birthday fun!

Wow the last few days have been super busy! I started work on Monday the 28th. Those 7 hours of work and training went by fast compared to my 8 hours yesterday. I really like the day shift better.

My birthday was really fun, though I missed family and friends. Thanks to all of you who called me or left messages. I'm sorry if I haven't called back, when I actually do get time, its usually 11:00 my time, 1:00 am your time. I"m sure many of you would not appreciate that. I felt very loved, yesterday though. My friend who works in the coffee shop gave me free breakfast, and some other friends bought me lunch. there were several other birthday surprises during the day, and last night after I got off of work, we went to Yosemite falls to see a moonbow. NOw this is something I've never heard of since before I came here so I"ll explain a little...
Moon bow is when the full moon rises and reflects off the spray of a waterfall. It creates a white arc, similar to a rainbow, but without the colors. Its really beautiful to watch and if you watch it awhile(as we did) the moonbow will go away and then come back depending on how much the wind is blowing and how much water spray the waterfall is creating. It was really beautiful and I cannot imagine what it looks like when its in full force. We only got to see a small one because the bigger ones do not appear until early morning, and I was not willing to stay up that late. So.. maybe next month we can all camp out under the starts and wait for the moonbow. It was a good birthday present. WE also went to the meadow Monday night and loked at the stars and today we went to the Devil's bathtub. Its a pool of water on the mountain side which is heated by the sun. It was really small this year, but it started raining when we were climbing up, and we could see the rain blowing across the valley. We were higher than the trees! and The rain smelled so good !I wish I could have taken a picture but pictures can never capture the true beauty here... its too bad, you'll just have to come here yourself and visit me...:)
I've had little time to develop new relationships except for at work( which is fun and I love all the people there) so I'm just working on existing ones. We invited several friends to the moonbow, and some people are able to guess that we are from crossway(I'm not sure if this is good orbad?) I'm all for standing up for what you believe in, but I"m not sure if its a good idea to overwhelm people with a huge group of people who all believe in the same thing. It could be intimidating, and its a good way to turn people away. So we usually do not tell people who we are with or what we believe in unless they ask. Its pretty easy to get on the topic, though. Lots of people here are very well educated even if they didn't go to college and have read a lot of "spiritual" "theological" material. It makes for some interesting conversations.
I hope to have more details to blog the next couple of days... a few friends and I are going hiking to Glacier point... its a four mile trail, but really its almost five. Luckily we can take the shuttle back down to the valley.