Back at School (...A Little Early)!

Hey y'all!

So, following my adventure into the time/space continuum, I accidentally took a wrong turn and fell off the face of the earth for a while. But it's all good--after spending a couple weeks fighting death eaters in the parallel Harry Potter universe (which TOTALLY exists), I managed to apparate back to this time and place with the help of the elder wand (which I convinced Harry to let me borrow before he... well, never mind--don't wanna spoil the movie ;p).

Just kidding! But I haven't blogged in a while, so consider this my re-entry into the world of social media.

Since the end of the semester, I was able to spend some time with my family back in Rome, NY before coming back to school for the Wilderness Program (WP) (which I'll explain in a bit). As always, home was refreshing; good food, quality time with my dog, and a LOT of sleep were all quickly crossed off my to-do list. Then on Monday the 14th, I made the trek back up to SMC for two and a half weeks of training for the Wilderness Instructor Training Program (ITP).

First, we did a Wilderness First Responder course (WFR, pronounced "woofer" colloquially), which is required of all SMC WP instructors. Basically, it's an eight-day course that teaches emergency wilderness medicine skills for people in outdoor leadership capacities; less than a wilderness EMT license, but more than Wilderness First Aid. It was a long eight days with a lot of information, but now we're THAT much closer to becoming official program instructors! Pretty exciting stuff :p

WFR ended on the 21st, and the next part of our training began yesterday (the 22nd). Depending on what disciplines each instructor chose to pursue, each of our training is different. Several of my peers and I have been getting trained in paddling instruction, for example, but others are currently getting trained in climbing (rock) instruction. And after my group is done with paddling, several of us will do climbing as well. Other disciplines offered by the WP are backcountry skiing, ice climbing and hiking, but hiking doesn't require extra training, and the other two can only be done in cold environments (contrary to popular belief, Vermont actually does get warm in the summer :p).

So I'll be on campus getting trained until the end of May, and then on June 1st I move into my apartment in Burlington for the summer! I'm living with my boyfriend and six other friends on Cherry St., and we're all working/interning in the area until school resumes. I've got a potential job lined up, but I don't want to announce anything til it's OFFICIAL-official, so more to come on that front pronto. 

Other than that, not too much else going on. But looking forward to a rockin' summer in Burlington!

Thanks for reading!