Being the ever increasing optimist that I am (can you increase your optimism exponentially? infinitively?) I write these blogs from a Midwesterners' point of view. I was raised by east coast parents in a very nice town just outside of Madison Wisconsin, so bear (that will be funnier soon) with my rather narrow perspective on life in the West. Plane trips are boring, lets admit it. There's all this hype going in and then you get there and you're like, "oh, plane goes up, plane goes down, and there's turbulence in between". Whooo! So, fast forward from our way-to-early departure from Madison, on through our 45 min stop in Minneapolis and voila, we have arrived in Missoula Montana to the lovely Missoula Airport. It has an official title, I don't know it. Missoula is home to the University of Montana which has an amazing Wildlife Biology program, which I will be majoring in along with hopefully either Journalism or English. Anywho, there are four gates, and stairs going down to the main lobby of the airport...where the elevator escaped to is still an ongoing question for me. Down those stairs we were immediately greeted by a welcoming party, who strangely wasn't for us. We should have ordered one, I'm putting that on my to-do list. Coming out of the stairwell we were greeted by none other than a 10ft high stuffed grizzly, encased on all four sides by a glass box. Now, I have seen Night at The Museum, so the glass does not comfort me any. Moving down the hall past grizzly A we come upon baggage claim, above baggage claim would of course be stuffed grizzly B, an elk staring at his new visitors (us) and in true Montana fashion, a cougar biting the jugular of a mountain goat, sheep, thing (my wildlife bio classes have not begun). None of these are cased in mind you; if Ben Stiller had been there I might have run screaming from the building. Well, if I saw Ben Stiller anywhere I might run away, but that's another story for another time.
Now, having made it to the hotel without getting lost, I was given a wonderful tour of the town and surrounding trails by some old neighbors. He grew up here and is the son of the Sheriff, he's my new best friend. On our way back into the hotel we began to talk about Starbucks. It was inevitable, my addiction to coffee and the access to a Starbucks is not very simple. We met a group of ladies in the elevator who were explaining how out on the east coast, there are no Starbucks. Now, I was born on the east coast and have spent many a summer months there, and there are more Starbucks than I can count. Well, after further probing of where this lack of Starbucks was in order to black it out on my U.S. map it was revealed that it was in Cleveland Ohio....on the east coast. Yes ladies and gentlemen, Ohio is now the east coast. I didn't know whether to laugh or ask them if they saw the ocean and if it was as big as they thought. Luckily they had to get off the elevator before we could crack up, and crack up we did.
Montana has been very welcoming, I'm proud to say I am a part of this community now. I will have more to come next week (and maybe sooner!) about the first week of classes, a football game, and a new roommate after mine decided not to attend college. OH! and doing laundry, which I hear is free, a word I intend to be on the lookout for in the next four years.
Have a wonderful week and enjoy the last of the warm summer days!
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