I'm addicted to snowboarding!

- So I finally found someone who is gonna let me use their computer and Internet to get some pics online. I only had a short time to do those first couple pics, but I've got over 200 more to look through and get on the blog. I hope you enjoy them, I've got plenty more to take while I'm here.

Thurs & Fri - Happy Groundhogs Day! Work has been getting crazy and I am loving it. I hate slow, boring days and now that I know how to work the front counter and the back rentals, I stay busy and work over 50 hours per week at ITT. James told me I'm moving to my next spot next week. I'm not to happy about that but my bosses at ITT have convinced him to let me spend most of my time there. The snowboarding rentals and weekly trips are booking up so fast lately. Ever since Kim and I have been taking the trips and going boarding with everyone, the word has spread and we're getting some loyal customers to hang out on Saturday trips. It's been a lot of fun. A lot of our employees have been sick or having problems at home which is making the office pretty short staffed. It's alright though, we just have to work at a faster pace and move from the front to the back constantly. Friday was insane though, it was almost too much. Kim and I have been working all week from the morning and not leaving until around 6:30 or later. After the office closes at 5:30 is when we can actually get organized and get some work done. She ordered 20 more boards, but they still havent come in. We need them really bad because these boards are going on two times a week and their slowly getting ruined. It's alright though, we just come into work after we get back from our Saturday trips and get some more ready to go out again for the weekend. It's the most business they've ever done with snowboarding rentals since they've offered it here. She's leaving in about 2 weeks so I hang out with her for dinner and work since her house is pretty much empty and her husband is still out of town. Kim, Mack, James, Amber and I went out to dinner Thurday night across the street at the Days Inn Resturant. It was really good. I got home and watched to new season of Survivor, it was really cool. I can't believe they have a "Lumber Jill" on the show. I thought that was awesome....until they kicked her off first. What the hell? Come on, she's a lumberjack for crying out loud!! Oh well, Friday night we all ate at the food court together to discuss the snowboarding trip in the morning. We had a full van going and Mack, Amber, and this snowboarding expert Phil were going to follow us and hang out. It took me about 2 hours to load the van and try and somehow fit 14 snowboards and a set of skis in this 14-passenger van and still have room for all the guys coming. Kim is so fun to hang out with, I'm gonna miss her when she leaves. Shes fun to hang out with and actually likes teaching me how to board. She tells me I'm her entertainment and she likes to hang out with me too. I'll have to find a new friend after she leaves.

Sat. Feb 4 - Ah, snowboarding again. 2nd time around and I'm excited to get up there. I met Kim at 7:30 and we were on our way up the mountain around 8:15am. The weather was absolutely wonderful today, you could see everything at the top. There was a bunch of snow up there too so I knew it'd be a good day. Phil taught a few of us some more trips and by the end of the day I perfected my toe-to-heal transition for switching sides down the mountain. I really liked the shorted board I had today and was cruising down the mountain like I had been doing this for months. I did really good and yes, I'm addicted to it now. We've made really cool friends on these trips and it's fun to hang out on the mountain with really cool people. By the end of the day, it was only taking me about 15 minutes to get down the mountain. Snowboarding is such a good workout for your legs, abs, and butt. My arms are killing me though, it surprisingly takes a lot outta your shoulders when you fall and prop yourself up from the sitting position. On our last run, we found this awesome trench and started trying to do jumps out of it. It was hilarious, but I was down for trying it. Kim was amazed that on my second time on a snowboarding, I was already trying to do jumps in this huge, deep trench on the outter path. Oh well, what did I have to lose? An arm, a leg. Oh well, I didn't hurt myself (knock on wood) and I had an awesome time. We left around 4 and got home in about an hour. The weather was still great when we left. It did start to rain though on the way home, which is good because that usually means it's going to snow on the mountain. The drive home is so funny, you look back into the van and see 12 guys asleep from a long, strenuous day. I was trying to find someone to go downtown to Catania with me for the St. Agata Festival, but no one was interested. We got the van back to ITT, cleaned it out for tomorrow, and put all the snowbaords away. It took awhile, but Mack and Phil stayed around to help us unload. After that, Kim asked me if I wanted to tag along for a Create-A-Trip that she booked this week for 5 old ladies that wanted to go visit Mt. Etna tomorrow afternoon. She told me we could cover it up and take our snowboards with us. We just had to drop them off and we could do some runs on the mountain while they are sight seeing and eating lunch. I agreed and she was pretty excited that she'd have somebody to board with and take the boring, wet drive up the mountain. We had it planned out, she was going to tell the customers that I was the new intern and she was taking me along on this trip for educational purposes and to see how this system works. She told me to dress normal and we'd sneak our stuff in the back of the van. They'll never know. Once we finally got outta work, they offered me to hang out with them for the night at their housing community (the one that flooded). I went back to my room, got dressed, and grabbed my camera and cord cuz Mack told me I could use his computer to get those pics uploaded. The night was really fun, we ended up hanging out with 6 people down the street who were having a party around their fire pit. Half of them were my age and the other half were Kim and Macks age. They were really cool though, they reminded me of all my Forestry Club buddies. They were farm boys from Louisiana and Tennessee. I got some of the pics uploaded before I went out, but it was taking a really long time. I'll just have to go back over there and spend some more time on it. I'm so glad it worked though. I went to bed really late and was scared I wasn't going to wake up and feel very good for the trip in the morning. We weren't leaving until 10 though, so I figured I'd be fine. I stayed the night with Kim in her bare house, but it was a lot of fun.

