Random Thoughts by Bethany

…that I have a job!

Yes, I am super excited! I received a call on Wednesday from a woman named Megan who works for Parity Corporation (a company that makes software for food companies, I interviewed there last Thursday). At first, I was not sure if she was going to offer me the position or tell me that they chose another person that they interviewed. I am proud to say that they chose to offer the position to me!

The name of my position is a “floating office assistant” meaning that I will basically help wherever I am needed. The company just reorganized a lot of things and moved people around, meaning that everyone has been given new tasks. This meant that they needed to hire a new person (me!)

The company is super flexible, I get to pick my hours and generally when I work. Another really neat thing is the location.  ParityCorporation (PC for short) is located in the business area in Bothell. This means that I can probably bike to work! That will be really nice because that means that I won’t have to spend as much money on gas! I will need to buy new tires for my bike though. (I’ll have to wait a pay check or two for that).

Everyone at PC that I met was really nice. I start there this coming Wednesday.  

Other things going on: I have three weeks left of classes (My last day is June 12th) and I have SO much to do between now and then!

It’s been an busy couple of weeks. Lots of school work, helping Erik with elections, working on lots of club stuff and looking for a job. Yeah, that’s right…I still do not have a job. There are a few places I’ve applied to, but these places are taking their sweet time on responding. It’s a bit frustrating and money is really starting to get tight. I would be in big trouble if I lived on my own right now…I would not be living on my own right now…if I had before.

Other things? Erik did not win the election. Ironically, he was too busy working on club stuff and working with the current student government to campaign for student government. Don’t you just love how life works out? It might end up being a good thing. He is applying for the positions of Ambassador and Communications Liaison. They are positions that (unlike the rest of student government) are picked by application only. We’ll find out soon what the results of that are.

We got approval for our swing dance club (All That Jazz) budget. Which means that we will be able to put on a good dance! We will be able to have Solomon Douglas and his Swingtet! If you are not familiar with them, they are very well known in the swing dance community. Erik and I are very excited. It has been hard to get to this point though. Erik has had to jump through so many hoops! It is ridiculous! I cannot believe the kind of roadblocks that Cascadia Community College has in place! There are great opportunities to be had, you just have to know how to work the system in order to benefit from those opportunities.

The job search…it has been frustrating. I have a few opportunities that I am just waiting to hear about. We shall see…I hope to have a job soon.

Life has just been crazy…I wish it would just slow down a bit. I’m ready for a break. I’m ready for summer. What is not so cool is that I probably will not have much of a summer, once I find a job.

I still do not have a job. School is my biggest time consumer these days. I’m starting to get a little worried.

Erik is a part of the Creative Arts Club at Cascadia, and they just recently cleared out their office. It’ll be really nice, since Erik has a key, we can do homework in there whenever we want! He’s running for Student Government President next year. That will be really cool if he gets that I think he’s the best candidate for the job!

I have been looking at jobs and universities lately as I need a job and I need to decide which university I will attend after I graduate from Cascadia. I would like to go to the University of Washington (Seattle Campus), but I need to be prepared for that not happening. I have looked at pretty much all the universities in my surrounding area, and unless I just need to pick a new major, I will either go to UW or not go…at this point at least. I am thinking I will major in Communications and minor in Spanish. Seems like it would be an easy enough major to find, right? Well, different schools offer different types of communications degrees. Some focus on drama, some journalism and some are a bit more general. Like the communications program at UW has a general communications degree, but within that is international communications. That seems to me to be a good thing to head toward. I need to continue to research majors…but at this point, I do not know what to do!

So, during my time in Spain I took almost 2,000 pictures. I am amazed that I took that many! I have managed to get them up onto a picture hosting site called Picasa. If you are interested in looking at my pictures, you can go to: http://picasaweb.google.com/bethanyinspain

I hope to make a folder with my favorites soon. We shall see. I have not been very busy since I have returned from Spain, but this will change! I start school this Thursday (April 3rd) and until then I am busying myself with looking for a new job. I have no idea what I am going to do. It is a little bit scary (no job + not knowing what university I will get into)

Life is slow for now, I would like to keep it slow…but that is not going to happen. I will try my best to keep my time commitments to a minimum. I’ll keep you posted on that one.

I am home!! It has been a day and the jet lag is not too bad. I have been just hanging out today. Within the next few days, I need to start looking for a job. I lost my job at the church, so I will need to get a new job. Also, I need to work on college applications and things like that. This is going to be a busy quarter!

