Thea and the Singing Telegram

I finally have a blog-worthy adventure, for tomorrow, I will be moving from White Bear Township, MN to Vancouver, WA for three months [not Canada, this one is by Portland].  Earlier in August, I applied for a spring 2012 internship with Shared Hope because I really want to work with non-profit International Human Rights organizations.  A week or so ago, I received an email back asking whether or not I would consider a fall internship because they still had an opening.  Ummmm, YES.  It would be awesome experience and a good organization for an internship.  I was pumped, but I still needed a place to live and transportation to get there, because, you know, I don't know anyone specifically in Vancouver and you can't fly with a bike.  Ok, yes you can, but it's really expensive and complicated and bikes can die.  Not exactly a risk I wanted to take with my sole method of transportation.  Plus it's cute.

Human Rights Internship: check.

The plan was that I'd arrive in Vancouver during the second full week of September, so I needed to find a room fast.  I tooled around Roomster looking for a lady or family with a spare room or something.  Kinda sketchy, but alas was disappointed with the results.  Either the rent was too high or they never replied to my inquisition.  I started calling up local churches to see if they had any leads, and... nope.  I signed up for a roommate search thing, which cost me $6 to learn that there were NO SEARCH RESULTS.  Really?  This stress resulted in a few  freak-outs, but I knew that there would be something better for me if this didn't work out.  Then, on Wednesday night I decided to give Roomster a second chance, since it at least had a significantly larger user database than the other ones.  I came across a newer listing of a single mom who had two rooms to rent, with cheap-to-reasonable rent and she left her phone number on the page.  I gave her a call to see if they were still available and, sure enough, the cheaper room was!  We spent about half an hour interviewing and she told me that this room had just opened up on the previous day because, here's where it gets better, she had been housing a Japanese foreign exchange student over the summer.  Determined for her to have a good first-impression of America, she decorated and furnished the whole room, including bed sheets and pillows!  This is really exciting because I'll probably be biking from wherever I arrive in Vancouver to wherever I'll be living, so everything will have to fit in my Osprey... and bedding is bulky, and expensive if I were to buy it there.  In all honesty, I was prepared to bring my compression sleeping bag and sleep on a floor; it was already at the base of my pack.  So, um yeah, SCORE!!!

Place to live: check.

Now for transportation.  Initially, I had found a bus line that would get me to Portland, so my plan was to then bike from Portland to Vancouver which I think would take about an hour.  My parents suggested that I consider the train.  Sure enough, I found a non-stop train from St. Paul to Vancouver that was only a little more expensive than the bus; but I couldn't buy the ticket because at that point I hadn't found a place to live.  So on Wednesday night I looked up the price of the train and it was now $70 more expensive than it had been. Booooo-yet-understandable!  Slightly upset but reallllyyy freaking excited, I went to bed.  The next day I decided that I should stop stalling and buy the ticket, so I got back online and when I found it again, it had gone back to its original price!! Ahahahaha PTL!  Also, it's only $5 extra to check your bike on the train.  I'm leaving 11:15pm Saturday night and I'll be arriving there at 9:15am Monday morning.  36 hour train ride, blehh, but dad says that a lot of people say that taking the train over the mountains is the coolest thing ever because you ride on the very edge where no other vehicle goes - I hadn't even thought about that!  MOUNTAIN TRAIN, FTW!

Transportation: check.

Now, the job. Just kidding, I don't have a job there yet, although my landlady did tell me about a shopping area near the house where there are a lot of coffee shops and stores and stuff, so I'm bringing a pile of resumes.  Wish me luck!  I do have a savings account for this specific purpose, but I'm still not confident in my ability to live off that for 3 months.  I guess we'll find out!

Until we meet again,


Mern


Purely for your amusement, here's the FIF song behind the title:



Currently Reading:
Captivating - Stasi and John Eldredge
The Screwtape Letters - C.S. Lewis

Just finished:
The Chronicles of Narnia - C.S. Lewis
Crazy Love - Francis Chan