Ain't no mountain high enough.

I had another fantastic weekend in the great state of Oregon. After all the rain and gloom we’ve had in the past month, who knew I would be able to get a really bad sunburn on a 3 hour hiking trip in slightly overcast weather?

This past weekend, I went camping with one of my sorority sisters who is currently interning in the greater Portland area as well. Oddly enough, she is from Michigan but attends Penn State and is a member of the 10-year-old Phi Sigma Rho chapter there. We had never met before but early last week she invited me to go camping with her and her family, and I thought “why not?” She picked me up in the afternoon on Friday and we drove for four hours across the mountains. It turns out, we have similar likes/dislikes, ambitions, ideas, and from what we can observe our boyfriends are even that similar, too. I guess that’s just what happens when you meet sisters from other chapters. :)

Anyway, this weekend really rekindled my absolute LOVE for camping. There’s just something about cooking food over a fire, star gazing into the late hours of the night, and breathing fresh air for 24 hours a day that gets me. My ENTIRE extended family goes camping every summer, and it’s always something I look forward to months in advance. Unfortunately, due to my location and limited time for travel, I won’t be able to attend our tenth anniversary camping trip this summer :( I’m hoping I’ll be able to video call them so I can see all of my Kentucky family though!

I was also able to say I did a lot of “firsts” this weekend! I:

• Went hiking for the first time

Saw a mountain in real life for the first time

Went minimalist camping for the first time
(sorry, no photo for this!)

Went to the highest elevation above sea level I’ve ever been at (6,000+ ft)

It was such a SPECTACULAR weekend! I really hope that my sister and I will be able to go camping more often this summer and see all the beauty of Oregon!

We're painting the roses red.

It was quite a successful weekend if I do say so myself! I was able to accomplish another “Portland Must” to knock off my list of things to do here, too!

Friday night, I went with three of my coworkers to see The Avengers for the THIRD time since it came out in early May (and I’m not ashamed of it). I think the movie only keeps getting better each time I see it. I’m going to buy in on DVD that day it’s released in stores, and probably watch it as soon as I get home. :P

Saturday was much more eventful though. I went out to an early breakfast with my manager and a coworker in the Eaton graduate program called the Leadership Development Program, or LDP for short. We went to The Original Pancake House, and I MEAN the original, that was built in 1953. Portland is famous for being home to this restaurant before it became a chain, and it definitely still has that atmosphere. The waitresses are all dressed in pink skirts and aprons with their hair up in ponytails, and many of the framed pictures and artwork are from it’s original days. It’s a very quaint breakfast/brunch area, and the food was delicious! I would highly suggest it to anyone visiting Portland. After breakfast, we went to the Rose Festival Parade, which was very much like any other parade I’ve been to, but it was still fun to see the crowds of people and the floats. We wandered around the city for a while after, walking in and out of stores we thought looked neat, and then got lunch at a local bar and grill. Then we walked to the famous International Rose Test Gardens, since it was such a beautiful day out (and that’s pretty rare here!). Since Portland is dubbed “The City of Roses” it only made sense to create a rose garden, which is now home to over 7,000 flower beds in over 550 varieties. Some of the roses hadn’t bloomed yet, but there were still plenty to look at and smell. Here’s a few of my favorites:

This purple one is my favorite. It's called "Rhapsody in Blue" which is a beautiful song composed by Gershwin :)

I was pretty worn out after such a long day walking around the city, so I went home, watched the Stanley Cup playoff game, and went to bed early.

Sunday was a little less eventful, but the weather was superb. It felt like Michigan weather, which I’ve missed more than anything here in rainy Oregon, so I laid outside in the sun almost all day long, read a book, and took a nap. Personally, I think it was the best day yet. :P

Run, run with her top down, baby, she flies.

I accomplished one of my summer goals this weekend, and it’s so exciting!! My original goal was to run a 5k by the end of the summer. I’m not too athletic, and I’ve never trained for sports or anything in my life, so I thought a 3.1 mile run in three months was fairly reasonable. I started going running at the end of the school year to relieve stress from finals and projects and setting up everything for my internship, but I could only go so far before I felt completely out of breath and my muscles started to hurt. It helped that my friend Teagan would go with me though! She was very encouraging and helped me run our short routes without stopping.

As soon as school ended and I started running at home, it got more difficult to do it by myself. But I ran everyday, even if I had to stop and take a break in the middle of it. I even took my younger brother along with me a few times because he plays soccer, so I figured he could give me some good tips, too.

When I got here to Portland, it was even MORE difficult than at home. Oregon, very unlike Michigan, is FULL of hills and trails and I’m pretty sure it’s at a higher elevation than my hometown, too. I mapped out all of my routes the first day I got here, so I could stay motivated and not fall behind. I’m slowly getting used to all of the hills, but they are definitely my least favorite part of running. :p

So as I’m going through training everyday, I found out that there was an upcoming 5k called the ‘Starlight Run’ during Portland’s HUGE city fair. (When I say huge, I mean it. It is about 5 weeks long, and there’s events every Thursday-Sunday in downtown Portland including their famous Portland Saturday Market, a traveling amusement park, and music concerts at night!) Well, as soon as I saw that there was a 5k, I signed up for it without hesitation. I even got two of my co-workers to come along and run with me!