I cannot believe the final week is upon us. In some ways, these two and a half months have gone by so slowly and other ways it feels like everything has just flown on by. I feel like I am about ready to go home, but it makes me sad that it will probably be a while before I shall be able to travel again. Being in Spain and traveling around has really given me the travel bug!  I have been to so many places within Spain: Segovia, Avila, Ciudad Rodrigo, Zamora, Viadolid, Sevilla and (of course) Salamanca! As for outside of Spain, I have traveled to London and Italy.

I cannot believe how fast time has flown. As soon as we started traveling more, the time zoomed by faster than I could have imagined. There have been a few bumps, but I am feeling much better now (aside from a sore throat) and I am looking forward to my weekend in Rome, Italy. I will be going with three of my friends: Kate, Taylor and Alina. It will be really fun!

It is hard to believe that this coming weekend will be my last free weekend to travel. I do want to go home, but at the same time…it will be so hard to leave everything. In a way, I feel like I will be leaving a small part of myself here when I leave.

Here I sit, working on a few key phrases in Italian that Josh (our director) gave me. He is fluent in Italian, in fact he has lived there and will be working over there after our time in Spain is finished. He was very helpful, we talked about it a lot on our 8 hour bus ride to Sevilla (Seville for those non Spanish speakers). It was so fun, I just loved talking with him about it, and between the two of us we ended up going on random tangents on different words and phrases and how it connects to Spanish. I really enjoyed it. I wish I could do more of that and I would love to learn Italian some day.

I must go to bed now…it is 11:30pm, time for sleep.

So, in case anyone was wondering, I have been sick with the Spanish flu (gripe in Spanish) for the last two weeks.  I had to go to the doctor and he had some blood drawn to do a blood test. The result was…you have the flu! I got better just in time to go to London. (and I am doing a TON better now). I went with my roommate Kristen. We arrived in London on Friday night, walked EVERYWHERE on Saturday, and left Sunday morning. A tragically short trip, but a good one none the less. I HAVE to go back there sometime though.

This week has gone by really fast. Tomorrow I leave for Sevilla after class. A big group from my program are going. (Organized by Josh) It should be really fun.

I’m sitting here working on my pictures, I will try to post some soon! I will be gone for the weekend, but now that I am feeling better I will try to blog a little more. I only have a little more than two weeks left, then I come home!

This last week has been pretty interesting…intense is probably a better word. This last Sunday I did not get up much before lunch (which is at 2:30pm) because I felt absolutely horrible. I didn’t think anything of it, but I did feel horrible. I got up for lunch and as soon as my host mom set the heaping bowl of spaghetti noodles in front of me I began to feel dizzy. I decided it was not a good idea to eat (and I was not really hungry anyway) but as soon as I got up from the table I began to feel weak. I managed to make it to the door of the room before I passed out (luckily my roommate Kristen was there to catch me - or else it might have ended with a trip to the hospital. My whole flat has marble floors). After a moment or two, I came to and they helped me back to my bed. By then it was apparent that I had a fever. I don’t think I left my bed again until the next day. I did not go to Spanish in the morning on Monday. I slept in, ate some lunch, and was feeling better by then so I went to Geography. It might have been a good idea to stay in bed a little longer, but not only was I feeling antsy, but I had many things I needed to get done within the next couple of days. Tuesday and Wednesday I went to school but I still under the weather and I was not sleeping well either. Wednesday night was not good because I had many things to do…including study for a Spanish test the next day. Thursday I took my test still feeling a bit cloudy and congested. That night I went to this Spanish concert with this English lady and gentleman staying at my house. They are in charge of a small group of students and the lady (Jo) found a bunch of things for her students to do. The concert was really interesting. I went with my friend Angela, we really enjoyed it.

Today I am feeling much better. I slept in until 1ish and have just had a sort of lazy laid back sort of day. It’s been really nice since this week has been horrid. I walked around with my friends Taylor and Angelica (pronounced Angel-eeka) and we all bought a few things. After shopping for a while, we had some pinchos at Cafe Genesis. It was pretty good. After that we split up, but we are going to meet up again later. We are waiting for our friends who went to Zamora. There was an excursion offered to us and the kids at our school from California. It cost 30 euros for transportation, food and a wine tasting. I might have been up for it, except for the fact that I was just in Zamora this last Saturday with Kate and Angelica. Quite a few people went: 6 from my group, 10 from California, Josh and a few of the teachers. It might have been fun, but I am glad I decided to stay home.