6/2/2016 1:11 pm

So sorry for the lack of posting lately. I spend very little time in my room to sit and write posts. In a way, not posting is a good thing! The wifi is consistently unreliable. While it is annoying, I am somewhat thankful for that because I’m not on my phone and social media. It’s refreshing. I am officially in pantry now! I’m so much happier there. My shift is always 3-11 pm because I work dinner and then help close the kitchen. The shift itself could be better, but the people I work with make it enjoyable. One of my good friends, Kayla, works the dinner shift too. We started a thing in the kitchen that when it gets slow, we do yoga. Just tree pose though (standing on one leg—I’m doing tree pose in the most recent picture I posted on Facebook). Kayla and I will look at each other and say “tree pose!” and do it, at first the cooks were like ‘what is going on’, but now they join in. The sous chef, Simon, made his own pose. He calls it “teapot”. You don’t have to use too much imagination to figure out what his pose is. We all have a good time in the kitchen. There are some servers that are getting to be annoying already, but annoyance is expected with every job. A plus side of pantry is that I have the opportunity to get some tips from servers! Just a couple nights ago, a server had a very difficult table and I had to keep making and remaking salads for her, so she tipped me at the end of the night. She gave me a few dollars in cash and said she put more on my paycheck. So that’s a nice perk.

All the nights I’ve worked 3-11, I’ve never actually gotten off at 11. Most of the time it’s earlier than 11, like 10:30. But one night it was 11:50. Getting off late is unfortunate because some of my friends work mornings, so they are all in bed by the time I get off. But most of the time there are a few people hanging out in the common room in the basement that I join. It’s pretty cool when it’s a lot of my friends, because I’ll round the corner to the basement and everyone looks to see who it is, and I’m met with a chorus of “Kristen!!!!! You’re off!!!!!” As you can imagine, with my hours, I have a lot of late nights, so I sleep in a lot too. Some days I’ll eat lunch and then take my book to the second floor of the Inn and read for a while before I have to go to work. The second floor is a very pleasant place to sit and read.

Staying up late and sleeping in doesn’t mean that I’m not hiking though! I had off on Monday, so some of us hiked the Carter Falls trail. It was gorgeous (refer to most recent picture I posted). The temperature was in the high 60s or low 70s so it was a perfect day. After Carter Falls, we drove further down the mountain to Twin Firs trail, where there are giant trees up to 850 years old. That trail was very short, but incredibly pretty. (I took pictures, but they won’t load so if you’re curious about anything feel free to google them). After that hike we came back, ate dinner, then went to the basement to watch a movie with everyone. A few nights ago, a lot of my friends and I walked down the closed road behind the Inn, and stargazed. It is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. We could see the Milky Way, and the International Space Station fly by every 15 minutes. There were so many stars. We stayed out there for a while until the wind picked up and we all got too cold, I can’t wait until summer when we can stay out there as long as possible. Just yesterday, I did another hike with 3 friends. Myrtle Falls is a relatively short hike, but it is up the mountain a bit and in the snow, so it’s not necessarily the easiest thing. Hiking uphill in snow kicked my butt a little bit. It was SO worth it though. Hiking up towards the mountain was unbelievably gorgeous. The waterfall itself was mostly covered in snow still, but there was a little bridge that crosses the waterfall, so we sat there and just soaked in the view for a bit before heading back down for lunch.

The job is fine, but the people are awesome. Some of my friends and I were saying that if we had met under different circumstances, we probably wouldn’t have become friends. Everyone is so different and everyone has their unique story as to why they came here, I love it. I expected it to be an interesting group of people, and I was worried about making friends. But it’s been so easy to talk to everyone here. I think it’s because we all have one thing in common, which is some sort of desire to escape and live and work in a beautiful place for a summer. So far, this has been an amazing experience and I am so happy.