like, AHHH THE PACIFIC OCEAN. SO WARM AND SUNNY AND GORGEOUS.

uhhhh no.

it was more like, AHHH THE PACIFIC OCEAN. SO IRON GREY AND FREEZING AND WINDY AND FOGGY.

i was wonderfully reminded of england. and also of how freakin' cold england is.

but eventually the sun came out, so that was legit.

IT'S SUNNY! BUT STILL FREEZING!

we drove down coastal highway 101, which was absolutely GORGEOUS. like, seriously, you are legitimiately driving down the pacific coast. it was fantastic. 

and of course, we went to the aquarium in newport.

i love aquariums. i love sea creatures. so for me the aquarium was this big thing of me being like

OMG OTTERS

OMG OCTOPI

OMG FISH

OMG STARFISH

OMG SHARKS

it had one of those underwater tunnels with SHARKS AND THERE WERE SHARKS AND I WAS VERY HAPPY OKAY.

after spending a good three hours at the aquarium, we continued down the oregon coast and eventually turned off to go to eugene, a large college town where we were spending the night. eugene is home to one of two voodoo doughnut shops in the entire country.

i have been to the one in portland. jessica wanted to go. we decided to go.

when we reached eugene, there was nowhere to park and i could hear my grandma complaining (like she'd been doing for the past four hours) all the way from the other car, so we went to our little seedy hotel ten miles out of eugene and my uncle filled up the cadillac with gas and took me and jessica to voodoo doughnut.

and that was where the fight happened.

the three of us were sitting outside of the famous doughnut shop and admiring how many homeless people eugene seemed to have and we were watching a homeless lady play the ukulele and sing with her friend and her dog. (well, he dog wasn't singing. and all the homeless people had dogs. it was rather strange.)

her dog wandered into the street and she dragged it back and began to hit it. like, no joke, she was beating up her dog. and i was going to say something, but this lady stopped walking and was like, "uhhhh what are you doing?" and then they got into this HUUUUUGE argument and it eventually ended up with this crazy barefoot lady yelling "GO BACK TO PORTLAND YOU FUCKING YUPPIE"

and that was when we decided to leave.

we got up bright and early the next day for a four hour drive to crater lake national park where we had a cabin. the drive was rather boring, but my mom and i ate licorice and had coffee and we talked about all kinds of things and we reached the park in no time. we drove down a nice straight road and we pulled over at a picnic stop with a little sandy slope. so we climbed up the slope.

what was on the other side of the slope?

MOTHER HUGGIN' CRATER LAKE, THAT'S WHAT.

to learn about crater lake and how it was formed and whether or not it has mutant fish in it, click here.

we had a picnic lunch and jessica and i peed in the woods because bathrooms in national parks aren't often found, we went to the rim village and took lots of pictures and took a few small hikes and drove most of the way around the lake before settling into our cabin, which was like, a thousand years old.

i mean, a hundred.

that's jessica.

after settling in and having a nice meal, all of us except my grandma drove back to the rim for a sunset hike that hiked up one of the mountains to a fire safety cabin place. and i took about eighty million pictures. and the ranger who guided our hike was super cool and pointed out all kinds of super legit plants and stuff and i asked him how you become a ranger because that's what my brother wants to do and then we just stood at the top of the tower and looked at crater lake with the sun going down.

PICTURE MONTAGE

so that was pretty dope.

the next day we spent the morning driving around the other side of crater lake and looking at phantom ship (the thing above is wizard island) and we went to the highest point from the lake.

which looked like this.

that's phantom ship.

basically, if you haven't been to crater lake, oregon...

YOU HAVEN'T LIVED YOUR LIFE PROPERLY. BOOK THOSE PLANE TICKETS, BRO.

after a picnic lunch, we split ways. my parents and my grandpa clambered into big red and spent another day at crater lake (and then drove three days back to indiana) and jessica, my uncle, and my grandma got in the cadillac and drove six hours to portland to spend the night before we flew home.

portland is still my favourite city.

ahhhhh nothing like a nice instragramed photo of portland.

we stayed at a hotel that had a TV in the bathroom, which goes against my sensibilites as someone who has five TV channels total (and a VCR) and i stayed with my grandma, who was very happy that we weren't off roading it in a cabin. 

at twelve thirty in the morning someone knocked on our hotel door. so of course, i jumped out of bed like a ninja and it's this weird dude standing outside and he says something that sounds like, "sjdghkjsdfhgsdkjhgdsg."

and i'm like, "bro say what?"

and he's like, "I HAVE YOUR TOWELS"

and i'm like, "WE DIDN'T ORDER ANY TOWELS"

and my grandma is like, "GO THE EFF AWAY I AM AN OLD LADY"

and that was pretty wicked.

in the morning, while i was getting ready, an old couple kept trying to key into our room. and jessica heard then and came outside and was like, "why are you trying to get into my grandma's room?"

and they were like, "this is obviously my room" so i stuck my head out of the door and said "obviously not" and i think i almost gave the woman a heart attack.

