Climbing a Mountain (Literally and Metaphorically)

Buon giorno, readers!

This had been a very stressful, yet rewarding, week for me.  Let me start with the mountain climbing adventure that spoke of in my last post.

Last Friday (besides being my Mom's birthday), was the day I climbed to the top of Mount Tammany.  Mount Tammany is located in the Delaware Water Gap National Park, which straddles the Delaware River between Pennsylvania and New Jersey.  The mountain is located on the New Jersey side of the river and is about an hour from my apartment.  I got up early and packed my rucksack with popcorn, water and a light jacket.  I drove up to the park and left my car in the lot at the foot of the Red Dot Trail, which shall from here on out be referred to as the Trail of Death.  The trail is about a mile long and it climbs the 1,526 feet to the top really quickly.  This means that almost all of the trail is vertical and covered with rocks.  This required me to basically boulder (climbing over rocks to you non-climbers) my way up the trail.  I ended up not needing my jacket, since I was working up a sweat climbing.  The entire way up, all I could think about was 'I'm going to have to come back down!' which was not comforting.

Finally, after about an hour, I reached the summit.  This was my view

The mountain that you see is on the Pennsylvania side.  I sat down on a rock to take in the view and gather my strength (and eat some popcorn).  I ended up having to call my Dad to have him look up online whether or not there was an easier way down the mountain.  Thank goodness there was, so I ended up going down the Blue Trail, which took longer but was not as vertical :)  My reward for making the three hour trek was eating at Pizza Hut on my way home.

Saturday, I had my first Object Care class.  This is more of a field trip class, and since we go to different places and it takes all day, we don't meet every week.  For our starter class, we met at the Monclair Historical Society where our teacher works.  In the afternoon, we had the second part of the class at Glenmont, which was Thomas Edison's home and is now a part of the National Park Service site in West Orange.  I think the class will be a lot of fun, especially because we will get to go several of the big museums in NYC and go behind the scenes.

Now, you may be wondering "Katie, why did you say your week was stressful?  Sounds pretty fun to me."  Well, this has been the week of trying to get a job.  I had an interview at Sears in Livingston (about a half-hour away) and at the nearby Best Buy.  Both places offered me a job, but I was reluctant to accept since I was still holding out hope for a job at the SHU bookstore.  I had been calling my contact there (and probably bugging the hell out of her) since my interview, but hadn't gotten any word.  So, yesterday (Tuesday) I had resigned myself to the fact that I would probably have to take one of the off-campus jobs, even though they wouldn't be as understanding about my class schedule.  Then, today, a miracle!  I got a call from the bookstore and they want me to start tomorrow! So I'm happy and now, almost 100% stress-free!  Tonight, I shall celebrate with pizza!

So, the moral of the story is, the trail up may be hard and arduous, but once you get to the top, the view is spectacular!

XOXO,
K