Welcome to Jasper

Sunday, September 11th, 2011

Sunday was my first full day in Jasper, and it was nothing short of amazing.
Other than waking up at 5:30 and not getting my phone until 11 but hey, who cares??
In addition to fretting and running down to the front desk every 30 minutes to see if my cell had been dropped off, I had a very productive morning.
I signed my lease at 8 am when the office opened, and got a tour of the important places on site, like the staff cafeteria, the staff services centre (Where we get our Uniforms) and the buildings in the staff area. I also went and got the internet hooked up in my room and my wireless router all set up, which makes typing this blog a thousand times easier.
Sure, JPL has computers for the staff to use, but they're mega slow and probably riddled with viruses.

The first thing I did when I got my cell back was text Andrew to apologize for flipping out over losing my phone, then call my mother.
And yes, she just laughed.
Typical.

I went into 'town' with Andrew and his roomie Carlos to get a feel for the place Sunday afternoon, and we managed to cover the main part of town in all of 20 minutes. Which meant we still had an hour and forty minutes to kill.
And there was NO decent shopping.
Like, at all.
It sucked.

Anyhow, after being in town for the afternoon, I came back and tidied up my room (shock, i know...) then went down to the Grizzly Cafe (fondly known as 'The Griz') for drinks with Kayla and Cassandra, two of the girls from my floor. We ran into Andrew and Carlos and a bunch of old staff and ended up having a couple of drinks with them at the Griz and at Cory's place before we decided to go into town to hit the 'big' club, Atha-B.
Apparently, it's tradition for the newest staff to go and get totally drunk the night before their orientation.
Now, we get it.
The club was fun, and it was a great way to just get out and unwind after a long weekend of travelling and stress over moving away from home.
Even if you do get in at 3 am
and need to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for your Orientation at 9 am the next morning.
We all managed just fine.

Monday was a little long, spent in a board room going over all the do's and don't's of the JPL, getting everyone familiar with the standards and the site, and finishing off all the paperwork.
It was a lot of information to cram into 8 hours, but the fact that Daisy, the staff dog (she's a cute caramel and white bichon/poodle mix) was in and out of the room, up on everyone's lap and begging for pets for the duration  helped the time race by.
We were treated to lunch in the Emerald Lounge, one of the guest dinning rooms, and it was delicious!
The staff were given a menu of three options: a pulled-pork sandwich, a spicy chicken pita or an Alberta steak burger with mushrooms.
I had the Pita, as did Kayla, Cassandra and April, one of the other new staff members, and it was amazing, if not a little confusing to eat.
(The guys assure the sandwich and burger were good too)
We wrapped Monday night up at the Griz again, with a few coolers for the girls and Kayla, April and I getting ready for our day off while the rest of the new recruits were prepping for their first day of work.

Tuesday came and went without much to say. It's a little weird having your second official day on the job as a day off, but it still managed to be productive.
In addition to starting this blog (yay!) Kayla and I hit up the Gym and checked out the Bean (the staff cafeteria) for a good lunch of roast pork and mashed potatoes and LOTS of Salad. I also managed to get my room moved around (pics to follow) so it feels a little bigger and looks a whole lot cleaner (...mostly).

Wednesday was day one on the job. Kayla, April and I are the only new Housekeeping staff this week, so we had training bright and early at nine am. After an hour in the HSKP office, we got to see the rooms and learn how to clean the bathrooms to the Fairmont Standard. Which we did, for the rest of the day.
It really wasn't boring, surprisingly (I have to say I was a little worried...) The repetition is a great way to learn, and things just breezed by. Between the three of us, we got a good 20-30 bathrooms cleaned, and by 3:30 were out of work, so we got to head out early.
The best part of today though, I must say, was lunch. We went to the Bean again, and got some AMAZING Fish and Chips <3 which was made even better because the department arranged for all the housekeeping staff to get free lunch today.

And that, is my week thus far.
Tomorrow we're going to be learning how to make the beds, and Friday is putting the rooms together, so it's going to be a busy couple of nights. Plus, we're all pretty stoked to hit 'The B' again this Sunday - made even sweeter because we get Monday off!!

Ciaoz for now;

xoxo Kara