How I Got Rear-Ended and It Was a Good Thing

Hello blogging world!  Yes, I am back. For this post at least.  And then we shall see... Summer tends to be more reading and less writing for me, and fall and winter are more writing and less reading.  It is almost fall, so I'm sure once my last semester (!!!) of school starts and fall starts to make it's appearance, you will see me back around again.

In the meantime...

It's not often you would find that having someone run into the back of your car at 9am on a July morning when you least expect it would be a very good thing to happen to you. That just goes to further show how God doth worketh in mythertiouth wayth.  (My olde English somehow slipped into a lisp...)

You see, if I'd not had a gentleman two cars behind me fail to apply his brakes properly and hit the car behind me, which then hit my car and pushed in the trunk just enough that it became a struggle to shut and open, and give me a case of the whiplash, I would not have had a whole month of chiropractic care covered by the insurance.  I've been having a lot of stiffness and being able to go twice a week for several weeks worked out a lot of the problems I'd been encountering.

If I hadn't been rear ended, the insurance company wouldn't have given me an additional payment besides covering my medical expenses. Then, when I discovered that I would not be receiving any financial aide from my Pell Grant because I only have 7 credit hours this semester, paying $1100 would have been a much more daunting task.  As it was, adding the insurance money to what I had saved up left me only $100 short - a much easier amount to find the extra funds for.

And if that gentleman had not rear ended my rusty, dented, fifteen year old beater of a car, the insurance agent wouldn't have come to my house, taken one look at the car and said "Don't bother fixing it" while handing me a check that turned out to be exactly what I needed for a good down payment on a new car. Without that check, saving up for the new car I was desperately needing would have taken me much longer.

As it was, because I got rear ended, last week I was able to pay for my last semester of college and upgrade from the top car, to the beautiful shiny new Volkswagen Jetta on the bottom.

 

That being said, I have no interest in being rear ended ever again.

A Crash Course in Palestine

Working in a large hotel with meeting and event space is proving to have an educational aspect that I did not expect. We of course have our weddings, business meetings, and educational conventions. Those have proven to be interesting, but nothing quite like the group we had over the weekend of the 4th of July.

Our entire hotel - every guest room, and every inch of meeting space - was booked by a single convention, something you don't see everyday.  We're used to being sold out, of course, but being sold out with random guests who are not connected and being sold out with a single group of close to 1,000 people who all have the same schedule are two very different things. 

This group was essentially a giant family reunion.  Each member of this federation is directly from, or has a parent or a grandparent from, a single town in Palestine.  In the years since they relocated to America, they have all kept in touch and gotten together for a weekend during the summer for 57 years.  To me, that is pretty amazing that there are that many people, from the same town, all related in someway that have consistently kept in touch for over half a century.

Prior to this weekend, I honestly didn't know anything about Palestine.  I thought it might be a country, officially, but I was not completely sure.  I assumed they were primarily Muslim, but again I wasn't sure.  We had been preparing for this group for a long time, so I took the opportunity to do some research and learn more about this culture.

I still don't know very much, but I did learn that Palestine is loosely considered to be an independent country by some, and a region of Israel by others.  Currently the majority are Muslim with a minor Christian population, but historically the population was much larger.  Since the 1940s, however, large amounts of Palestinians - many of them Christian - have fled to other countries as a result of persecutions and attacks by Israel; the group staying at the hotel was made up of those Christians who left Palestine during and since that time.  During their stay, I had the opportunity to see parts of a performance by an ethnic dance troupe which was fascinating to watch in the traditional Palestinian garb with large agricultural influences. They set up large trees in the lobby that were meant to represent the olive and almond trees, both important in Palestinian agriculture and symbolism as I was told. As far as I could tell, every guest could speak Arabic, even the younger generations.  You could tell they loved and were very proud of their heritage.

From a hotel standpoint, it was definitely a different kind of weekend.  The day they all checked in was nuts, and then the next two days were quiet in a busy way as we didn't have any guests to check in or out, and fell into the role of a concierge desk instead.  The day they all left was especially crazy... of course there were hiccups along the way, but overall the group coordinator told us that everyone loved their stay here and were very happy.  And that, after all, is our main goal.

So that was my unexpected educational weekend.  It just goes to show you never know who will walk through your front door.

Lavender Love

I have lately become a little obsessed with lavender.  Lavender in food, specifically.

My interest was sparked when I stumbled across a recipe for lavender lemonade on Pinterest, and fully ignited when I discovered that this fabulous new grocery store, Fresh Thyme Farmer's Market, had dried lavender flowers available for purchase.  I had looked briefly online, but anything was in too great of quantity for my experimental interest, and none of my other local grocery stores had it among their seasonings or spices.

