Work Called On Account of Snowflakes...

Well, I thought I would get this last blog in before the world ended on account of snow in East Texas today...kidding, obviously, but I did get off work at around 11:30am today on account of snow beginning to fall. The excitement people have for this awful stuff down here is probably equivical to my excitment regarding a 73 degree day in February. I guess we can call our unnecessary excitement a draw at this point. I actually don't think Dianna will have us come in tomorrow with some of us having a commute every day and the difference in the time it takes for them to get the roads under control here. Man, talk about puttin' in less work to get yourself a snow day..

Well before the snow hit this past weekend was woooooonderfully nice. It was in the low 70's on Saturday and Casper and I found a great walking/running/biking path that winds through town to try out. I feel like this past weekend was the first time I've really felt like I was getting settled and comfortable here. I'm starting to figure out where everything is, making friends, and creating new opportunities for myself. I think when I look back at this experience if it has given me nothing else but the courage and ability to live and grow in a new place completely alone I will be satisfied. Nothing that I have ever encountered has forced me to be as okay with time alone with myself, to go outside of my comfort zone to create relationships, or actively tap into the community around me for entertainment.

I am really starting to make friends with my roommates even though they are all so different than me or where I come from. Same story with my co-workers. I think the closest I've come to people I'm used to being friends with are the people I've met on my slowpitch team. Speaking of, we have a tournament this weekend that I'm realllly excited about. It is a really fun group of people and we all seem to be pretty good. I'm going to have to try and contain some of this Wolter competitiveness or else all these new friends are going to this I'm a freak...

As far as work goes, it has been great having Dianna back in the office. It has taken a lot of the stress of trying to create things to do for everyone when I am new myself. It is very exciting to really start digging in to what we are going to be trying to accomplish with our organization. We are essentially running a needs analysis within 4 counties in East Texas and then developing our programming around this needs analysis. I was originally put in charge of the Bi-lingual/Multicultural Program Development (whata joke right? I'm not bi-lingual and I was raised and lived in the whitest places on earth) Well, since that lady that conned the system never came I am now in charge of her position as the Job Skills/Training Program Development which I think I can really do great things with. It is also a main aspect of the mission of our organization. The Almond Tree's mission is to help individuals and families to become self sufficient through assistance with transitional housing and job skill training. All of the other programs will work to aid in self sufficiency through different outlets like technology, disaster relief. etc. The beautiful thing is that this is giving us the opportunity to find out what the missing gaps are with assistance in these communities and create our programming accordingly. I'm rambling but the bottom line is I feel like I'm actually somewhere I feel like I can not only make an impact, but I also feel like the feelings I have now are why I thought I'd love PR in nonprofit in the first place. I feel like this experience has shown me both the ugly and beautiful sides of the motives of a nonprofit orgaization and the people who run them.

Once I save up some cash, which may take God knows how long, I want to start seeing Texas. If anyone has any suggestions of great places to visit leave comments. I'd love to hear them!

Ash