Home again

Holy cow! Once again, it's been two long weeks since I posted. My apologies. Life's been crazy. In brief:

A matter of hours after I said so long to Pops, I set out on a four-day trek that turned out to be pretty much the most awesome thing I did in my three and a half months of South American wanderings. Watch for a post on that. For now, just let me say that if you ever go to Peru you'd darned well better visit Machu Picchu, preferable by way of the Inca Trail.

So, after various adventures, I'm now back in the US. I stopped in at GFU (the college I graduated from last spring) and hung around for a couple of days, chatting with friends and generally pretending I was still a college student. I caught a ride home to northern california, and 48 hours later headed back up to Portland to look for a job. Which I now have.

And thus, after 4 years of studing chemistry (at a mere $28,000 per year), I find myself serving coffee, earning minimum wage. (Plus tips!!) I like to think of it as furthering my chemistry experience by way of a real-world internship. I mean, baristas are basically chemists... they spend the day mixing things together in precise combinations in order to achieve the desired product. We even get to use crazy machines that shoot out steam through metal pipes and squeeze hot solvents through special powders. Sounds like chemistry to me.

That's really just my side job, though... the one that pays the bills. My real job (the one I'm excited about) is teaching science. Through a really cool program at GFU, college-aged science students get to teach science to home-schoolers, ranging in age from kindergarten to 12th grade. Last year I taught a chemistry class to home-schooled high-schoolers.... this fall is a genetics class, also for high-schoolers. The highlight of my work week, though, is going to be the Star Lab. It's this huge, inflatable planetarium I get to take around to elementary schools. I'll teach them about the stars and constellations, planetary motion, etc. Totally rad stuff. At least, I think so, anyway. ;O)

But both of these are temporary... next fall I'm headed to Boulder, Colorado for chemistry grad school. Four to six more years of chemistry await me. In the meantime, I get to work at GFU, hang out with cool Fox people, and basically enjoy all the benefits of living with/near all my college friends, without the bother of classes or homework. Not a bad deal, really.

For example... yesterday I went to the beach with a few friends (Mark, Dave, Pat) to enjoy the 80-degree weather at the coast instead of the 90-degree weather here in Newberg. On the way we visited the largest glacial rock in Oregon (thrilling!), crossed the shortest river in the US (equally thrilling!), and bought a box of 24 Scooby-Doo push-pops for three dollars at Grocery Outlet.

Oh yeah, and the beach was cool, too. Great tidepools.

A shot of an anemone, taken with my spiffy waterproof digital camera. You can actually stick it underwater. A bit scary at first, but you can get some great shots.

Pat and Mark, debating whose rear end is larger. Just one example of the intellectually stimulating conversations I've been having with my fellow college graduates. Life is great.