Settling In

I am officially in Boulder, as you all know by now. We have settled in to our apartment, furnished it, and made a slight attempt at decorating it. We still feel a bit adrift when it comes to making this home.

We've been on the mad hunt for jobs, staking it out in internet cafes applying online, roaming the streets with resumes in hand, and filling out any application that people are willing to hand us. As of right now, Lindsay landed a job at a restaurant called L'Absinthe, and then scored me a position there too with her good looks and charisma. :-D

I just interviewed tonight (if you want to call it that...more like sat outside with a crazy old french man who blew hand rolled cigarette smoke in my face and sipped what looked to be straight up espresso.) BUT, I got a job, sort of. I'll be hostessing there on Friday and Saturday nights for now, seeing that it's the slow season through August, until the students come back. He knows I need a full time job (which Im still working on via CareerBuilder and Monster) and said that if i can't find anything else, he will find something for me. So, it's a start. And I figure I can keep it even when I do land a full time job.

We've made some friends in the area, which is always exciting when you're staring at each other on your living room floor realizing, wow, we know nothing huh?
We met Kris' friend Dan who came down to visit and showed us around the mountains in our backyard, literally. It's pretty exciting to know I can bike down the road and be ready to hike in the foothills of the Rockies.
He took us to Denver to his friends place where we met Ed, Scott, Fred and Claire. All very nice and down to earth people. Ed works in Boulder and took us out the other day into another part of the foothills where Lindsay and I almost died on a 2 mintes hike uphill. It's the altitude, I swear.

I met a girl named Tracie when I overheard her in the internet cafe talking about a homeless shelter. I walked over, introduced myself, aplogoized for being nosey but told her that I was very interested in what they were discussing. She got very excited, told me all about it, and now I am on the fundraising committee for Carriage House. It's a shelter that allows homesless people to come in, provides them with food, professional counseling, computer access, help with resumes, job searching and housing. Their numbers are very successful and I am excited to be a part of it all. I am meeting with her tomorrow to get a tour and meet some of the staff and clients. She is more than willing to help me get my feet on the ground in the area of social work, she is very motivated and energetic about it all. I'm hoping it will only rub off on me. And I am looking forward to gaining some experience that will hopefully get my foot in the door for a job down the road. She is also aware that I am looking for a full time position and has been doing her buest to point me in the right direction. She has a Masters in Social Work, something I am very strongly considering at this point for somewhere in the very near future.

As for now, I am still adjusting to the shock of throwing myself into something completely new and unkown and working from the ground up. It was slightly more jolting than I expeted, but I'm working it out and telling myself, that's what happens when you dive head first into giant, life changing situations, haha.

I miss all of you at home, and can't wait to see everyone over Christmas break. I hope that some of you get out HERE before that. I am working on nailing down all the hot spots that I will be dragging you to in order to get the best taste of Boulder! So...BOOK A TICKET!

I'm off for now, like I said, I love hearing from home, or wherever in the country (or the world) you crazy cats may be! So don't hesitate.