By the day of the run, I had only ever accomplished running ⅔ of the length of a 5k, so I was a little nervous that it would be hard for me to finish it. The best part about this run though, was that it wasn’t supposed to be a super serious run where you try to get your best time. Everyone was dressed up for the Rock N’ Roll theme and there was a costume contest before we started. It put everyone in such a good mood, and it really helped encourage me to do my best no matter how far I could get or how fast I ran.

By the time it was ready to start, I was warmed up and ready to go. My friend tracked the first mile, which wasn’t too bad, but I was dying and ready to take a break by the end of the second. But I was able to get a lot of motivation from the crowd. The 5k precedes the Starlight Parade that’s full of lit up floats and clowns and normal parade cars, so the community sets up camp early in the day to get good seats. Everyone cheers you on as you run and the atmosphere is just so energetic. The kids line up along the side of the road to get high-fives, too! Seeing their faces is what encouraged me to keep going. :]

All in all, I finished the 5k, without stopping, in under half an hour, which was better than my original goal! I’m really proud of myself for getting this done, but now I don’t know what to do since I finished a goal so early on in the summer! Maybe I should double it and run a 10k by the end of August..

You say it's urgent, so urgent.

So! Interesting day at work today.. two fire trucks and a rescue team were called in at 6:30am..

My co-worker and I work our regular shift from 6am-3pm, because that is when the shop is open in my plant, and we’re doing a lot of work involved with them instead of just in an office. So we get to work and are checking emails and going over the list of things we have to do today and a blaring horn signaling a fire sounds out of nowhere in a near silent office. Most of the full time employees just think it’s a drill or were joking around with each other like “what did your line do to start a fire?!” When the trucks actually showed up two minutes later, we all started to get confused since we didn’t think there was actually a potential fire in the building. After roll call and a few more minutes of waiting we were waved back inside by the head firefighter. Apparently, a fluorescent bulb had a “burnt ballast” (I’m still trying to figure out what that means) which caused the fire alarm to go off. You’d think in a plant that manufactures electrical products, that a “burnt ballast” would be the last thing to cause trouble..

The rest of the day went well though. I’m actually starting to get into my projects today, making rough drafts of meetings, visual boards, and just keep learning more about my line! :]

Keep your eyes open.

Wow, it's been a little while, hasn't it? I only recently was able to set up the internet in my apartment, so now I don't have to hang out at Starbucks every night just to check my emails and, oh gosh, Facebook! It is really convenient to have internet in the apartment now though, because I don't have to worry about walking places to get it (not that it was that far in the first place) or worry about interrupting people when I'm on Skype. I had a Phi Rho E-Board meeting earlier this week on Google Hangout, and I felt bad because there was a woman quietly reading her book right next to me.. I guess if she had been irritated, she would have moved or told me, right?

So I made it through an entire week of my internship! It's been really exciting being on the floor and seeing how engineering work is really done. On the first day, my supervisor wanted me to shadow the lead wiring employees to learn how to read wiring diagrams and schematics, but I got so bored of watching after five hours that they put me to work instead :p. I only got to measure out specific lengths of wire for the rest of the day, but I worked with two other employees so the job went by fast. On the second day, I even got to wire some of the panels! Oh, I guess I should back up a little too. I work with the medium voltage assembly line, and (in my opinion) they get to build the biggest and coolest projects in our plant. Unfortunately, this type of project isn't done frequently, so I probably won't be able to work on anything like it for the rest of the summer, but hey, at least I got to walk into the middle of building it when I got here! Besides learning how to assemble the projects and learn about all the different voltage lines, I have a lot of other projects that involved training programs for the employees and improve communication between the lines and the office. Basically, my job is to make everything easier. I'm normally good at this type of thing, so I'm really excited to dive farther into my assignments. I'll explain more about them as I go along.

Honestly though, my favorite part of the internship so far has been meeting and getting to know the people that I'm working with. There's a couple of guys around my age that work on my line, but most of them are older adults with wives and kids. They all have such unique personalities and they love to joke around with each other while they're working; it's just a really enjoyable setting to be in for me since it's my first "big kid's job." I get along really well with them, and they've been so patient about trying to teach me things that they've been learning about for years. Working like that makes the days go by really fast too!

Once I start going out into the city and doing things, I'll start posting pictures of Portland, too. It's beautiful here :]

Oh, the places you'll go!

Hello, PORTLAND! I still can't believe I'm here right now, and I'm not exactly sure when it's going to hit me. Probably half way through the summer I'll realize it like BAM. :p

Anyway, despite the current dreary weather, it is absolutely GORGEOUS out here! If you've never been to Portland, write it down on your bucket list of places to go before you die. As soon as we drove out of the airport, all I saw was hills and mountains of greenery. If that's not something a Spartan could easily fall in love with, I don't know what is.. 

