More on the Smokies

I finally finished all of the paperwork and mailed it in today. There was a LOT of it. I originally planned on scanning it in the library and emailing it, but the scanners are slow and I couldn't get the file size to be reasonably small. Also, I couldn't figure out how to save the scanned images as PDFs. So I gave up, took the 20 minutes (and $3) to walk down to the post office and have them mailed. Glad that's over.

While I was filling out the travel grant form, I realized how much cheaper it was to drive than fly. I mean, sure Skybus is cheap, but they don't fly to Knoxville, and Chatanooga is 100 miles away, I believe. Plus Skybus doesn't have flights listed past mid-April. I don't know what's up with that. So I think I'm going to take Greyhound down there. That'll be interesting. It's even cheaper than driving yourself, if I'm remembering the rates correctly. And WAY cheaper than flying. I just have to do a bit more research (when I have less work to do) about luggage and such. Turns out I'll need to bring bedding and stuff, so that's more than just a backpack. And I won't have much room in my backpack for clothes anyways, as I plan on bringing all of my camping stuff (yay!!!!). And I'm sure that I won't be able to bring my bike, but oh well. Gatlinburg is 2 miles away from where I'll be staying, and even though it's pretty hilly a bike would be useful. Not sure how groceries are going to work yet, and I'll probably have to walk to Gatlinburg to go to the library (the nearest place with internet access unless I decide to buy a laptop and get a wireless card. Given my financial situation, that's not going to happen). And there's no TV reception there, so I'll pretty much be without TV. So I should probably pack lots of books. Plus I'm sure I'll get a library card there (which is funny, because I never even got a Granville library card and I've been here for 4 years). I guess I'll need the public library more this summer than I did here though.

It's really beginning to set in that I'm actually going to be doing this soon. And the more I've thought about it the more excited I am for it. It will be an adjustment, but it's not as remote as some of the other positions that I applied for. And I DID want something remote. But 12 weeks is a long time if I decide that I need to have some civilization every once in a while. I guess this will be a good position to test those waters. Hopefully it will be good for a lot of reasons. And I hope there are plenty of people living around me (based on the map there seems to be several buildings in the housing area). And (Julie should note this) every other week in my schedule I get Fridays off, so if anyone wants to come down and visit me, we could feasibly backpack Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night.