January 13

A little bit of Wyoming in the American Indian Museum. There was not a lot of plains Indian things in the museum which i found kind of disappointing, but at least there was this. Welchie lives pretty close to Devil's Tower

Washington Memorial in winter

Library of Congress. It's beautiful!


It is rather daunting to write everything down. I will try to get everything down though! first off, this is going to be unedited. so there may be some things that the general public should not know. if people want to know what's going on, i'm going to make a blog and edit out certain things, so forward that link when it's made to them. this is for your eyes only ;). i will try to email at least once a week. if i fall behind, feel free to get my bum in gear.

So! arriving the night before i was supposed to get here was stressful! there was no other way to get around it, though. I am extremely grateful to Juan and snow for taking care of me.  I am extremely thankful for them for letting me stay there, taking me to work and then my new place, and loaning me their linens. Their kindness has been much appreciated. Let's just say I got a healthy dose of soft rock on my way to work the first day.



I have never been so nervous. I can't even remember being this nervous for Paris or leaving home for college. it turns out i have been nervous for a good reason. I wasn't nervous about leaving home... well ok, leaving katie and her family sucks because kirsten left her too, leaving friends sucks, leaving my family sucks, especially since mom also lost kirsten. I also left a very special boy behind. anyways, going on. I wasn't nervous about moving to a big city either. i have done that before. I was more nervous for work. and for good reason too! I work from 9-6 every day. i was expecting 9-5 and the extra hour makes it that much worse. I do get an hour lunch, though. My jobs are sorting mail, taking phone calls and sitting up front, checking the printers, setting out news papers then recycling them at the end of the day, doing chores or LAs and LCs (can someone please tell me what those stand for? and the difference?) eventually, i will be giving tours to visitors to the office! that's what I'm looking forward to. I can also sign up for classes like "how positive thinking helps relationships" haha. i think i may take that one. They also encourage us to go of and look around a bit. I like that because by the time i get out of work, it's already dark, so i just go home and chill. i would only have saturdays and sundays to go around and try to see things.

The first day i was here, i was thinking "what have i done?" to myself  the whole time. the last couple of days have been much better though. I think it may end up being rather fun. Most the LAs and LCs (still confused) are really nice. Today, i really focused on relaxing and chatting with them :). the first two days i was talking in my "low" voice (is it really ever low? i guess i mean lower). the low voice means i'm being really shy but working through it enough to get work done. today i tried to speak in my normal voice and i had a much better time. I think everyone else will start to like me better, too.

My fellow inters... hahaha. oh my. Kelsey is cool. she only comes in twice a week, though. she goes to college up here and is just  volunteer. She's extremely tall... like 6'2, really nice and patient (cause i'm sure she thinks the rest of us are nuts), and pretty. John's from SoCal but goes to school at UW. random. Also, we got crazy hate male about Obama that was pretty much spam so we were told to throw it away. he thought it was legitimate so he insisted on reading it because someone "put a lot of time into it." it didn't even have an apostrophe in We're. and it was typed in all caps. I don't like Obama either, but it's crazies like those who legitimize real complaints about the president. The nice thing about John is he lives in my building and actually walks home with me. that's super nice. Welchie.,. i like him pretty well :). he's SUPER from wyoming. he's from Sundance. his entire county doesn't have a single traffic light. He always talks about his study abroads and buddies. His favorite subject of discussion is alcohol. His freshman roommate was mormon and Welchie said that he would have converted if he didn't like beer so much. He talks about it ALL THE TIME! We're not supposed to talk about it casue we're "representatives" of Barrasso, but that does not stop him. ooooh no. beer is on the mind. I actually really like Welchie. he is so WY. his accent and everything. he's just a politically incorrect gentleman. he's really nice and quite funny and i enjoy spending time with him. There is one more intern, Max. but i've only seen him twice so far because he works at the Indian affairs office. I think he might actually be indian but i can't tell worth crap. He's really intelligent. he has like one million bachelor degrees, six masters, and has started his PHD. he's nice but i think he thinks we're all idiots. but i like him, i want to get to know him better.

