What a hectic time I've had these past few days!

Wednesday, I woke up bright and early to drive into The Cities for a conference. After an uneventful 4 hours (well, except for getting lost at the end of it...), I made my way to the federal building(!), and my, is it big. After riding the elevator for a few minutes (I accidentally got on an "up" elevator instead of down...oops!), I found my way to the conference room, and the meeting began.

The conference was a sort of networking, meet-and-greet sort of deal for all the interns within the region (which is made up of 8 states: Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota), not only to meet with each other, but to meet up with all the big important people, to get ourselves "out there" to get hired permanently by these people. My, was it intimidating! The first day consisted of the department heads of all the different sections talking about what their position/department is, why their job rocks, why we should join them, that sort of thing. While the presentations were interesting, after 3 or 4 hours, attention spans were definitely waning.

After the day was after, I was driving back to the hotel when it decided to pour for only the 15 minutes it took for me to get there, throwing in some hail just to spice things up. I made it there okay, though, and got settled in. Later, I went over and explored the Mall of America...my, it is HUGE! Although they kind of lie, a lot of the shops have multiple locations in the Mall!

The second day started off much the same, hearing from some more of the higher-ups. Then there was a sort of "how to get a job" dealio, where some people were talking about what they look for in a resume, good interviewing skills, et cetera. We also worked on "elevator speeches," which is basically how to give a good summary (of say, what your job is) within 30 seconds - literally a speech that you would give in the span of an elevator ride. The rest of the afternoon was dedicated to the start of the intern speeches, where everyone had to do a kind of "what I did this summer" kind of thing - introduce ourselves, talk about something interesting we learned, that sort of thing. After the day ended, we had a little barbecue at the local refuge, so that was fun.

Friday started off with finishing the student presentations, and I had my turn. Man, I was so nervous...I'm not good with public speaking in the first place, and with all those important people there! I think even the Regional Director was there that day...oh boy. I survived, though, so that's all good. We had more presentations by some more important people, and a Q&A session about how to get into the Service. After some chatting with the people that matter, a few of us got together for lunch, and then it was time for me to make the long drive home.

Everyone there was so nice, it was amazing. Every time I turned around, there were a gaggle of other students to say hello, and we all hit it off pretty well. If all goes to plan, we'll be the "new generation" of the Service, so in theory we'll get to know each other more over the rest of our careers.

Saturday was the local anniversary celebration of the town by the refuge, so we helped out with that. As soon as I get there, though, somehow myself and two guys got shanghied into making the mud pit for their Tug of War contest, so we got to shovel dirt for an hour and a half - I'm still a little sore from that! After we finished with that, we went back to the refuge to help people (mostly little kids, but there were definitely some older people, too) build birdhouses, along with other crafts. That was fun! The fire team had their truck out, so the guy in charge of that crew got to have kids mess around with the hose and the lights and their radio, it was so cute! I can't tell who had more fun, the fireman or the kids.

Today I hung around my apartment all day, glad for a day to relax. I researched into picking up a minor in biology, because at the conference (and this entire summer, for that matter) it became very apparent how important biology is in this field. Lets hope I can go for it!

Nice mishmash of different things today.

Today started off working around the office. Entered in some cactus data, helped organize the new filing system, carried in a bunch of drills that we'll be needing for saturday (needed to charge the batteries!), things like that. The biologist and I drove around for a while, meeting up with the tree contractors (basically watching them RIP SMASH TEAR, pretty entertaining), filling out a paperwork survey for one of the wetland pools (asking about the percent cover of invasive species, the depth of water, amount of foliage, etc; this is to determine how suitable it is as a habitat for breeding birds), and various odds and ends.

For the afternoon, we went out for our LAST BIT OF CACTUS WORK (hooray!). Although it was left last because he didn't know where the stake was, time constraints, etc, I think unofficially it was saving the best for last. This outcrop was basically a really tall hill, and once we (finally) got to the top, we could see a ridiculously large portion of the refuge. It was absolutely breathtaking, I wish I had my camera with me! The area was a little bit wetter than most of the other outcrops, so it had a relatively high biodiversity, since it was still dry enough in areas for most of the regular outcrop inhabitants, but wet enough to support different forms of life. I saw a little brown skink, he was so cute!

When we were finally done, we drove around a bit more, then headed back to the office, where I finished entering in all the data(!) - we ended up with roughly 1600 cacti, phew!

Tomorrow I head out bright and early to drive out to The Cities, where I'll be sitting through a 3 day workshop; therefore, I don't know when I'll be posting next!