Sat. Feb 5 - Kim and I got up bright and early and headed back to base to get ready for our secret-intentions trip. I ran home real quick though to change and grab some warm clothes. We had kept our snowboarding pants and jackets at the office though to dry out during the night. We mopped out the van and we went and picked up the 5 people for the trip. It had been raining all night and the weather was really nasty. Half way into the trip, the weather started to clear up and you could start to see the mountain. Since Sundays are official off-days for Italians, there was an insane amount of traffic getting up the mountain. I've never seen so many people in my life, they were all sledding down the craters and just walking around. Not many of them were on the mountain skiing though, so we figured we'd get 2 or 3 runs in before they wanted to leave. They only wanted to be up there for 3 hours and by the time we finally got into the parking lot, it was already past noon. We still wanted to go and the half-day ski lift ticket was only 8 Euro. Today was the day I found out how rude and annoying Italians truly are. They arrive in huge buses and walk around in their hot pink, turqouise, and baby blue snow suits and walk right in the middle of the street. They don't move for cars and since we're Americans they are even more ignorant to us. Oh well, we let the people out and we drove around for another 30 minutes trying to find a parking spot. The parking and driving system here on a Sunday is practically impossible. There were probably 25,000 people up here today. We hurried up and got dressed and headed for the lift. It was awesome, we walked right on and saw some people from base so we boarded down with them. I did alright, but I like the shorted board I had yesterday better. I did have one painful wipe out though. A guy ran directly into me from behind and I fell down the mountain, hit the back of my head hard, and my board flipped all the way over my head and I did a backwards summersault. I literally laid there for about 10 minutes holding my head because I was so dizzy. My tailbone was killing me too. I got up though and finished the run alright once my pounding headache went away. We got 2 runs in when they called to tell us they were ready to leave. We hurried up and ran to the car to change. By the time we were leaving, it was snowing pretty hard. They got in, told us they had a great time, and asked us the question "did you go snowboarding?" We laughed, told them the truth, and they didn't care. They were really fun to meet and the drive back was filled with conversation and stories about their travels around Europe. It was still raining when we got back to Sigonella, so we figured there was more flooding around her (Kims) house. We got back, cleaned the van again, and I went back to my room to take a nap before Super Bowl tonight. She wasn't coming to JOX to hang out for Super Bowl, but my boss told me he'd find me a ride over there when I was ready. I went back, took a shower, finally got ahold of Jeff, and took a nap for a few hours. I left around 11 and finally got picked up and brought to JOX right before the game was starting. I was still really tired, but I wanted to go and have a good time. It was me and the big-dogs hanging out all night. It was so funny to see the MWR Director, my boss James, and some of the other Administration act crazy when they got drunk and hyped up about the football game. I saw two guys from the snowboarding trip last weekend and played 2 games of pool with em. There is definitely an advantage to being a girl over here, I never have to buy drinks. I only had 4 Bud Lights, but I only had to buy one. $2 for the whole night ain't bad! Overall, the night was fun, but long. I got on the microphone and gave away a bunch of prizes because my bosses were a little to intoxicated to complete the task. The game started a little after midnight and ended at 4:45am. James told me I had to take the day off since I've been working too much and told me to get some sleep and catch up on some school work. Amber drove everyone home around 6am. None of my bosses could drive, so the 6 of us fit in her tiny Hyundai. Yes, 4 grown men (2 are fairly larger) and her and I in this tiny car. It was a total clown-car moment for like 15 minutes until they dropped me off and another guy. I was laying across them in the back seat, but luckily security let us out the gate and on our way. There's no way we were going to get in trouble anyways, we had the most important people at MWR in that car. It was fun though. I finally got to bed around 6:45am. ***After the game was over, James told all of us that he has a friend whos parents left their house in Torino for a few months to escape the Olympics madness and asked if we wanted to all take a road trip up there and stay there for 4 days during the Olympics over President's Day weekend. It's a 13 hour drive, but we'll just use one of the MWR vans to get up there. This will be awesome if it all works out. Its the same week as that Calabria Ski Trip I mentioned, but we don't even know if enough people are going to sign up for it to go. I think I'd pick the Olympics trip over that anyways. We'll see. I'll probably find out my the end of the week if enough people want to drive up there together, it sounds good to me.***

Mon. Feb 6 - I went to bed at 6:45am like I said, but not even 20 minutes into my sleep, the fire alarm in our building started going off. This was the loudest and most annoying sound I've ever heard. I got up, but some flip flops on and headed outside. There were only a few other people out there, but the firemen and everyone else showed up. I was freezing. I had shorts and flip flops on. It took about 25 minutes for them to fix the problem and I impatiently went back and my bed to go to sleep. Oh yes, only 20 minutes later comes the alarm again! Once again, back outside, freezing and waiting. About 30 minutes later, I finally get to go back into bed. Back to bed and yes, again, this time a little longer sleep, 20 minutes later it's going off once again. I was so aggravated and the people in my building weren't looking too happy either. It only took about 10 minutes to fix, but come on, it was 8 in the morning and I had only been asleep so far for like 30 minutes. Luckily, the madness didn't happen again, but I woke up around 2pm. I called Jeff and talked to him for awhile before he got the work, but then I went and took a shower and got ready to leave. I headed to ITT to visit beause my real boss, Leslie, finally got back in from the states. She was really nice and I went and talked to everyone for awhile before I headed over here to the library. I'll be in here for awhile today, but I'm not really in the mood to work on my report. I'm just checkin emails and catching up on my blog. I might go see a movie tonight, do some laundry and cook dinner. I've got a long week ahead of me, and yes of course, Im signed up to go snowboarding on Saturday already! I'll talk to you all later, I miss YOU!