Montana

There were many, many perks associated with my job this summer at National Defense University. One of these was the travel--the trips we take with our international officers. For as much as I love to travel, I couldn't believe that I actually got paid to travel with this job!

The first trip of the year for the Fellows is to Montana. Fresh air, cold water, good food, and lots of wide open spaces.

I love wide open spaces.

Since I work with the military, I flew military air for the first time. It was a thrill, I tell you what. One of my coworkers told me, "Just wait until you see the lunches they pack for us. There is so much meat."

I didn't really believe her until I saw the sandwich:

Yep, totally felt like a carnivore eating this. And I'm just gonna say that yes, I did eat all of that turkey.

I also got practice as a flight attendent, and my coworkers and I passed out all of the lunches. And they were personal orders, too, so I got to see if I could recognize all of the officers' names and faces. I only gave the wrong lunch to one person. Yep, feeling pretty proud about that.

One thing I love about being "back west" is the amount of food served at social functions. For some reason I felt like people were always skimping on the cheese and meat in DC. But the table spreads in Montana were luscious and abundant. And the cheese! There was so much cheese. Cheese for our sandwiches, cheese in my scrambled eggs, cheese on the potatoes--there was enough cheese to make me happy for a week!

The meal on the left was lunch. And the spread on the right? Hors d'oeuvres--before dinner! My coworkers and I had to keep telling the Fellows that dinner (steak and potatoes) was waiting inside and they shouldn't get full yet!

Clearly, a good time was had by all.

My hotel room was humongous. I have seriously never stayed in such a large hotel room in my life. It was easily 8x the size of my apartment in DC (not hard to do, since I slept in a box only a little bigger than most Americans' closets). Before we left my boss turned to me and my coworker Elizabeth and said, "I'm really sorry, but you two are going to have to share a room in Montana." (Usually staff members get their own rooms.) What he didn't mention was that we were in a suite--with two rooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen (with dishwasher and fridge and freezer), a balcony, a living room, and a washer and dryer (with Tide included!).

It was pretty awesome.

The second day we were in Bigfork, Montana, we had a sweet tour of Glacier National Park on these awesome red busses.

The tour guide for my bus was super nice and had been to Salt Lake several times. When he found out I'm Mormon and from Utah, he said, "Well, I tell you what. Mormons are some of the nicest people I've ever met. They sure know how to be friendly!"

Naturally, I was thrilled that he had such a good impression of us!

We went shotgun shooting one of the days. I was absolutely terrified that I wouldn't hit any, especially since I was with 65 men and there were only two of us females. 

And looking at my form, you wouldn't be surprised if you heard how many I missed at the beginning!

Don't worry, I got much better. And I actually hit 8 pigeons (which is more than some of the officers!).

Montana = horseback riding through the mountains.

We toured the Montana state capital

And had a boat tour of the river.

We also went white water rafting (sorry, but the only picture I have of that is sitting in a box in Utah. And I'm in Jerusalem), attended a pow-wow on an Indian Reservation, and went to Yellowstone. Those pictures will have to come later--because really, I want everyone to see my pictures of Yellowstone. Because they're awesome.