Sheesh! It’s been awhile since I have been able to get on here and say a few words…by now it’s probably clear that that means I will have more than a few words to say…Oh well.

I am happy to report that school has started for the students and I STILL love my internship! We had a full 4 weeks of training before the students came back to school, so I was definitely ready to start seeing some clients and getting busy. My schedule is filling up and I am excited to be doing an assortment of Counseling-Center type things this semester–group, outreach, supervision, learning about the afterhours HelpLine…WOOOOHOOOO!!!

As far as fun stuff goes, I will work backwards since Wylie beat me to it for our weekend in Aggie Land…though I will have a few comments to add there!

TODAY–Sat. Sept. 12: It was very rainy and we were feeling lazy at first, so we caught up on some of our TV watching…that was nice. We thought that the rain would stop us from heading out to Caldwell, TX (about 20 miles) for the Kolache Festival…but we were wrong! We made the trek in the rain and found that at 3pm most of the kolache vendors were ready to get the heck outta that rain, and so we got 1/2 price kolaches! We sampled about 8 different kinds. My favorite was the poppyseed, then the raspberry, and the cinnamon roll (although I don’t think this counts as a kolache). Other than that, they all kind of just tasted like a danish. Some of them were gross and we didn’t even try them. I had a major attack of the sugars by then anyway…I understood why they were also selling giant sausages on a stick…something to cut the sugar! There was a polka band playing fine tunes and some people even dancing in the rain! I wished that the day had been nicer for their sake, but there were still quite a few folks enjoying the festivities.

We then went to Target because Wylie had some gift cards that were burning a hole in his pocket and I needed socks for when I wear dress shoes to work. Now I am writing this and we are relaxing. I still feel a little sugary, and am looking forward to some black bean and corn tacos when I get done here…

YESTERDAY: Fri. Sept. 11: HOORAY! Wylie was born today…well, today, but a couple years back!!! We had a very fun day…I get done with work on Fridays at 12:30 (because I work late other days, not because I am a slacker) so he also took the afternoon off and we went to a fancy-pants place in town with a vegetarian menu for lunch, and then to see Inglourious Basterds. (The movie, I will note, was actually pretty funny. I laughed out loud a few times and didn’t think that the trailer was accurate for the amount of violence–I had been wary of seeing it because it looked like it was going to be non-stop…it wasn’t that bad. I did cringe and hide my eyes a few times, though.) Then we came home for a little birthday celebrating at home–we had 2 kinds of pie (pizza and Dutch Apple, which I found at a local place that makes them from scratch and sells them to you unbaked so that you can feel like you are part of the process. I appreciated that. Except, some of the guts of the pie spilled out during baking and were on the bottom of the oven and made it very smelly and smoky in the house. I did not appreciate that. I think our oven needs to relax. It is an oven. Things will fall to the bottom….)

THURSDAY Sept. 10, 2009–Our first softball game was rained out! BOOOO!! We did, however, have 2 lovely practices before this. There were rainbows at one of them. There are actually a lot of rainbows here because there are tons of tiny little rainstorms that come and go in 10 minutes or less and the sky surrounding them is blue…kind of wonderful, in ym opinion!!! Good for leprechaun hunting, too!

LAST WEEKEND! See Wylie’s post for the details. Parts of it were pretty incredible. The dinner at the General’s house was kind of odd. I managed to insult his wife a little bit on accident…but I didn’t get fired on Monday, so that was good. Apparently the hiring of the general as the VP of student affairs is frought with a bit of political drama that is interesting to hear about, if you like that sort of thing…I usually do. He mainly roamed the lawn with a cigar, and that was awesome. Then we headed to the Dixie Chicken, where we also made friends with two gentlemen from San Francisco who were here on business with the university. It was nice to have some fellow outsiders to share in the awe of midnight yell. I think Midnight Yell was one of my favorite things. There were probably 30,000 people there. At midnight. To Yell. You get to kiss at the end though, which is fun. And whenever the Aggies make a touchdown. The game was cool to go to as well. I am thankful that my training director is generous with her spare tickets and her tailgating spot! Tailgating is one of the best inventions to go along with sports, if you ask me! I liked seeing the differences in the football culture between College Station and Auburn. I will say this: The students at A & M are WAAAAAYYYY more mellow than the students at Auburn, and the scene was more relaxed here. Although, the whole student section yelling in unison is pretty intimidating!!!

Well…that’s about it. I told you I would have a lot to say. I will try not to wait so long next time!

