We're not in Albuquerque Anymore

Hey there! It's been a crazy couple weeks work-wise and now I'm in Artesia, NM of all places. We're having one of our programs down here and it's going well so far. Artesia is actually kind of a cute little town and the people here are super friendly! I'm staying in a fairly new hotel, Hotel Artesia, which is really, really nice and modern but it's hilarious because my room overlooks the oil refinery.

It's actually kind of a cool sight to see at night to be honest...if you can get past the constant oil smell of course. Today the class got to tour the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center. It's one of four such training centers in the U.S. and the only one that trains for Border Patrol. We toured their facilities (fitness, finger printing, drug labs, ect.) and then got to go on a simulated high speed car chase around a course! I was semi nervous because I get motion sick fairly easy and am still a VERY nervous passenger since the car crash in September,  but it turned out to be a ton of fun and I didn't lose my lunch so I was happy. After that, they took us to their shooting range and we got to shoot subguns (it's a machine gun but with regular bullets?) and the whole day was pretty much a blast.

We had a reception at the Chamber and then came back to our hotel for dinner. I have NOT been following by new nutritious diet : (. Only a week in and I'm failing. It's really, really hard not to eat badly when I'm working these program classes. I think I might just have to make a deal with myself that I can only cheat like this when I'm out of town. I just don't have the willpower unfortunately. And I don't really see the use in feeling shitty about it as long as I'm good most of the time. Excuses, excuses right? Anyways, this trip has definitely sealed the deal for me with this new job. I am enjoying it immensely so far and looking forward to future events and even planning them.

I also had a pretty fun weekend. Saturday night I went to the Mustachio Bashio and had tons of fun, as evidenced by this lovely picture.

And then my cousin Christopher and Uncle Chris came through Albuquerque on their way to Atlanta from Seattle, which was a real treat! We spent the whole day hanging out. We went to Wecks for breakfast and then walked from my house to Old Town. I love me some family time!