White Christmas

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

It has been a crazy month and I can't believe it is already Christmas on Friday! My sister got here a week ago and my parents got here on Sunday. It is so wonderful to have them here in Park City for Christmas this year and to be able to show them around my town and have them meet my friends. They were able to secure a condo right in town, so I have moved in with them for the week. They have been skiing while I have been working, but I finally have 3 days off so we can all ski and spend the day together. Erin attended my volunteer training last week for the Ski Center and she has volunteered on one of my lessons and is volunteering on Evan's lesson today. I'm making her work for her ski passes.

Speaking of skiing, I taught my first ski lessons this week! It was a little bit of a shock actually. As a new-hire, we have to complete 12 hours of team teaching before we can be put on the schedule. I had completed about 6 hours when I walked into work and my boss told me that I was going to have to teach in 30 minutes. Ok! My student was great. She is an 11 year old from Texas and we sang lots of songs and played in the snow in between runs. I also attended a 2-day Bi-Ski clinic last weekend. A bi-ski is a sit ski with 2 skis underneath that the instructor usually tethers from behind. It is one of the most physically demanding lessons that we have, and possibly one of the most dangerous (when something goes wrong) but definitely one of the most fun. You can put anyone in a bi-ski and go rip it up all over the mountain. In our clinic, we learned all about how to set up and adjust the equipment, how to load onto the chairlift (and unload), how to bucket the bi-ski and how to tether it on steeper terrain. We did have sand-bag students so we weren't endangering each other's lives.

In other news, I have a place to live! For those of you who didn't hear, we had a water main bust in our attic a few weeks ago. I woke up at 4 am to water dripping onto my bed and a river rushing down our stairs. Within an hour, we had water coming through every seam, overhead light and crack in our ceiling from our upstairs to our basement garage. I left to shower at a friends before work and when I returned 12 hours later, our entire place had been evacuated and gutted. My friends were wonderful and everyone offered me a place to crash as long as I needed to. Luckily, our neighbors aren't returning until after the first of the year, and they were gracious enough to let us stay there. I started looking for a place to live immediately, but the selection in mid-December in Park City is slim. Two of my friends in Americorps with me told me that they were looking to move, so the three of us will be roommates. We finally found a townhouse in a neighborhood in town, right across the street from 3 friends! It has 3 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms, LOTS of extra beds (for visitors!) and kelly green carpet. I can't wait to move in!

I hope that everyone has a wonderful and blessed Christmas and New Years! I hope that it is a wonderful time with family and friends this holiday season for everyone. I miss you all and am looking forward to seeing some of you in just a few short weeks! Merry Christmas!

Stats Update

• Total Ski Days: 9
• Lowest Temp of the Day: -6 (Yesterday)
• Today's High Temperature: 0 (as in, ZERO degrees.)
• Hours spent outside in 0 degrees: 6
• Amount of Duct Tape insulating my gloves: Approx 1 ft.
• Number of days homeless: 3

Cashew Chicken Traditions.

Apparently, it is snowing in Baton Rouge right now. That's nice and all, but why isn't it snowing in a place that needs it? All we have are high temperatures that aren't reaching past 30 and icy ski runs. Hopefully though, it will start snowing tomorrow and will continue throughout the week like it is supposed to. If I wasn't absolutely frozen and buried under blankets, I would be doing a snow dance right now. (Though, despite the cold, my friend and I got ice cream tonight...only at the BEST ice cream place ever, called the Yellow Snow. Expect to go there when you all come to visit.)

Anyway, I hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving! Things have been great in my neck of the woods. Last week I boarded a plane bound for, first Chicago, and then Springfield, Missouri. It was great to get out of town for a bit and see my family. I love Park City, but it

really is kind of like a college town for college graduates. It's small enough to only have about 2 degrees of separation between every person here between the ages of 20 and 35. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but it was good to get away for a weekend. I love Thanksgiving in our family. I love the predictability of it. It is 5 days out of the whole year that have followed the same schedule for years. Wednesday night, we all get into town. We go out to Mexican Villa...which we didn't do this year

