In Which We Get Thoroughly Trained

Well, more things have happened. This time it was our work training down in Tucson, Arizona. I won't bore you with details, but I will say that I'm pretty excited to work at this school. I think I'll have some pretty awesome coworkers and I like the level of freedom I'm going to be given with my curriculum, even if it is going to require a decent amount of work. Maybe more on that later.

Anyway, the main cool thing about this training is that they put us up in a nice hotel. I mean really nice. Like seriously. And I'm not just saying that because I've spent the last year staying in the cheapest guesthouses we could find. We were driving up to it and we kept on asking, "Are you sure this is the right place?" and we kept having to reassure ourselves with, "No, this is the place from the link that we were sent." and things like that. When we went to the front desk and I said, "We're here for the BASIS training," I half expected them to say, "We don't have any idea what you're talking about," but it was the right place! I've got a couple pictures of it.

Anyway, the training was good and I met some cool people and I got some work done. I made a fantastic introduction PowerPoint, and I also got to look at what I'll be teaching. All this time I thought I would be teaching US History to sixth graders, but it turns out I'll be teaching World History. I'm cool with that, and I think it will be a little more fun, but at the same time, it's a little daunting, because when I look at the topics I'm supposed to cover, I realized that there are seriously a lot of them that I don't know about. I guess I'll be learning a lot this year, too! At any rate, it was a pretty good week, and the thing that really sucked was that we had to go to some of it on Sunday. But then we got to go up to Phoenix and drive around looking at the temples with our friend Sarah, so that was cool. At any rate, here are some pictures.

The pool view of the resort.

Arizona!

Arizona sunset!

Mesa temple!

This one has Nancy and Sarah in it kind of.

Me and Nancy with the Gilbert Temple!

So, that's that. Overall we're looking forward to moving down there. We should have a good time and the heat isn't awesome, but we'll survive, I'm sure, especially since our apartment (which looks awesome, btw, we drove past it while we were in the neighborhood) has a pool. So, all that being said, I'll make an end with this awesome picture I took on the Fourth of July when I was feeling especially American.

This is Captain Danger out.

In Which We Take the Train

I have to say, things have been pretty busy lately, but we've been having a pretty good time. This blog post is about my first experience with Amtrak. Of course, I've ridden on trains before. I did in Korea, in the blog post about our visit to Seoul and Gimcheon that Nancy never published. And, I will say that I think that my experience with Amtrak was slightly better than my experience with Korean trains, mostly because I didn't have to stand up for the better part of three hours.

Anyway, an increasing number of car problems resulted in us deciding to take the train to Reno to borrow a car that Nancy's parents graciously offered us to get to Tucson for our training. Nancy has taken the train a few times before, and I was looking forward to the experience, until it turned out that it was delayed five hours--FIVE HOURS, you guys. I mean, how does that happen? So, our train ride that was supposed to go from 9:30 pm until 8:30 am ended up going from 3:35 am (turned out it was delayed six hours in the end) to about 3:00 pm. 

Then there were problems en route. One of our engines broke so we had only one engine, and then it was too hot so we couldn't go faster than fifty miles per hour. The amazing thing was that people really weren't complaining about it. I was a bit surprised by that.. Generally Americans are crazy quick to complain, but not here. Everyone just seemed to take it as a matter of course. All I know is that I won't take the train if I ever need to get somewhere on a schedule. 

Regardless, we did make it to Tucson in the end. We've just finished our first day of new teacher training, and I'm writing this on my new (like, seriously brand new 17 inch) school laptop. So, so far so good! Also, can I point out that driving from Reno to Tucson takes a stupidly long time? It totally does. At any rate, that's about all I've got to say right now. Hopefully soon I'll have a blog post where I can put up some pictures. I'd love to write about our canyoneering trip we did on Saturday, but someone I know might take their time getting those pictures to me. Something about a new baby or something. Anyway, I'll call it a day here. This is Captain Danger out.

In Which We Learn a Profound and Beautiful Truth

We've been back in the United States for a few days now. It's been pleasant. I have to say, one improvement has really stood out to me: the lack of humidity. Seriously, though, it makes a HUGE difference. Put me out in 70 degrees with 80% humidity and I'll be soaked with sweat in well under a minute. Put me in 100 degree weather with no humidity, and now I'm barely sweating! I was moving sprinkler pipes around and wandering all over the fields yesterday in 95 degrees and I wasn't sweating at all. This is an excellent improvement and I hope I never get used to it. I'm afraid that's more than I can ask for, though.

Also, driving: It's easy to start doing again. Kind of like riding a bike.

Also also, not sorting your trash: It's highly underrated. It's awesome to have a piece of plastic and be able to throw it away wherever I want.

Finally, licorice and root beer: They're as awesome as I remembered.

It's good to be back. This is Captain Danger out.