It was the weekend! (Now it’s Sunday, which–I am sure–I will dread soon enough, but for now I am still excited that tomorrow is Monday and I get to go to work again!) As Wylie mentioned, we stayed pretty low-key this weekend, but managed to squeeze in some fun stuff. I enjoyed First Friday in Downtown Bryan for several reasons–1. It is nice to be able to walk there. 2. The Village Cafe seems like it has good food and good people at it, and homemade sangria which I didn’t see soon enough this time, but will definitely try next time. 3. Kids in a spashing fountain. 4. A band on the street. 5. A very delicious “taco” that was so good. 6. Some awesome bluegrass.

Yesterday Wylie and I both had some work to do, so we spent the early part of the day doing that. Not that exciting, but had to be done. Then we went and saw the movie “Funny People” with Seth Rogan and Adam Sandler. If I was an official type person, I think I would have given it 5 stars. As it is, I am just a regular person and I will give it a thumbs up. I giggled quite a bit, and had a tear in my eye a few times as well…not an easy feat, but I am starting to think that Judd Appatow has my number. The evening was filled with more fun stuff–mostly lounging and a trip to the DQ. We realized that it was nice to spend a Saturday like that, but we will need to start planning day trips and stuff for the weekends if we want to get to everything on our Texas List, since we now have less than a year here!

This morning Wylie made us some from scratch pancakes, which were kind of new to me. I told him about the beer pancakes my dad used to make, and that was new to him. They were pretty tasty and a full belly made me take a nap. We did a few errands this afternoon–I had to get some watch batteries replaced, so we braved the mall for a few minutes, and I remembered that I don’t like the mall that much.

That’s about it. I am going to put up some photos of my new bike, which I love. Wylie took them Friday as I got home from work, it was like 104 degrees out and I was very sweaty. I hope it doesn’t really rain too much this week so that I can ride it.

Yesterday Teresa and I went to the Division of Student Affairs Annual Summer Social after our work days were over. We weren’t really sure what to expect except what the flyer had on it. It sounded okay, and it would be a good chance for me to meet the rest of her cohort, and actually get out of the house.

So, after I finished up my work day I got in the car and drove to meet Teresa at her office. It’s a nice office with a bunch of room, and way too many chairs in it. After cooling off for a bit we headed on over to the Student Recreation Center where the hoedown was going on. It was a quick event, about 1.5 hours, that included dinner (BBQ for non veggies, potatoes for me), a sing-along (three songs that not many people sang along to), a lesson on how to do the Aggie Chicken dance (it’s just the normal chicken dance everybody knows), trivia (we didn’t know this was happeneing), a dessert competition (Teresa made cookies but we were too late to be in the competition, or they were scared that she would win), and a dollar sale (we kept our dollars in our pockets). Whooh! It was a fun evening, I was glad to get out of the house and meet some people, though it felt like an awkward first-meeting kind of place. We will all meet again I am sure.

Afterwards we went home and just lounged around, the whirlwind evening had us wiped out.

Hooray! 4/5  of the way done with my first week of internship! The good news is that those exclamation points are not just for the heck of it…I am actually, really, truthfully, 100% loving it so far! (OK, maybe not the 6:30am alarm clock part, but that’s no secret…) This week has mostly been meeting the staff and other important people on campus and learning their names and what they do and what kinds of questions they can answer for me next week, when this week seems like a blur and I have to ask where everything goes again…:) Everyone is really nice so far and interested in making this a good experience, so I appreciate that. We have been doing some fun stuff as well–like today we went on a scavenger hunt all over campus to get aquainted with where things are and what is important at Texas A & M. It seems like traditions are one of the most important things at Texas A & M. The Corps of Cadets is a big deal here and there are lots of things that go along with that…there is a dog, Reville (rev-i-lee), and there is yelling at midnight before home football games, and there are class rings being purchased by the thousands and dunked in beer at the Dixie Chicken …  We had a fun time today and took a lot of silly photos along the way, I will see if my cohort will let me post a few.

Speaking of my cohort…I think I love them! They are all really fun and nice and I will be glad to go through this with them and hopefully hang out some along the way! We all attended the annual Division of Student Affairs social this evening and brought our sweeties and families, and it was good to get to meet them all. We ate some BBQ and a lot of desserts. There were a few weird things though, like a sing along and the chicken dance…I’m not sure about that stuff…

Hmmm…Wylie already wrote about the biking, and I am glad that that seems like it will work out for me, at least some days. We have been having fun in the evenings…last night we made cookies to take to the social and there was the bike riding…we also tried another pizza place on Tuesday–Buck’s–which was my least favorite so far. I do get tired pretty early though, so hopefully I will learn how to manage that better…Any tips???