and I think it rocked my cousin Jeff's world a little. Instead, we went to get pasta. Who, you might be wondering, goes and eats a big, Mexican or Pasta dinner on the night before Turkey Day? The Smith's do. And then we run it off the next morning at the Turkey Trot. Paige and I were the champions this year! We even beat out Mitchell. Then we take family pictures, race to the cold showers and head out to the farm. We then eat ourselves into a food coma. We had 20 people at the farm this year, plus 3 dogs. Unfortunately, Shelby wasn't allowed at the farm since she would roll in every pile of cow poop there. Anyways, we eat alot, as does everyone on this day. The day after Thanksgiving, we split up into shopping groups. The brother's go to Bass Pro and take the annual tour de childhood. Aunt Kim and Maria tackle the intense sales and my mom, Paige and I venture out to an outdoors store away from the madness and then to Starbucks for momma's daily fix. Then, we got Cashew

Chicken. If you have never been to Springfield, you apparently have never experienced THE Springfield Cashew Chicken. It's like Jambalaya

is to Baton Rouge. With a Springfield native as a father, we grew up having a homemade version, which I actually prefer. But it is a necessity, to have the origonal while there. We then go to Grandpa's for pizza, pool and patio-sitting. I introduced the fam to Apples to Apples this year. It got pretty intense. Day 4 of Thanksgiving, we all go see an early movie, watch the Kansas/Mizzou game and go to Grandma & Jim's for early Christmas presents and a homecooked meal. Then day 5, we wake up before the sun and hit the road. What a wonderful 5 days of my life. I am already looking forward to next year.

It's Here!

Tomorrow is the first day of the ski season in Park City! Hurray! It was a long day at work: cleaning the ski center, making copies of training packets; and GETTING MY INSTRUCTOR SKI PASS! Its official. I've got the uniform and the pass. Even though the pants make me look like a gangsta/snowboarder, I am so excited to wear it. I can't wait to finally go skiing. I also am ready for things to get busy again. Tomorrow is the returning instructor training, so everyone will be back and on the slopes. I also get to play sled hockey tomorrow, so that is exciting too. I've started my winter work schedule, so I have no more weekends on the weekend. So while my roommates are planning lots of fun for the next two days, I will be doing the 8-5 work day. Didn't you hear that Tuesday is the new Friday?

I've been told I have to keep up with these blog updates. I apologize for the few weeks that I left everyone in the dark. Well what has been happening? I have started working full time at the ski center, which is great. I love working out of a double wide where I can bring the dog that I am dogsitting to work and where I get to stare at a giant mound of man made snow out my office window. We are supposed to open next Saturday! Which means that it had better start dumping some snow. Speaking of dumping snow...it actually is doing that right now. We've gotten about 5 or so inches at my place in around 5 hours. Im on the lower elevation end of Park City too, so up top there will be alot! YAY! I took Cooper (the dog) outside a little bit ago to play in the snow. It was so beautiful! I love how it is so much brighter when there is a white covering on everything. Anyway, back to work. We've had some serious issues with the computers and phones over at the ski center, so it was really frustrating to have to go back and forth from the ski center to the ranch to work on the computers. Finally, today all was up and running so I actually felt productive! I did some emailing to our 200 volunteers...tried desperately to find some sort of order in how to manage the 200 volunteers and I decorated my volunteer board. I find it amusing that I am the VOLunteer coordinator, and I am also a Tennessee VOL, so I decorated my board in orange and white. It would be silly not to take advantage of that opportunity. Today we also had a couple of visitors from past instructors who are returning for the season. It was so fun to have people start to come by and catch up on their summers and talk about the winter ahead. I can't wait for the ski center to get busy again.

