I was up and at 'em at around 6:00 almost every morning. The breakfast buffet started at 7:00 or 7:30 and class began an hour later. I was assigned to one of the ten or so conference rooms with about 30 people to a room. Inside of the rooms, there were tables set up and groups of five or six assigned to them. My group got along fabulously and by the end of the two weeks, I was actually pretty sad when we had to say our goodbyes. We got to pick our team name and I told them about my impressive record of going all through college successfully naming all of my groups "Team Fierce" and they were all about keeping the streak going. So Table 4 became Team Fierce.
The first week was pretty rough. We were pounded with information and a lot of it was really new to me despite doing my internship last year. I was also worried because I was the sole representative from Alaska and I definitely felt like an outsider. Most people are from big cities in the mid-west or on the east coast and live a completely different lifestyle than I do. The main questions I got were "how many people even live in Anchorage?", "how cold does it get?", "why do you live there?", and "isn't there like a month of complete darkness?" It got pretty old. I wanted to turn around and ask them why they live in a place where the only foliage they see on a daily basis is the litter-ridden city parks but I decided it was a lost cause. I did end up making some great friends, though, and was really grateful because I don't know how I would've made it through the two weeks without them. One girl was from the New York City office, two were from Columbus, Ohio and another girl was from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. It was awesome to create bonds with people that I never would've met if it wasn't for my job! It'd be fun to plan our future annual week-long trainings to be at the same time!
We had half of Saturday and all of Sunday free and my goal was to say "yes" to everything I got invited to so I didn't wallow in misery by myself at the hotel all weekend. On Friday, a pretty big group of us went to dinner in Old Town Scottsdale at an outdoor Mexican restaurant. It was perfect weather and we all were so happy to be outside after spending countless hours inside over-air conditioned rooms all week. We walked around a bit afterward and found out that Scottsdale is a ritzy place. There were shiny Bentleys driving around and 50% of the shops were upscale art galleries. On Saturday, another large group of us took a shuttle to Glendale to watch an Arizona Coyotes hockey game and it was a blast! It was my first hockey game and I found out I actually liked it - who knew! The group split up afterward and half of us headed back to the hotel. I'm glad I went with that group because I found out the other half ended up staying downtown until almost 3am and I would NOT have been a happy camper.
Sunday was the best day by far. I got up super early - about 5:30am - and met a group of 7 people in the lobby to board a shuttle to...wait for it...the Grand Canyon! My NYC friend and conference room table mate put the whole thing together and I was so thankful. Even though I lived in Utah for almost half of my life, our family never made the journey south to visit the Grand Canyon. It's never been somewhere I've been dying to see but, being so close to it, I didn't hesitate when the idea came up. We headed to Sedona first and I fell in love! I've always pictured Arizona as one giant desert and never understood how people lived there year-round in the heat. Sedona completely opened my eyes to a different kind of Arizona, though, and I definitely felt like I could live there. There were streams, orchards, giant ponderosa pines, flowers, mountains, gardens, cottonwood trees, and farm animals all nestled into this little valley out past the sandstone and saguaros. It almost felt like home. It wasn't too far from Flagstaff, too, but of course the company I work for doesn't have an office there - only in Phoenix. Bummer.
Once we put Sedona behind us, the terrain once again turned to sand, sagebrush, and scorching heat. I had no idea that the Grand Canyon was on a giant indian reservation. It's predominately Navajo and is called the Havasupai Reservation. We entered the reservation and that was the last of traffic lights, fancy hotels, and fast food restaurants. Apparently there's only one building with running water and it's a trading post/restaurant in Cameron. We stopped there to get a quick lunch of highly recommended Navajo tacos (fry bread with ranchero beans, burger, cheese, tomatoes, lettuce, onions, and an eye-watering salsa) as well as some souvenirs. We then drove past a few traditional Navajo mud huts that are still lived in today and spotted a couple wild horses. Our tour guide told us stories of Grand Canyon-related unsolved mysteries and old indian legends as we wound our way toward the south rim. My first glimpse of the canyon made my eyes open wide. It looked like someone took a dagger and rammed it through the earth in a fierce, jagged pattern. It seemed bottomless and dangerous but at the same time fragile. The edges carefully fell inward into layers of muted colors piled on each other like a thousand-tiered cake. We pulled into a look-out and walked single file to our tour guide's "secret" place. Keeping one eye out for scorpions and the other on the crumbling ledge, we stood in awe at the vastness of it all. At some points it almost looked two dimensional - like a painting or a postcard. It was hard for my eyes to comprehend all of the height and textures. I'd take a few steps to the right, then to the left, stand on my tiptoes, and lean my head just to try to capture all of the dimensions. We stopped at a few other places and I couldn't believe how big it all was. It seemed to extend endlessly in every direction. All I could think of was how strange that there are places like that in the world that remain so untouched and others that have been ruined by humanity. Who gets to choose which places stay and which go?
We stopped at Grand Canyon village for a last look, browsed the Hopi House souvenir shop, snapped a few more pictures, spotted some elk, then made our way back. We were all wiped and slept for at least an hour on the shuttle. I was thankful to have a whole row to myself! We stopped in Camp Verde for a quick dinner and made it to the hotel by 8:00.
The second week of training wasn't as tough but I still had trouble focusing. I was tired, homesick, overwhelmed, and anxious. I felt like I had so much to learn and in so little time. Luckily it went by in a flash and before I knew it, I was on my way to the airport. I almost missed my flight out of Pheonix because my flight time was changed to three hours earlier and I didn't find out until an hour before takeoff, but everything worked out and I made it back to Anchorage two hours earlier than originally planned. Potentially horrible situation successfully avoided!
Now I'm back in the land of near freezing temperatures and winter hats, shorter days and higher heat bills...but I couldn't be happier.
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