An adventure a day...

Up at 6:00am today, I went with Callin out to jog/hike the Red Rock State Park's Pyramid Rock Trail this morning. The sun rose over the sandy rocks, and we ended up coming over a ridge to see one of the most beautiful canyons, lined with gnarled juniper and soft green grasses blowing gently in the wind. The calm was palpable... but then we had to go.

After jogging back down, getting back to El Rancho, taking a quick shower, and finding a place at the table, the sessions began. The powerpoint eventually subsided for Indian 101, which was a quick two-hour overview of all things Native American. We then bussed out to the gorgeous campus of the University of New Mexico - Gallup, where, after a lovely bag lunch, a couple of the girls in my group and I lay down under the grass in the shade of an olive tree and relaxed for a bit between sessions.

The afternoon was taken up by introductions to UNM, which just got better and better. The very first thing was a greeting -- "Ya at'eh" which I've been able to say for months because of my Navajo CD, but I'd never known what it meant. Apparently the hilarious syllable, "Oh" (which is said in a low tone, as if someone has just told you that you can't go outside to play today because it's raining, and they just ran over your cat) is the respnse: 'Ya at'eh' means "It is good", and the response 'oh' means, "yes". How wonderful! I hope very much to learn Navajo. I might take it online in the fall, but I'll have to figure out the credits first. Here came the next bit of good news; I may be able to not only earn my license in two years, but my Master's (of Arts in Education), as well. I took one course online last Spring, and if I take classes either here, online, or at a different university and transfer them back here after that, I'd be able to come away from Gallup with a full Master's degree! I'm pretty darned excited, and the staff seem like they're very knowledgeable, and that the university will be small enough to give its students individualized attention. It seems like it'll be a much tighter-knit community than Madison could offer, and I think I'll like the change. Better yet was the view; the rooms of the building in which we met looked out over wide stretches of great plain and red mesas and buttes, as far as the eye could see. I can really see myself liking that place.

This afternoon, we came back to get our interview assignments and information on our placements and what to expect with interviews. I've got interviews with elementary schools all over the area -- from right here in Gallup to up to three hours away on the Navajo reservation -- and I look forward very much to (hopefully) getting hired; being able to start making plans based on a placement, in a school, with a certain location, with a certain group of students. I also look forward to being at Institute; though we'll be much busier, we'll all be teaching... so I think we'll all be, in the words of one of the staff members here, "much happier camper[s]". I am very much looking forward to us all getting placed; until then, we're all trembling bundles of nerves, still trying to meet people and put on a good face, but not sleeping terribly well and asking each other incessantly, "How are you doing?" We're really all a kind of funny bunch, and I quite like all of the Corps Members I've met; I can't wait to really start getting to know everyone, when we're not so worried about interviewing and what's to come.

After dinner at a pizza place called The Rocket (complete with a Family Tree on the wall and lots of pictures of cats with garlic and oregano), Julia and I went for a walk at sunset, and the calm returned. We walked up a hill and looked down the bluff at kids playing tennis and running around the track and generally being kids all over the grounds of a school, then walked a little further on and saw a gorgeous husky dog just before turning around and heading back down to El Rancho at dusk. All of the neon lights seemed to be coming on at once, just as all of the locals seemed to be coming out of the air conditioning. Julia commented, "There's a totally different vibe here after the sun goes down," and she couldn't have been more right. The song Summer In the City could have been written about Gallup.

In any case, much calmer from the sunset and the walk, I'm winding down and feeling like I'll be ready for tomorrow. But in order to be really ready, I'll have to hit the hay pretty soon. I'll let you know about my placement as soon as I do!