The shooting in AZ is everywhere here. Everyone here now seems to think that because one crazy has immersed and done something violent, there is crazy people out for all of them. They all think they are in danger. i don't think they are in any more danger now than they were before the tragedy. it's silly, in my humble opinion. Also, everyone is now using it as political fire for their agendas which i think is horribly distasteful. They're all being a bunch of hypocrites. It makes me sick. I mostly blame the democrats who are now using this as a way to SOMEHOW show how horrible republicans are. Like republicans are to blame for all the crazy people hearing voices that tell them to kill tons of people. Huh? and it is so RANDOM to point fingers at Sarah Palin. thankfully there are some politicians who are realizing how ridiculous this is and are speaking out. thank you, guys.

Speaking of politics, do Republicans really believe that becoming crazy radicals is really going to help strengthen their party?
what we need are good, logical, realistic minded politicians. Romney maybe? This tea party, crazy bible belt pastures, blatant gun wielding madness needs to stop if the republicans want to have a chance! Obama is already making it easier for the republicans. this insanity does not need to occur. the unpopularity of Obama health care alone got the Republicans to win house. Let's just be patient, wait for Obama to lose more followers with all his bad decision making, earn the trust of the people, and all the normal things.

Also, there was a news story about how some female senator is getting more floor time to win more female approval for the republicans. The article was talking about the simple things that win us over. what are we, women? silly cattle that the men are trying to herd into their own political parties? I blame politicians, but the news media. I wish i had a link to the article so this little rant makes more sense.

As for my apartment... it is quite nice! i finally met my third roommate. i like them all. the fourth one may be a tad awkward, but no real complaints. their so nice. One is from SLC, another from ID, and the third i met is from NY. she found out where we are all from and then asked if we knew any mormons. we laughed and i informed her that i am, in fact, mormon. She seemed a  bit awed and said "i have never met a mormon before." it was funny. the other three of us were basically just telling her how not weird mormons are. it's a good thing i'm her first mormon. that may sound a bit full of myself but what i mean is I'm a very strong mormon who follows all the 'rules" and goes to church and stuff. at the same time, i am not crazy or judgmental or weird. (tell me if i'm wrong, though). Oh, right. i was supposed to talk about my apartment. It's really cool, actually. it's two levels. i'm on the bottom with another girl who has yet to show up. three more are in the room upstairs with their own bathroom. the living room is in this cool loft area  and the kitchen down by me. It's really cold all the time. i like it though. it's just a quick 6 blocks away from work. i can do the walk in about ten min. I always get there just on time. :)

This is a no brainer, but everyone here drinks. I was used to it in Cody, but that was in high school. i didn't live with them. teachers didn't joke about it all the time. no one did it around me ever. I'm also understanding how stupid swearing is. some guys put it in wherever they can and it sounds silly to me. I also informed my roommates that if they came home so drunk they were passing out, puking, whatever, i would FREAK out. Basically, i told them they would have to take care of it themselves because i would think they were dying and call an ambulance. it scares me. they both informed me that they haven't gotten that drunk in a long time. that's comforting, i guess... but i heard my neighbor intern come home raging drunk at like 12. i wasn't scared cause our door was belted. but yeah. I think i'm going to have a lot of days in while everyone else i sout getting drunk.

There is a McNiven in my office. He stopped me and said "i saw you are going to BYU. are you LDS?" well so is he, and he got me information about where i'm going to church and about institute. I def can't wait to get the church back in my life. i can feel my spirituality deflating  in this environment. Travis (the McNiven) said "there's def not the same standards here" and he's right. all the drinking people, politicians...   i could use a spiritual lift right now.

so far, i've been to the american indian museum, the capitol, and the library. good times. :)

all in all, i think it will be good! i know it will get better. Sorry if this seemed a little negative. it's no walk in the park so far. good news, i like my roommates, i like Welchie, i like Travis, i like my apartment, and staff members , i love the church, and i have modern technology so i can keep in touch with the people i love every night. I love and miss every single one of you. If any of you have questions, or anything, let me know!and sorry for the rambling and lack of editing. Hope it was a good email!