In other news, Halloween was great. I was a superhero, along with my friends Kristin and Libby. Kristin and I spent most of the day friday constructing our outfits...it was great. We were able to meet up with all of our friends that night and had a great first Halloween in PC. Last weekend, I went to Moab, UT with my friend Evan to see another friend from school who lives there. He works for another adaptive sport organization called SPLORE. There ended up being 7 people there that weekend from UT! (That's the University of Tennessee...not Utah) Brad had 4 other friends of his and Evan's staying there while they sold corn dogs and funnel cakes at the Moab Folk Festival. They travel around the country right now, selling those at concerts and other events. It was such a fun weekend. The weather was PERFECT. Warm, sunny...shorts and flip flop weather again! We biked everywhere that weekend (or walked) and we all make a huge breakfast at brad's place Sunday morning. We went bouldering Saturday morning with the dogs and went mountain biking on Sunday. We had a blast staying at the SPLORE house and it was quite comical. There was a working toilet in the boat house, were they store all their river rafts and the one in the house had to be refilled everytime it was flushed. Brad lives in a room converted from a garage. I am actually leaving tomorrow to go back to Moab with Americorps and I think we're going to go and help the SPLORE crew clean up their house on Sunday. Hopefully it won't be too cold this weekend!

Well, I am comfortably in my bed, with Coop sleeping next to me and it is snowing outside. That sounds like bedtime to me. I hope everyone is well and I miss you all so much! Have a great weekend!

Another Tennessean comes to PC!

Get ready Park City! Tennessee is moving in. Starting in December, yet another TR student from UT will be starting her internship at NAC!!! I am so excited! Evan and I found out tonight, and Jessie finds out tomorrow. : ) I knew that she would have no problem getting it. What a fun winter this is going to be! YAYYY! I had to tell SOMEONE, since I can't tell her. Luckily she doesn't know I have a blog.

It's been a great week, even without that news. I babysat the CUTEST kid ever last night. His name is Parker, and he is 18 months, happy and cute cute cute. Unfortunately last night he wasn't feeling well and decided to throw up all over me...it's lucky for him that I am obsessed with him. Today Andrea and I drove about an hour and a half out to the Rossignol warehouse in Ogden to pick up lots of sweet donations for our ski sale on Saturday. Lots of new boots & skis, some slightly used ones and some rando boots for those who only need one. So many that we couldn't have fit another thing into the bed or the cab of the Tacoma we were driving. Then we drove the truck and a suburban over to our storage unit (which we got for free because the number is 666 and no one wanted it) and we filled both cars to the brim with donated boots, skis, a snowboard and some one-piece snow suits that were donated to us throughout the year. We unloaded all of that into the building and spent about another hour trying boots on, picking out our favorite skis and eating pizza. Tomorrow we get to organize and price out all of it. I really don't need anything but gosh, new skis or boots for $25? I can hardly pass that up. Tonight I hung out with some of our baseball kiddos from our Miracle League for their end of the season party. They came to work and climbed the climbing wall and ate pizza. They are so cute.

Tomorrow we are all going to see the new Warren Miller film. This is my first Warren Miller experience, which is apparently THE event to kick of the ski season. His films feature lots of footage of professional skiers doing some crazy stuff and they always have a pretty big adaptive section...my boss's husband Monty has been in them twice as a 3-tracker. They heli-ski and do all this crazy stuff. We have a big group going so that we could get a dollar off the tickets and we also get a free pass to the Canyons!

Well, it should be a good weekend. Its still fairly warm ( 50's) and I think I'm going to take advantage by riding my bike to work tomorrow! We'll see if it really happens.

Also...it is the 3rd weekend in October, which means we play Alabama this weekend. They are undefeated, but we ain't scared. GO VOLS!!!

Update Numero Dos!

It was a great week and apparently winter has decided to lay off a bit. It's been in the 60's and 70's (!!!!) for about 4 days now! What a great change. I busted out the short sleeved shirts, flip-flops and even shorts for the weekend. It's still nice today...a little colder but I think 70 degrees is gone for good now. Snow is in the 10 day forecast.

