Things that make me ashamed to be an American...

Absolutely disgusting. I have a terrible taste in my mouth and I am honestly disturbed by this.

Mission Possible + No More Customers!

Since I gave my notice of resignation at my current work today and for the most part its common knowledge that I'm leaving, I'll go ahead and post some more information about my new job opportunity. Sunday is my last day of dealing with miserable, terrible, no good customers on the phone and on March 15th I will be starting a new job with a local nonprofit organization called 'Mission Possible'. It's a part time job with the possibility of going full time. I'm fine with part time because I really need more time, so I can finish the rest of this semester strong and not have to worry about losing my mind dealing with assholes on the phone. My work title is going to be 'juvenile assessor' and my primary responsibility will be to perform risk assessments on kids who get put in the Spring Creek corretional facility, ages 10-17. I'll be assisting in the legal/judicial process in assessing whether or not kids will be at risk to be repeat offenders. It seems like a really interesting job opportunity and I am excited to start. I can feel some of my idealism coming back, we'll see if that continues. ;)

Working 20 hours a week and doing something that is actually related to the type of work I've done the past few years as well as the work I'd like to continue to do in the future will be a lot less stressful than working in a call center environment and having to listen to people bitch and moan all day. I'm sad that I won't be working with some of the good friends I've made there but I'll be keeping in contact with them and harassing them into hanging out with me outside of work.

In other news, congrats to Hanna for landing a pretty sweet job at a local nonprofit working with developmentally disabled kids, as well as a part time tutoring job and some other interviews. Congrats to Ben Rexroad for getting a provisional job offer from the Santa Fe police department. Ben and I will be taking a road trip up to Portland, where he will be testing for their police department and we will be enjoying the city and hopefully spending time with a few friends. Should be fun. Pictures and stories to come.

Bad News, Good News

Today was a day of bad news and good news. This afternoon I received my results for the Foreign Service Officer exam, which unfortunately, I did not do well enough on to get selected for the oral assessment/interview portion. I admit I was a little disappointed but given that I spent maybe a total of 3 or 4 days preparing and studying, while working full time and starting graduate classes at UCCS, I'm not letting it get to me too much. I missed the score necessary to be selected for the next part of the process by seven points. I am not too distraught about it, because my intent was to get a feel for the test and see how I did the first time around. I might consider taking the test again next year after more preparation but it depends on how things are going with grad school.

On to the good news. About an hour and a half later, I received an email notifying me that I have been accepted to the Masters of Arts program at Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver. Needless to say I was very excited, as well as surprised. My dad did his Phd and JD at DU, my stepmom did her JD there, my cousin Shanae is finishing up her MA there now, my undergrad advisor Dr. Hazan did his Phd there and my friend Brian is finishing up his MA there as well. From all of these people, as well as other friends and acquaintances, I've heard many good things about the Josef Korbel school at DU. I feel very privileged to have been accepted and I'm very excited about the possibility of studying there.

We're still waiting to hear back from schools in NYC, both for Hanna and I, and we're waiting to hear if Hanna was also accepted into DU before we make decisions about where we'll be attending school in the Fall. To complicate things further, I'm enjoying my current MPA classes at UCCS and I'd like to continue in this program. I'm looking into the possibility of doing a short term study abroad in Europe and I'm going to sign up for at least one summer class. If possible, as I think I've mentioned previously, I'd love to get both my MPA and an MA in international studies but we'll see where things go once I know what my other options are.

In other good news, a new job opportunity has become available that I'm very excited about. I'm keeping the details on the down low until I know more but I will update the blog with more on that as soon as possible.

Two awesome songs that I'm loving right now.





Thanks for reading, more to come!

Bieba Feva

Here's a music video and song put together and performed my friend Mike Farrell (and I believe his brother, Zach). Mike and I worked together a few years ago. He's one of the funniest guys I've ever had the pleasure of knowing. I wouldn't be surprised to see him become a pretty famous comedian/actor/musician one day, haha. Keep up the hard work and craziness Mike!

Back up

Okie, got my original blog fixed and back up. Very busy at the moment with school and work, more to come.

Fox Hunting With the Golden Eagle (Bayan Olgii)

My good friend Agii was the local coordinator when the BBC came to film a bit on Kazakh eagle hunters, pretty cool video.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00dwd5x
Same vid but this is the link from BBC.

Also, a friend from Arizona, Pat Phillips, a river raft guide, started doing river tours in Mongolia with the help of Agii while we lived there. Here's a link to his site, pretty cool stuff, check it out.

http://www.mongoliariveradventures.com/MongoliaRiverAdventures/Home.html

The Grind

I started classes last week and I'm still trying to decide if working 40 hours a week and taking 9 credit hours of graduate classes is the smartest idea. So far I really like my classes and I feel like a lot of the material is very important and going to be very practical short and long term. I'm taking a Management Development workshop, Organizational Management and Change,, and Policy Process and Democracy. For the most part I seem to be the youngest person in my classes and most of my classmates are already well into their careers and many work in some type of management or upper level administrative position. I've met some nice, interesting people, my professors seem to be pretty knowledgeable and experienced and the material, for the most part, is interesting. I am probably going to be doing more reading and writing this semester than I did during any semester as an undegrad. Just gotta stay focused and not get burned out too quick. :)

In other news, my work's HR department was none too pleased about my work rant blog post. I stood my ground though and didn't back down. I told them writing is how I vent and express my thoughts and emotions. As most noted, I changed my blog address, just in case, but will not be censoring myself or hiding my thoughts on crap like that. I'm keeping my eyes out for other opportunities, hoping for some decent part time work so I can focus more on school and do my best work this semester. In the meanwhile, this will do.

In other news, Hanna is in Colorado now and it's been really nice having her here. In between work and classes I've been trying to spend time with her, show her around Colorado Springs and go to the gym as often as possible. This will be quite a bit easier if I'm able to work part time. More on that if anything worthwhile comes my way.

While I'm happy to be back in school and I feel fortunate to have a job, a place to live, clothes on my back and food on my plate, I've been getting real antsy and stir crazy lately. I am going to Vegas for my good friend Tino's birthday in a couple of weeks but I've been really itching to do some traveling. I might check out a study abroad information session tomorrow to see if the MPA program has any short term study abroad programs I can do at the end of this semester or during the summer. Even if it's only a short term thing for a few weeks, I would love to be able to go study in Europe or South America temporarily. If I can find anything worth applying to, I'll post more about that later. :)

More to come, thanks for reading.