Finding myself with some free time the other day, I decided to try out Lavender Lemonade.  I used this recipe to make the lavender syrup, and was delighted with the results.  It is naturally a golden color, due to the half cup of honey, but I added in a (wee bit too much) purple dye for fun.

Having prepared a nice pint sized jar of lavender syrup, I decided to try out the Lavender-Honey Iced Latte  (the same recipe where I found the lavender syrup).  I quickly brewed up a concentrated coffee in my French Press, and while that was cooling off to an Iced Latte temperature, there was this recipe for Lavender Shortbread Cookies that I knew I had to try.

The cookies took just a little bit of time, with the thirty minutes of refrigeration, but were very simple and easy to make. Lavender can be somewhat overpowering in large quantities, but in small amounts for baking the scent is full of summer and cheerfulness.  I did get a few raised eyebrows from my family at the "putting flowers in cookies", but I think we've all agreed that the end result has a subtle enough flavor to be unique and quite tasty.

Next on my lavender list... Lavender Cupcakes with Honey Frosting, and Chocolate Lavender Cake with Earl Grey Frosting!

Settling In

At the same time that I finished week three of my very first full-time job, I also finished living on my own for three weeks while I house sat for family friends of my parents. It's been a busy couple of weeks, and gone a long way in disrupting my normal blogging flow.  But the waves seem to be calming a bit, and there are hopes of more frequent posting in the near future.

The new job has been going very well.  It has been absolutely fascinating to go from a small, 112 room hotel that served only breakfast, to a resort with nearly 400 rooms, thousands of square feet of meeting and event space, four different restaurants, room service, more departments than I know what do with and a golf course.

Coming from a small hotel where I was the front desk, housekeeping, maintenance and everything else after 6pm when everyone left, it has been a strange experience being... just the front desk. When a guest wants a toothbrush or new linens, I just page housekeeping and they take care of it, there is overnight houskeeping as well.  If someone gets locked out, I can call security because we actually have security.  No more unclogging toilets because that's what engineering is there 24/7 for!  All I have to do now is check guests in and out and help resolve issues at the front desk, and then answer phone calls when I'm back working in the PBX room because that's right - we have a PBX room where all the phone calls go and the Front Desk gets only the calls that are directly for them.

Working in a large hotel is proving to be very interesting, and I am enjoying it very much so far.  Of course, not everything is perfect, and there are definitely management issues that need to be worked out, but I love all of my co-workers, and I am excited to be a part of this new team.  It does make me feel very grown up... working at least 40 hours a week, getting paid well, having the opportunity for insurance and vacation time down the road, dressing up every day in a blazer and dress pants as part of my uniform.

I do miss my old job at times, and the people I worked with there.  But over all, I am excited to be venturing into this new stage in my life and getting one step closer to the goals and dreams that I have for my career.

A New Page

Over the weekend, I only had to convince one of the people who reads this blog that yes, I was serious, when I said my exciting news has nothing to do with rings and wedding bells.  That's not bad.

So... what is it then? Alright, I'll tell you.

This coming Monday, I will be moving up in the career world by starting my very first full time job!

I'm excited, I think.  I am very sad to be leaving my current hotel, but I'll be moving to a full service hotel with event space, still as front desk, but with the idea that once I get my foot in the door I'll be able to move into the convention and events planning department.  They know that events is where I want to be, and they are willing to give me coaching and opportunities to build my skills while waiting for a position to open up.

It was a bit of an interesting process, finding this job.  I wasn't even looking for a new job initially.  I was in class one day, and my teacher said that she had information about a job that she thought I should apply for. It was a catering and conference coordinator position at a very nice hotel up more in the Chicagoland area.  I thought, "well, why not?"  and scheduled the interview.

Apparently, the woman I interviewed with absolutely loved me and for a good two weeks was going back and forth between myself and another candidate who had five years of event experience that I didn't have. I eventually gave up on getting the job, and then got a letter saying that they had chosen someone else so I figured that was that, and marked it up to a good experience.

Then, one of the hospitality classes went to that same hotel to assist in a sales blitz, and my teacher ended up talking with the woman who I'd interviewed with.  She expressed how she had really, really wanted to hire me and had come this close to choosing me over the other candidate.  My teacher jumped in and said she was sure I'd take any job I could to get my foot in the door, because planning events in a hotel was exactly what I wanted to do.

And that was how the woman I first interviewed with ended up going to HR, telling them that they needed to hire me because I needed to work for this hotel, and I ended up interviewing for a position as a guest service agent.  I pretty much had the job before I even interviewed for it, which was a bit of an odd experience... but there it is.

It'll be an adjustment, for sure, with a 45-60 minute commute depending on traffic, and working 32 to 40 hours a week.  I am going to miss the hotel that I work at now, very much.  They are wonderful, wonderful people there, and have become like family to me.  But I know this is the step I am supposed to take, and I am looking forward to making it.

So here's to starting a new chapter in my hospitality career!