So last week, on Wednesday, I had a surprise while I was at the barn getting ready to ride. All

of the sudden, Doc, my professor and the head of our TR department at UT, walked into NAC's barn! I knew that he was in town for the NRPA (National Recreation & Park Assoc.) Conference in Salt Lake but I had no idea he was coming out

to visit the NAC. It was so great to see him, and for him to be able to finally see where I did my internship and where I am working. There are actually 2 of us from UT's rec therapy program at NAC right now. My friend Evan is doing his internship here this semester and is planning on staying on for the winter to teach skiing with us. I wasn't able to show Doc around because I had to school one of the horses before I went

and worked with the ALP (Adventure Learning Program) group on the high ropes course, but he invited Evan and me to the NRPA Social Dinner the next night in Salt Lake. It was a really fun dinner! Evan and I met Doc and his buddies at the conference center. As we walked into the room, we each got a sticker on our back that we would have to figure out what it said later. Typical TR conference...always

full of games! We had a great dinner and met some great people...I even got to promote the NAC a little! After dinner, they started giving out awards and recognizing people for their service and acheivements. All of a sudden they called Doc up to the podium, not to our surprise. He has accomplished so much during his career...his resume is about 10 pages long. He received one of the top awards: the distinguished service award. I was so proud to be there with him as one of his students! Then, of course, he made me and Evan stand up to be recognized as his students. After the awards ceremony, we played a few more games and I won a URTA (Utah Rec Therapy Assoc.) mug, lunch box AND shirt! Yeah! Then we had a marshmellow snowball fight. Did I mention I LOVE my field??

The ALP group on Wednesday was great...it was a group of about 30 people from Park City Leadership who came out to do team building with us for the day. The group consists of business men and women from around Park City who are involved in local businesses and non-profits. They were really fun to work with and we belayed them on the high ropes course for about 2 or 3 hours. Then I went from that debriefing back to the barn, where I taught 2 lessons. I was just covering for one of the instructors, so I hadn't taught either of the students. On Friday, I taught 2 more lessons for Kristen. I was excited that she asked me to cover for her while she was out of town. I was ready to get into the actual programs again after weeks of training. Friday I taught the two cutest kids. One was really nervous riding his horse but he was really brave and told me that had been his best lesson the whole session! The other lesson was my favorite student at NAC. This girl was my case study as an intern in the barn,

and I also worked with her in the aquatic program and the ski program. I also got to teach her as an instructor this summer, so I was really happy to work with her again. Saturday, I went with Tracy and Evan to West Jordan to the Miracle League baseball game. This is new for the area because the field is brand new, so we started our own team. Miracle League is a baseball league for kids with disabilities who can't play on mainstream teams. The field is completely accessable, the bats are flat on one side for a wider surface area

and each player plays with a buddy. Everyone gets to run bases and they don't keep score. A few of my campers from the summer were there, and one of them asked me to be her buddy for the game. She's the cutest thing ever. She is the only girl out of 9 kids and she's has CP and she is great at sports. I didn't have to do anything for her except keep her company when she got bored on the field. : ) Afterwards, we went exploring around Salt Lake. We found some great deals at the Patagonia outlet (my favorite store!) and then went and walked around the Temple because it was such a beautiful day! If you are in Salt Lake, it is definitely a place you should visit. It's very interesting to see and learn about the different buildings.

It was a great weekend. We have a karaoke machine at our place for the time being while our friend Jill is staying with us so we have been taking full advantage lately! I actually just recorded Jill singing Me and Bobby McGee for Oprah's Karaoke Contest. She's really good! If she makes semi-finals...you all are required to vote for her! Last night we also went to a Park City Film Series showing of Away We Go, with Jim from the Office. It was really good! A little inappropriate at times but it had a cute storyline. This week is looking good as well. A little slow, but I will be really busy at the end of the week doing the ski sale and Wednesday I get to babysit for one of our program managers. Her baby, Parker, is about the cutest kid I've ever seen.

I hope everyone has been having a great week! I hear its getting cold back home...right as it warms up here! : ) Oh! And I just got a plane ticket for Thanksgiving...Springfield here I come! 1 month, 5 days. I can't wait.

Staying Connected

So I have decided to start a blog, in attempts to keep my close friends and family updated on life out here in Utah throughout my year as an Americorps member. Also, I see this as a way for me to reflect and keep track of my experiences, as long as I am semi-diligent about updating this.

We'll see how that goes.

