WOW I suck at blogging....

I do suck at blogging. 

It has been about a week since I arrived in Portland. I have yet and will not be posting pictures on this blog. I am going to just upload them to flickr and then have the link here. It was such a long process to put that many pictures on this blog. 

Let's start with working at Portland State. It has been, as I coined it in my practicum reflection, an information overload. I have been introduce slash had so many meetings with various people that it's hard to remember names and faces. I have a split assignment between housing and residence life so it's double the staff to meet. Here at PSU, it's even weird calling it PSU, but here at PSU there is a split system with housing and res life. 

In the residence life side I have been working on New Student Week and planning some educational programs. I also investigated how to use Strengths Finder 2.0 for student staff training. It was pretty interesting. Actually all of the materials I gathered were from Loyola College in Maryland. If you are interested I have the link to their NASPA presentation. 

Another project I am working on is creating a program database and program evaluation. The staff has been very receptive and their student staff is pretty amazing. I had a chance to show off my cooking skills at their Study Jam. PSU is on a quarters system so they currently in finals week. This weekend is move, but thankfully I don't have any responsibilities. 

On the housing side I started my first day there on Tuesday. I work there Tuesdays and Thursdays. So yesterday was my first day. I learned the general responsibilities, wow responsibilities has a lot of Is . Anyway I I learned what they do and all that good stuff. I also learned how to use STARres. Which is their housing program that tracks students throughout their housing experience so to say. I got to contact student who have to transfer their rooms for the summer. It is a bit intimidating trying to guess how to pronounce a student's name, but I don't think I hurt anyone's feelings. 

Tomorrow I will be learning more about the facilities side of housing, but I am not too sure what else I will doing tomorrow. Today, I did get a chance to become a member of the Global Village Committee. The Global Village is a themed living and learning community at PSU that focuses on multicultural issues and themes. Today we reviewed application essays for the incoming students. This would be for the fall semester. Starting next year there will also be a Russian Immersion floor. Students living on this floor sign a pact to speak Russian while on the floor. PSU received a grant for a Russian capstone project and this is part of that grant. 

This is going to be a long entry so maybe at this point you should get a drink of water or a bucket of popcorn. Go ahead I'll wait. ..... 

As for the rest of my cross country trip... 

It really was an amazing experience. I don't remember where I left off in my last post talking about it, but I really recommend giving it a try. It cost a lot more than expected, but I would do it again in a heartbeat. I would suggest scouting out your hotels a bit more, but that was also part of the adventure. I only stayed at one place that I was afraid that I would wake up without my kidney. Driving through the Colorado mountains was beautiful. The Grand Canyon was pretty terrifying. I thought I was going to fall to my death. I wonder how many people die there each year. I seriously thought I was going to die one night driving through South Dakota. It was so dark and I kept thinking about Jeepers Creepers. 

There was a wonderful woman Minnesota named Sandy or Sally either way she was nice. She was all over Miranda and I like really touchy, but she was drunk so we just went with it. She was about to commit adultery so you know how that goes. California was only disappointing because when I came in from Vegas there was no welcome to California sign. I loved San Francisco too bad I only had a day there. It was a big deal for me to drive into California considering I was so obsessed with the state since I was a little kid. It seemed so far way and out of reach. 

I am missing a bunch of stuff and stories, but it's a blog and it's getting late. 

So far Portland has been cool. I haven't had a lot of time to really explore the city mostly because of the Penguins, but I am not complaining. This weekend is Pride here in Portland so I am sure there will lots to see and do. Friday night will be devoted to the Guins, but the rest of the weekend will exploration time. I am going to be eating at a different vegetarian restaurant every Friday or Saturday complete with a review so look forward to that. I am also going to be making more of an effort to update. At least twice a week. 

I finally got the map done on the SAGA website that link is https://www.msu.edu/~saga/classof2010summer/

So there are some people on there, I'd like to see a few more, come on cohort give me your blog info. 

Yeah, so that has been my first week. I will do a better job at this. I promise. Photos on flickr this weekend. 

Go PENS!