Work goes like this: Some days go by fast, some days go by painfully slow. Sometimes I learn something useful, most of the time I don’t. Everything we do is tiny, but necessary. The first week we worked on Excel spreadsheets, then we moved on to bigger and better things. I thought it was permanent, but this week we had to go back and rework the same spreadsheets…

Three things about commuting/driving in LA: I’m afraid of unprotected left turns. The local streets in Westwood really suck. There is way too much traffic in Los Angeles, but at least it’s in the opposite direction of my commute!

My room is almost clean and completely unpacked! My goal is to finish cleaning up tonight, so when my man visits tomorrow it will be nice. (I think it’s very strange for teenagers to call their boyfriend/girlfriend “husband” or “wife”. What if things don’t end up that way?)

My weekends have been crazy busy and I’ve barely had time to settle into my new place. Last weekend I drove down to Irvine to see Rose and Maggie, and briefly meet up with Hilar. This weekend is my first weekend to just bum around! Next weekend I’m planning on meeting up with some friends from ISB, and then in the future Heather’s coming down for some classic girl time, and a San Diego trip, and Danny, and Crystal, and all sorts of awesome. Very much enjoying this summer so far

Okok off to clean my room now! Pictures to come, when it’s neater.

*Click links to view actual instead of desaturated colors, please Also, I was too lazy to make my stamp smaller.

We stayed in Yellowstone for 4 days, three nights. Our flight left in the early morning, at around 6-something, so I woke up at 3:30 like a crazy person to take a shower before leaving.
We transferred in Denver, arrived in Yellowstone in the morning. Proceeded to drive through Grand Teton National Park, taking a pee break at the edge of Jackson lake.

We ate a late lunch at Signal Mountain Lodge and then got to our hotel in time for dinner. After dinner, we crashed for some serious crashing time. Next day: We went to the Mud Volcano in the morning and saw a bison just chillin’.

And Dragon’s Hole. Or Breath, or Lair, or something.

Then dropped by to see this crazy petrified tree. It had a gated fence around it, to prevent people from chipping themselves some fancy petrified tree souvenirs. But why did the fence need a gate? Dunno.

We got back on the car and it started raining! Nice timing. So then we drove to the Mammoth Hot Springs Terraces. Yellowstone had a lot of driving and looking and not much exciting hiking. :/

The terraces were totally crazy. The ground had weirdass texture and was probably super hot. And everything was steaming. And weird colors due to bacterial growth.

Then Emerald Spring. It’s different colors because of the different temperatures of water housing different bacterias.

There was also a cute geyser that kept going off sporadically. But don’t get it confused with the Sporadic Geyser, which is not this one.

And then we went to Old Faithful!

Kapew! I thought that he was super faithful, but actually he erupts every 90 min plus or minus 50 minutes. That’s kind of a big difference. But usually it’s plus or minus 10 minutes. But that’s still not tht faithful. :/ How disappointing.

And then the weather got crazy bad so we decided to go home. Check out the trippy clouds! (I’m too used to CA weather, I suppose.)

Next day, as we were driving to our next destination, we saw an entire herd of bison just hanging out.

There were lots of cute baby bison too

We got to Lower Falls and took picturesss

And then we went to Upper Falls and took more picturesss (clearly I’m getting tired of blogging right about now sorry) Check out these crazy mountains!

There was a rainbow at the bottom of Uncle Tom’s Trail. (Not Cabin.) I heard everyone take a deep breath and say “Wow, that’s beautiful” when they saw it as I was taking pictures. I wonder if there was a leprechaun and expressed my wonder out loud and my mom thought I was crazy.

My sister and I only took one normal expressioned picture together the entire trip, and here it is. With Lower Falls in the background. Taken at Artist’s Point.

View from Artist’s Point. When the sun came out, the sides of the mountains were sooo yellow! Finally, I understood the name of the national park.

Then we went back to see Old Faithful again, except he hella spazzed out and tripped out twice before actually erupting a lame eruption like 10 minutes (relatively) late. And then we went to see the geysers/springs around Old Faithful, like Morning Glory Pool. My sister made me walk two miles in the rain. I suffered while she laughed histerically for no apparent reason. But Morning Glory Pool was pretty so I guess it was worth it. I guesssss.

And then we went home to sleep. And then the last day on our way out of Yellowstone and Grand Teton, we stopped by Jenny Lake! My lake. Jenn Lake. They spelled it wrong.

And that is all. I have four mosquito bites on my shoulder, all from the last day (WTF?), one on my pinky finger (also WTF) and one of my foot. And one on my tummy. Did these mosquitos eat me through my clothes??? Here are some animal sightings.

We also went to many more places but I chose the most blogworthy photos to put up and describe only. For example, when we went to see the Natural Bridge, the kids walking with their parents in front of us were singing Billionaire. And I sang the next line and they were amused. But see, I couldn’t have caught that in a photograph right? ALSO I petted the top of a baby tree and it was soft. But then every other tree I petted was spiky. Until we went to my lake. Basically, my lake wins.