I've been back in Park City since September 25 after spending a wonderful month at home visiting family and friends. I got to make a great trip to Knoxville, Memphis, Baton Rouge and Jackson, Mississippi and I also fulfilled my dream to see Wicked, which was INCREDIBLE. If you haven't seen it, you need to add that to your list. I also was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to reconnect with my old trainer and she was generous enough to give me a job of riding some of her ponies while I was home. It was wonderful to be able to see her and ride for her again.

As soon as I got back to Utah, I left the next day to go with a group of adaptive cyclers to drive to Yellowstone. We went to participate in a Yellowstone Cycle Tour that happens every year,

though for the past two years, it has been snowed out. This year, the weather was beautiful. We drove up to Old Faithful from West

Yellowstone, saw Old Faithful erupt and then biked the 30 miles back to the town. It was an incredible experience to bike through the park, especially for my first time there. I was nervous that I would run into a buffalo on the road, especially after watching one turn and ram it's head into the side of a car. I could only imagine what one would do to someone on a bike! Thankfully we didn't have to escape any buffalo, or any wild animals on our ride. I biked with a man named Kent, who bikes every day to and from work, so he was in much better shape than I was!

Then, on September 30...we had our first snow of the year. In SEPTEMBER.

This is outside of my back door, and that is the Miner's Hospital across from my apartment. Higher up in town they got up to a few feet! Sure is different from fall in Tennessee.

I am about to start week 3 of my year here at the National Ability Center as an Americorps member. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Americorps, I'll try to explain it the best I know how. Americorps is something like a domestic peace corps. We sign on for a year of service (1,700 hours) with a non-profit organization and for me that is the National Ability Center. We also are required to complete 80 ISP (Individual Service Project) hours with another non-profit organization in the community. We can choose where we do our ISP hours, and we also do one group service project a month. In return for our year of volunteering, we receive a small living stipend, an education award of about $5000 at the end of our term, around $200 for any training we choose to do during the year and $50 for equipment. At the NAC, there are 6 Americorps members. We are from all over the country: Libby is from Wisconsin, Dave is from New York, Adena is from California, Christina is from Salt Lake, Andrea is from Michigan and I am the only southerner in the group. I am really happy with our group. After being able to get to know the previous Americorps members from this past year and see how well the worked together, I was a little nervous about who I would be spending the next year with. I already knew Andrea from my internship in the spring and was relieved that I at least knew and liked one person. I shouldn't have worried though, because we all get along great and have already spent lots of time together during and outside of work. We completed our first service project yesterday at Park City's Recycle Center garage sale. Our recycling center is very unique in that it is very well known and active in the community. They recycle EVERYTHING. It was amazing during the tour to see how different things are recycled and how things come in full-circle because of the center. They send plastics to Patagonia to be made into fleeces, the are the only center in the country that recycles car seats year round and they hold garage sales for the community. It's wonderful to live in a community that requires recycling at all city functions and that is so diligent about recycling. Here's their website if you're interested in taking a look! www.recycleutah.com

We've also received our jobs for the winter season at the NAC. I am the volunteer coordinator at our ski center, where we provide adaptive ski lessons for people with disabilities. I am thrilled to be at the ski center. It is a fun, busy place in the winter, based out of a double-wide trailer by the base of Park City Mountain Resort. The volunteer coordinator is one of the busiest jobs in the winter, trying to organize volunteers for each lesson that needs a second, or third person to help. Many of our adaptive devices require extra hands or muscle to get the student on or off the ski lift or to help them up when they fall or just to be a blocker from other skiers. I'm already trying to prepare myself for this job, and I am also excited to be able to learn to teach. I did a little of this last winter during my internship, but this time, I get a uniform and my own lessons! Who would have thought that I would EVER be teaching skiing??

In other news, Tennessee beat Georgia yesterday, if you haven't heard. To add to the trill of the win, I live with two graduates of the University of Georgia. After weeks of trash talking, mine was thankfully justified. There are about 3 Tennessee fans in Park City, and the 3 of us watched the game at a bar with about 7 or 8 Georgia fans. I thought I was going to miss the entire game because of our service project, but to my relief I was about to catch the exciting second half. The only thing that would have been better than our win, would have been to be able to celebrate in Knoxville with my dear friends who were in town. I guess you can't win them all.