My roommate and I drove to our apartment and talked with the woman we're leasing it from. She gave us a tour of the complex and told us all of the fun places to go around town. The apartment is a really cute two-story townhouse with fully equipped kitchen and furnished rooms! She is one of the nicest women I've ever met, and I can't thank her enough for opening her home to us for this summer! :]

The only downside of my first day so far is that the internet is still not hooked up in the apartment. So, currently, I'm people-watching at the local Starbucks to use them for their Wi-Fi (shh, don't tell anyone!) :p

Here's my plan for today though: grocery shop, map out running routes around the city, write a letter to my sorority big sister, and cruise around town! :D

I'm leaving on a jet plane, don't know when I'll be back again.

This is it. I can't believe I'll be flying away from Michigan for the next three months. I had never imagined that I would be working in a place other than the midwest, let alone one that was three timezones behind. It's going to take A LOT of adjusting, especially because I'll basically be living out of a suitcase the whole time, but I still think it's going to be a really great summer.

I'm not only going to learn more about the engineering profession and what it's like to have a 'big kid's' job, but also a lot about myself in the process. Or at least, I hope I do! We had orientation at Headquarters over the past three days and the HR reps stressed how much we will change as workers, students, and individuals over the next 12 weeks. It's kind of scary to think that I'll be a different person when I come out of this, but I can only hope that I learn enough to make myself more well-rounded!

I ought to go finish packing (which has been quite stressful!) since my flight leaves in less than 12 hours! Yikes! When you hear from me next, I'll be across the country! :]

Happy Mom's Day!

First of all, Happy Mother's Day to all of the mom's of MSU students out there! It's kind of rainy and chilly here in my hometown today, but don't let that stop you from pampering your mother and giving her the best day ever! I'm not letting my mom do any cleaning, laundry, or cooking today!

Aside from that, this past week as been pretty busy, but I've still been able to relax quite a bit. Since school let out, I've unpacked and organized all of my college things and have started preparing for next year, rented an apartment in Portland for my internship this summer, bought my plane tickets, finished The Hunger Games series, and went on a date with my boyfriend! I still have SO MUCH to do before I leave though..

We have orientation in Cleveland for all Eaton interns starting on Wednesday, so my friend Hannah and I are driving down there on Tuesday night (a 4 hour drive!), and staying until it's over on Thursday. Since I'm flying out for Portland early on Saturday, that gives me three full days to pack EVERYTHING I need, and take care of everything else I need to do before I come back in three months..

Looks like I better get started now!

Schools out for summer!

I know, I know, the title is really cliche and I've used it before, but it's true! I should have posted this yesterday, but in the frenzy of taking my final two exams, moving out, and saying goodbye to my best friend who's transferring to another university, I was a little busy.

Finals week was.. okay, I guess. I only had three finals (one on Tuesday and two on Friday) but those last two just made the week long and boring. When I wasn't studying I was reading my book, and when I wasn't reading I was studying. Almost all of my friends were done with their exams by Wednesday or Thursday, so they all got to hang out late on Thursday while I was studying and going to bed early in preparation for my 7:45 am Friday morning final.. :/ It really sucked considering I'm going to be across the country all summer and it was my last chance to see a lot of them until September.. Thank goodness for online video chatting!

And speaking of which, I finally got my location and I'm going to be interning with Eaton in Portland, Oregon all summer! I'm both really excited and extremely nervous. It will be my first job actually pertaining to my major, so that will be AWESOME finally seeing how everything I'm learning in class applies to the real world. But it will also be my first time all on my own for an extended period of time. And I have to admit, I'm not too thrilled that I'm SO far away, at least for my first internship. I was prepared to be placed somewhere in the Midwest or along the East Coast, but the West Coast had me totally taken aback. Fortunately, I've heard Portland is a gorgeous up and coming city full of young adults, urban living, and is surrounded by National Parks. That, I can definitely live with. :]

The only thing I have to do now is find an apartment, buy my plane ticket out there, and pack! It may not seem like a ton of things to do, but it will DEFINITELY take up the majority of my time over the next two weeks until my start date!

DTS: Down To STUDY

Well, it's that time of year again.. the oh-so-dreaded FINALS. I was lucky enough not to have mine start on Wednesday, but I am part of the unfortunate bunch that will be having two of them on Friday... So maybe I didn't exactly luck out then.

Either way, it feels like I've just been studying forever.. Last week was our final design project for my Mechanical Engineering Design class, so I didn't even get a chance to start studying until AFTER that was finished.. That project went well though, so I can't complain.

I haven't decided if my waking up super early to study before my 7:45am exam today was a good choice or not.. probably not since I'm procrastinating and decided to blog instead.. :p

I should probably get back to studying now.. good luck to everyone on their final exams, presentations, projects, and papers! And congratulations to all of the new Michigan State graduates, some of my closest friends, I will miss you all next year while you start your big person jobs! <3