This is intense

Oh, how I love you all for actually reading my insanely long posts and then responding with long comments... I love reading them!

OK, so today there was continental breakfast in the dining hall at 7:00 but the other girls and I decided to skip that, sleep a little extra and eat granola bars in our condo. We had to be in the office at 8:00. What's weird about this camp is that you drive everywhere because it's so huge. And the staff village is set kind of far away from the camp and stuff. So, we hopped in the car and went to the office.

At the office, we had to do some paperwork (like the freaking health form again) and find out about our investment options for our 401(k)s. YL has does 4% matching which is apparently really good. We also had to sign up for lifeflight because otherwise we wouldn't be able to get to a hospital for like 2 hours if we got hurt. But we took care of all that and it was really fun to sit in a room with everybody and joke around.

That took about an hour and then we went on a tour with Rich, who is the intern coordinator. Again, Wildhorse is ridiculously huge, so we had to get in cars. We first went out and saw the ghetto gas pumps that we can use (that's right, you can get gas at Wildhorse). We also saw the giant camp garage (there's a full-time mechanic), woodworking shop, welding shop, etc. Those lay right next to the air strip which is actually used fairly often. There is also another smaller staff garage, woodworking shop, etc. in the "bullpen" which is right next to the staff village. So, if those happen to be hobbies of yours, you can feel free to woodwork or something.

From there, we went out to the stables. The only have about 5 horses right now, but the camp is a fully functioning ranch as well, meaning there's cattle that they round up with the horses. And tractors and such. The ridge runners are up next to the stables as well as more storage and such. About 3 miles out past the stables is a resevoir which is apparently beautiful and amply stocked with bass fish. We can't go out there right now because it's hunting season and we may get shot. They let hunters come stay on the property and they mainly hunt deer, elk and pheasant. There are also all kinds of random buildings that are used for storage and stuff. It's going to take a while to figure out where everything is.

From there, we went down into the main camp. Surprisingly, I haven't even really seen main camp. We come in on the service road and into most of the buildings from the back, so it's weird. But we saw the club room and it is huge! It has a capacity of 900. Rich was telling us that during the summer season there are normally 1,000 people on property including all the staff, wc and ss and kids.

We had to cut the tour a little short because it was time to get to Geronimo which is the housekeeping headquarters. There we learned how to clean the quads. Wildhorse doesn't have traditional cabins. They have 2 big hotels with a lobby in the middle. There's a girls quad and a boys quad. They're each basically a big square. You go into the middle of the square and there's a really pretty courtyard and you enter the cabins from there.

Every Monday is going to be our All Clean Day, which is where we completely turn over all the cabins and all the interns all work on it. Today we did one floor of one of the quads in order to get the hang of it. Basically, in the morning we'll be cleaning bathrooms, one of us in each room. The rooms are different here too. They can either hold 10 or 14. The 10 rooms have 2 bathrooms and the 14 rooms have 3. So rather than one big bathroom in each cabin, there's 2 or 3 regular bathrooms with a shower, toilet and sink.

After we were done with the bathrooms, we have to room finish which is where we go through and clean out the cubbies and make sure the blankets are folded right and stuff. And the last step is to take out the army of vacuums and do that.

After room finishing, we went to lunch and had our first Operations Lunch. This is the once weekly lunch/staff meeting that we'll have on Thursdays where we get our schedules for the weekends and talk about any special needs the specific group coming in might have and pray for the group. Today we talked a lot about what kind of attitude to have for good customer service. Of course, Andy (the Guest Services Coordinator) had to mention Disney for their amazing model of customer service.

After lunch, the girls went back to housekeeping and the boys went to maintenance or landscaping depending on which they are assigned to. On Thursdays, all the girls will be in housekeeping without the boys doing everything to get ready for the week. We first first finished vacuuming and then learned how to clean the suites. After that, we cleaned the hotel lobby, the club room and the Sassy (the snack bar). Then we went back to Geronimo, cleaned up and finished our work day.

I am definitely exhausted. If you know YL, you know how precise housekeeping is. Lines have to be straight and towels at a specific angle, etc. It's something that we will get down in no time, but it's just a lot of information in one day. And we're definitely not done. We have dinner at 6:00 and then we're going to have and intern meeting where we will learn even more about what's expected of us, what we can and can't do, etc. We also get our keys to different stuff and the camp and, if you're one of the lucky few, a walkie-talkie. I'm really hoping for a walkie-talkie. You just look cool with one of those.

I'm so excited to have jumped right into work today. It's a little exhausting, but this is definitely what I wanted. I'm here to work and to work hard. I know that I'm going to have a lot of fun and grow a ton, but it's clear that we are here to work. That's definitely more prevelant than on WC or something, not that you don't work hard on WC and SS, but this is actually our salaried job to be here. It's fun.

I'm hoping to get to bed early tonight. We have our first day of training in our specific jobs tomorrow which I am definitely pumped about. The 3 girls that are one Guest Services get to do their AE training tomorrow which stands for Adventure Experience. They get to learn all about how to rescue people on the ropes course and stuff. It sounds really fun.

Oh, also, I saw like 9 deer standing maybe 20 feet from me today. They were weird Oregon deer. They kind of have mohawks. And apparently there's cougars around here. Awesome.

Bryce- to answer your questions: chicken, huge, I'm working on more pics, and maybe a little.

Al- It's freezing here. Seriously it wasn't supposed to get above 50 today and it didn't feel like it did. I've been in long-sleeves and a fleece all day.

I love you all, but I must go because there is much still to do today. Feel free to call me on my land line. I don't think anyone has gotten a call yet, so that would be cool.