Pictures below are from the 30th Des Moines 20K Dam to Dam with Nicole and Robert, friends from Anders House this past year. There are also some pics. from one of our cooking adventures in our apartment. Jealous? You should be. They were the most gourmet tacos I've ever had.

Apartment

A year ago I was graduating, and now I am living in my first apartment. I feel like a grown up- crazy! I am staying in Frederikson Court Apartments just north of campus with Katherine Frels from Guthrie Center and two of her college friends. We each have our own room and share a bathroom, kitchen, and living room which are furnished. The room is a little small since it is on the end of the building but perfectly fine with me, and I like all of the roommates. My summer classes start tomorrow. I'm not quite ready for the whole class and homework thing to start again, but it wont be too bad- I hope ;-)

Yesterday I went with some friends to the wedding of my connection group leader from the past school year, and on the ride back, we discussed all of the things we wanted to do this summer since we were all going to be here in Ames. We probably wont be able to get them all completed, but we plan on having a wall of sticky notes with our goals and another wall which we will use to move the sticky note along with a picture after completing the activity. One of these is to go camping- possibly on Central Campus if we can get away with it.

Yay, yay, yay, whoohoo!

My finals are complete, and although you are not here right now, I am doing a happy dance. To some societies, this is the crazy woman dance, but luckily my friends were not too alarmed since they have seen it throughout the year. Anyway, I have gone from a pitiful, stressed-out, jobless, sun-burnt, sick girlie to a care-free, still jobless, kind of tan, not so sick girlie.

The job area for this summer has been kind of rough. Since I am living in Ames and taking classes this summer, I have been searching for a part-time job.

I was not selected to be a guinea pig in a vitamin study to see if there is a correlation between carotene absorption and the amount of soy bean oil(kind of bummed but also a little relieved), and the two cafe jobs, Stomping Grounds and The Cafe, didn't work out were worth a try. The experience was also good because it forced me to finally put together a resume, and the manager from The Cafe with whom I had the interview with said to try again in a month or so to see if anything opened up. The Cafe is a really sweet restaurant, and it was cool just to talk to the manager about the business. He and the other owners really emphasize good quality food that is in season. They buy milk and meat from the Sheeder farms in Guthrie, change up their menu every couple of weeks, everything is made from scratch, and they specifically designed the restaurant to give the customers a sense of privacy to actually talk to the people they are with without being distracted by others.

Yesterday I applied to Panera Bread and JC Penny. Hopefully something works out, but for right now, I'm going to enjoy the time off and start packing up the stuff in my dorm.

Have a great weekend!