Summertime on the East Coast: Settling in to southern life

Hello everyone!

I have been in Forest for about a week now and it feels like so many things have happened!

Jason was gone most of the week for job training in Charlotte so I spent a good amount of time with his family. Jason's mom is so great, she says to live here I need to act like one of her kids. I feel a little uncomfortable sometimes with that but I'm getting used to their house and their patterns and such. So while Jason was gone it was my main goal to find a job. I am not sure how many places I asked for an application and filled it out and turned it in but it was a lot.

I landed a job at a nursing home called Runk and Pratt. Strange name, I know, but its probably the nicest nursing home I have ever been to. These people have a lot of money and the facilities reflect that. The residents have it reeeeeeeaalll good. I mean especially when they have someone like me serving them their meals right? :) Anyways, that is what I do there. I serve them breakfast, lunch and dinner depending on which shift I am working. So basically I have 20 new friends all over 65 years of age. I love it. There aren't many residents because this facility only opened up about a week ago! So gradually there have been more residents moving in and others taking tours and such.

The people I work with are really fun and it is such a positive atmosphere. They will tease me and call me Minnesota and the chefs give me samples of banana bread or soup or let me have a cupcake here and there. The residents are awesome though. They are what makes the long hours and sore feet worth it!

So there is that. This past weekend Jason was home and we got to do some real summer stuff and it made me feel like its actually summer! Its been weird for both of us because the past two summers we were at camp and its like I don't even know what summer is supposed to be like without camp. But I think we will figure it out quickly, ice cream dates, swimming and boating in lakes, hiking, swimming in rivers, and the list goes on. We packed a lot of things in to the few days he was home!

One of the days that I had an early shift and I was done at 2pm, we drove up into the mountains and hiked to a place called Devils Marbleyard. We looked at the sign at the beginning of the hike and it had a 1 next to Devils Marbleyard so we were like oh yeah 1 mile we can do that it'll be easy. Well, it was a lot farther than a mile let me tell you and it was a lot more straight up than we expected too. Oh well, it was good exercise for sure and the view was amazing and we made it out alive! I am excited to do some other hiking while I'm here too.

On my day off, Sunday, I went with Jason's family to one of their family friends lake homes. It was a cloudy day but not too cloudy to keep us out of the water. I got to wakeboard for the first time this summer and it sure made me miss camp and the beautiful boat that I got to drive last summer. It was fun though, it almost felt like Minnesota..

Somethings I have really enjoyed about being in Virginia is 1) seeing the mountains all the time. I am probably 20-30 minutes away from one of the mountains that I could hike. They are so cool and I don't think I could ever get tired of looking at them. 2) Mostly everyone is SO nice. I know they say its Minnesota nice but I don't know if thats really a thing because people are so cheerful and welcoming here. I love it. 3) The sweet tea and southern drawls. Its kinda fun learning more about the southern way of life and listening to everyone talk. You can really pick out those rednecks because they will usually have some chew on the inside of their cheek. Yuck. But so fun to observe.

This week will be filled with work and uh work.. and some relaxing and maybe doing some cooking for fun! Thats all, here are some pictures of my life.