after an interesting breakfast in which i'm pretty sure the waitress put a picture of my grandmother in her mean girls burnbook for rudeness, we went to the portland airport and i got my giant starbucks. while i was sitting there drinking it and reading paper towns for the eightieth time, i noticed a little boy next to me with curly blond hair. he was whispering to his mom and she said, "why don't you ask her?"

little boy: do you like spiderman?

me: he's my FAVOURITE superhero!

little boy: me too! he's on your backpack!

me: yes he is! why is he your favourite superhero?

little boy: BECAUSE HE CAN CLIMB ON WALLS, DUH.

the flight to las vegas was totally and completely boring. jessica was really excited that we were landing in vegas. i was excited because i'd never been to nevada and it checked another state off my list.

let me describe the vegas airport.

hilly. bright. obnoxious. loud.

slot. machines. are. so. loud. and. i. wanted. to. burn. them. all. to. the. ground.

but while i was buying lunch, i saw an elvis impersonator, so that was cool.

we flew forward in time back to indy and landed around eleven at night. the guy was the pushing grandma's wheelchair was really into medieval fantasy and we had a pretty hardcore conversation about game of thrones. we reached the hotel by midnight to get to our car and we found...

a gigantic sparkly birthday card on the windshield. i shit you not.

i made it safe and home in bed by four. and got up for work at six thirty.

all in all, OREGON ROCKED AND ROLLED.

EMILY GETS READY TO GO BACK TO SCHOOL BY WATCHING PEOPLE BEHEAD EACH OTHER (and other such nonsense)

it's august. i mean, it's halfway through august. the ides of august. which means i've been running around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to get everything i need to get done... done before i go back to alma on saturday.

i've gone to the bank about eight times in the past two weeks. the bank tellers keep noticing and commenting on how i wear different shoes each time.

i FINALLY got estlin fixed (estlin is my cello). i had a minor breakdown in the parking lot picking him up yesterday because there were a lot of cars in the parking lot and i wasn't mentally ready to deal with people. i had spent all morning getting ready to simply go to the music shop, and i didn't want to deal with more people than i had to.

when i finally got out of my van and got estlin home, the first thing i said was, I MUST LEARN THE GAME OF THRONES THEME

this is me attempting to be cute while playing estlin.

so the game of thrones theme sounds like this. if you didn't know. actually watch the video too because it's badass as hell.

IT IS SO BEAUTIFUL AND I HUM IT ALL THE TIME WITH MY MOTHER.

well the music was like... super hard. and cray. ya know. so after an hour i kind of like... curled up underneath my bed.

i've found reasons to go to target about six times a week to buy stuff like new shoes and picture frame hanging devices that i can't remember the name of, i've been baking furiously with hannah who is now my wife, i've been absolutely refusing to pack until the last minute, and today i went through my closet to get rid of old clothes.

i found a really pretty dress that i wore to a wedding seven years ago and it fits. unlike my junior year prom dress, which i put on the other week to help with stress because i wanted to feel pretty and all bridal-ish. man that zipper did not want to zip up and it significantly lowered my self-esteem.

i also found a hooker dress and i'm saving it. for something.

i've also been furiously getting my poetry portfolio ready to submit to a national poetry contest. i was up until one this morning getting it ready. i finally submitted it today and i didn't puke.

GO ME.

(like, if i win this poetry contest, i get a bunch of money and my own poetry book. so that'll be neat. and not at all terrifying.)

i still have a list that's like... eight million things long that i have to do.

number one on that list is to finish the last two episodes of season two of game of thrones.

I MUST I MUST I MUST.

so we got my dad the second season for his birthday. i have eight days to watch ten episodes. and i've been live tweeting them mercilessly. so just stay away from my twitter. i don't know why you would want to follow me anyway because i tweet about pointless nonsense all the time. there are still two hundred and seventeen of you valiantly following me, and i give you the maddest props EVARRR.

there are so many more things for me to do. like, i need to clean. and do my laundry.

and actually pack up all my stuff to actually move into my apartment in actual alma in actual michigan to start my actual senior year off with actual RA training.

thinking about this is making me need starbucks.

um... i'm sorry about this post being really long. 

but i took a really badass vacation. 

and i've been spending a lot of time watching game of thrones and avoiding my real life responsibilities. like blogging.

see you on the other side of RA training, bro.

this is me saying bye to you.

post script: when i submitted my poetry to the poetry contest, i had to write a bio for myself and i'd really like to know what you think of it.

Emily Hollenberg is an aspiring poet, novellist, and professional blogger, an English literature major, and attempted world traveller. In her spare time, she enjoys reading Harry Potter over and over again, attempting to play the cello, and watching The Lion King. Her poetry and short stories have been featured in See Spot Run Magazine and her poetry was chosen to be presented at the Sigma Tau Delta English Honourary's 2013 National Convention in Portland, Oregon. She hopes to one day be as cool as her Tumblr page.

I AM NOT KIDDING. I SUBMITTED THIS. IS IT GOOD OR...?! 

let me know, my faithful readers.