McKay came out to Missoula for the 4th of July weekend and we had a total blast. It was SO good to see him. It had been a long 4 weeks and I was in desperate need of familiarity and normalcy. And hugs.He was instantly and willingly recruited as my assistant as we went around finding things to photograph for my big slideshow project tomorrow afternoon. He proved to be good luck, as I had changed my theme for my project about a million times and was hitting a wall with what it was I wanted to do. He helped me brainstorm and I'm pretty happy with what we came up with. I'll try to post the final product once I've shown it tomorrow.
On Friday we went to the Arlee Powwow, which was very cool and a new experience for both of us. Beautiful regalias and dancing.
McKay bought me a couple of presents--I'm really into gemstone rings...
We went and saw Wall-E and then sat in a parking lot and watched everybody else's fireworks. Very relaxing and inexpensive!Saturday we headed up to Glacier National Park which was AMAZING. We highly recommend going. We took what's called " The Road to the Sun," appropriately named as you really feel like you are floating in the sky. McKay kept reminding me how high were were, and how little it would take for us both to plunge to our deaths. So romantic.
(McKay sampling a fresh water stream)We saw a real life mountain goat, but he was too quick for my camera. We couldn't figure out how he got to where he was--he was at the top of a cliff that was about at a 90 degree angle. So cool. I wish we could have seen him scale it. We saw plenty of people with binoculars claiming to see Grizzly bears, but no personal sightings. I think I might prefer it that way anyway.
It was a fantastic few days and I'm so glad he came. Only about 5 more weeks to go. We agreed this is the first and LAST time we are apart for an extended period of time. I introduced him to a friend of mine from school. She told him she was trying to convince me to come back out in October to see some of my classmates graduate from the advanced program. She hadn't even finished her sentence before McKay cut her off with an emphatic "Nope!" It's nice to know that I am missed.
Tomorrow I present my "midterm" project to about 40 of my classmates and 4 instructors. I am ready to get it over with, but I'm not as freaked as I have been about past assignments. Which is weird, because this is definitely the biggest so far. I think I'm just sick of being insecure. It's exhausting. So I've decided to turn over a new leaf and just accept where I am thus far, and be happy. It requires much less energy and I sleep better. It sounds weird, but I think I just figured out that I can decide to stop stressing myself out. But then again, it's only been about 48 hours since I figured this out, so I guess we'll see if it sticks.
Wish me luck!
