a lovely ride

Hey halfway point-- sort of! Halfway will be officially this coming up Tuesday. I am blogging early (or a week and a half late) because it's not clear if I will have internet access at the time of halfsies. So better early (or kinda late) than never, right?

So, the past couple weeks have been a blur and whatever is opposite of a blur (lull? dead stop?). The week before last work was ho hum same old- wake up at 6 work sweat sweat sweat break sweat sleep at 10. I suppose the most exciting thing I can report is that I got to meet the "Bee Guy" and even be his helper. He's incredibly sweet and his voice is similar to Winnie the Pooh, which makes him an ideal bee keeper. He runs dozens of hives in the Tucson area, and because there is only one hive on the farm we rarely see him-- low priority. The bees on our farm are a very docile breed of Italian bees (Ciao, have some honey! Gratzi! Prego! Vespa vroom, vroom!) As we were opening the hive I was expecting/half hoping for a swarm of bees to cover us from head to foot or at least make interesting facial hair formations (bee beard!). Instead they just sort if looked at us and gave the bee equivalent of a shrug and a 'meh'. The Bee Guy said the ladies looked great and added a new level to the hive. Before leaving he broke me off a piece of the wax so that I could snack on the honey- what a bizarre and wonderful way to spend an afternoon. Interesting trivia: smoke does not hypnotize bees. It tricks them into thinking there is a forest fire. Sensing the smoke the bees gorge themselves on honey so that they can have start up honey if they need to make a new hive. So they get really bloated and sluggish (neither response really great for a real forest fire, bees.) and cannot flex their abdomens enough to effectively sting someone. Cool trick. Gratzi bees!


Monday and Tuesday were spent at the new farm. We had a giant sleepover with Adam and Debbie's friends who came to help out. It was a lot of fun and we finally finished reinforcing the fence in the first field. I am calloused over but am content with the knowledge that push come to shove can throw together a mean fence. I also got to trim Mesquite trees. From my experience, there is nothing in AZ that isn't covered in 3 inch spikes. The trees did a number on the WWOOFers... we are all covered in scratches and have gone through a couple of tubes of neosporin. We look tough now and that gives us some street cred , which is nice.

So where does the blur come in? Saturday night at 5:40. My graduate program at UNCG had a mandatory meeting so I had to fly back. I went from Tucson to Phoenix to Philadelphia to Raleigh over the course of 9 hours. I was a little loopy when Dad (thanks dad!) came to get me at the airport. He was kind enough to check us into a hotel early so I could nap. The plane ride to Tucson was my first plane ride ever... and after this trip I feel like an old salt. I really enjoy layovers in airports because while I'm on the farm I rarely see people and at the airport I have no choice. I like the airport gift shops that try to cater to the interests of the passengers flying in/out of that terminal. I'm not specifically talking about the kiosks with the neck pillows and ear plugs. I am talking about the "native spirit" stores in the Tucson and Phoenix airports. If I had 400 dollars to blow, I would have loved to own an authentic Native American headdress... love to own and love to wear it onto the plane. Damn you, WWOOFer budget!

So, graduate school. My program is Joint Masters program with NC A&T, an historically black university right down the road from UNCG. It's an amazing program that focuses on diversity. I will attend classes at both universities. My professor says to think of the experience as a living classroom, which it definitely will be. As a white woman I was definitely in the majority at UNC... so it will be a change with my classes at NC A&T but I am super looking forward to it. My professors are wonderful and my cohort looks like a cool bunch of girls (35 girls, 5 boys) and I can't wait to be with them full time.

Also while in Greensboro I got to check out my future living situation. To be respectful of my roommates I won't go into too much detail. I will say though that it's a very cool old house in a great location and I'm thrilled to be there with such cool ladies + boy.

So that's about it for the last two weeks. I was enjoying the momentum of writing a post once a week, but I'm afraid routine has set in. I will try and be more diligent/force interesting events in my life to warrant blog posts. As usual... I have pictures and will post tomorrow!