Roadrunner Hostel Video - My Latest Work

After months of collecting photos and video and figuring out how to work iMovie, I finally produced a promotional video for the hostel. Check it out!!

It Had Me At First Glance

As soon as I saw it, it spoke to me. It's retro-sleek look had me thinking about it for hours. I loved its black frame paired with a green, silicone slap wristband. It represented one of my innermost desires. That's right - I wanted to be a geometric, bold, and retro-stylin' rockstar. Watch out.

Ha! Pun.

The watch belonged to a guest who misplaced it, so I was able to hold it for a few minutes when I returned it to her room. I'm not a materialistic person and I tend to concern myself with style and presentation only occasionally. However, when something gets my attention, man it doesn't leave me alone. And this watch had it.

After talking to the guest - who was a 60-something year old lady from Colorado (I know, right?) - I learned that the watch apparently spoke to everyone else who saw it, too. I also learned that's it's essentially a one-of-a-kind. She found it at a Nordstrom Rack in Colorado. There was no brand name on it, so it was probably a generic fluke in the company's manufacturing. I tried searching for one that was similar (even using Google Goggles), but I had no luck. I guess I will just have to find a way to go on retro-watchless. Sigh. I should have known that a love at first sight always breaks your heart.

Hostel Waffles

We serve waffles every morning at the hostel and some people get creative with them. Here are two examples:

Waffle by Richard: Granola, seeds, and banana

 Waffle by Denise: mint chocolate chip ice cream, banana, and chocolate syrup

A "Most Excellent" Lunch

Thomas is one of my coworkers at the hostel. He's a pretty awesome guy - he's from Canada, wears only Dr. Martens boots, and came to Arizona to watch the cacti bloom. However, he's leaving to go back home next week, so we had to have a lunch event. We went to La Taqueria Pico de Gallo, which supposedly has the best, cheapest, and most authentic Mexican food in town.

We both wore our Dr. Martens to celebrate the occasion.

 Excited faces!

 I ordered a chicken taco and fish taco. Thomas ordered a beef burrito and cheesecake to share.

 The food was fantastic :)

Hostel Photos!

After a long wait, here is a mini photo tour of the hostel for those of you who cannot visit:

Roadrunner Hostel from the front

The Roadrunner Express!

Bike Racks

Breakfast in the morning...

we serve waffles and coffee.

Kitchen

Kitchen Ceiling

Dining Room

Two of our awesome staff members, Matt and Aia.  

Dorm Rooms

Private Rooms. A former staff member - who was also an artist - painted the doors.

The Back Patio

Thanks for checking it out! I hope this tour satisfied your curiosity for where I work and live :). 

The Gem Show

The Gem Show was here in Tucson January 27 - February 12. It was a fantastic few weeks at the hostel and I've been meaning to post about it for a month now.

The Tucson Gem and Mineral Show is the largest in the world and people come from all over to trade, sell, and buy gems and stones. We housed gem buyers/sellers/enthusiasts, jewelry makers, geologists, professors, and other vendors. It was a lively group of people, who would come back talking about their bartering adventures and share what they found. I have footage of some "show and tell" below. Unfortunately, the direct videos aren't functioning, so you'll have to visit Youtube by clicking on the links.

Gem Show Show-and-Tell

Many of the people who come to the gem show have stayed at the hostel year after year (since the 1990s). Because of this, the gem show is almost like a family reunion. Every year, the owner Peter dresses up in a roadrunner costume and puts on a pannekoeken dinner. "Pannekoeken" is Dutch for a giant pancake filled with meat, cheese, and/or fruit.

Pannekoeken

Unconventional Inspiration: Bryan & Debi

Bryan and Debi are two guests at the hostel. They're biking around the continent and stretching the dollar as they go. They find any opportunity to reduce costs and see the country, and they've offered me some great direction. There's a photo of them below:

Some resources they pointed me to were caretaker.org. For a subscription of $30/year, you can find opportunities to live at a home, ranch, inn, or other living center in exchange for work (similar to what I'm doing now at the hostel). Some places will even offer you a salary, and there are locations to choose from all over the world.

They also suggested I read Your Money or Your Life: 9 Steps to Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence.  I just picked it up at the library today and I'm very excited to read it, because it has my favorite word: independence.

Here is Debi and Bryan's blog thrubike.net. If you're interested in checking it out, look for their Tucson post...there's a photo of me on there!

Some Favorite Roadrunner Guests

The hostel has a fun community atmosphere: many people (both staff and travelers) eat, cook, and socialize together. Right now I'm enjoying the flow of new people during the busy season, and I make new friends almost every day. Some of those friendships last only for a day (because people leave) and some last longer. Let me introduce you to some of them:


Marta
Marta is a cake-decorator from Buffalo, NY. When the bakery where she worked closed, she took off for Tucson. She's my age and very athletic: she cycles, lifts, runs...probably pushes boulders in her spare time. She's one of the better friends I've made here. Marta wouldn't stand still long enough for me to take a photo of her, though, so it's a little blurry...but she's standing next to the chocolate cake she made for a coworker's birthday. 

Todd

Todd was here for the gem show as a non-gem vendor. He travels around the country selling sunglasses. I stopped by his tent and he helped me pick out a cool pair...and then we commenced topractice our modeling skills. 

Todd also writes and was in the film industry for a while. He's a pretty chill guy, but quick-witted, too...he can give me a run for my money sometimes. Sometimes.


Egyptian Military Parachuters
These guys were just fun. They were in Tucson for training, because we have a military base here. Only a few spoke English. I managed to catch one of them (Elsaid was his name) near the end of his praying and asked him to read some of the Quran. He didn't speak English at all, so there was a lot of gesturing. I've never seen the holy book up close before and I wanted to hear the correlation between the text and the words. He was more than happy to show me and even pulled up some online translations later. From left to right, we have: Elsaid, Monsour (Mano), Sabry, Morhtar, and Hassan.

Mano teased me about my feet and how small they were, so we had a running joke about shoe sizes. I'm holding up my hand for size 3 and he for size 5. 

Goran
Goran was also here for the gem show - he's a geologist. He's from Serbia, but moved to Vancouver to pursue his dream. He's soft-spoken, tranquil, and one of the sweetest men you will ever talk to. 

He would make these frappachino drinks in the kitchen all the time. He offered me one a few times, but it always at night and I didn't want to be wide awake on caffeine right before bed. I liked to watch him make them, though...frothers are the coolest gadgets!

Dan
Dan, in her own words, is "French-educated, Vietnamese-born, a Canadian and Dutch citizen, raised in New York City." She is one of the most fantastic people I've met. She's animated, talkative, very responsive to your thoughts, and funny. I enjoyed being around her because she made me laugh all the time. Dan was also at the hostel for the gem show; she is a dealer and works with only rubies, sapphires, and emeralds. She lives in Holland right now, but doesn't care for the country much. In her spare time, she's a farmer on Farmville and takes great pride in planting crops and caring for her animals. I love this woman so much, lol. (Photo courtesy of Facebook)

First Night Shift

I had my first night shift at the hostel tonight. Jimmy the manager told me not to worry: "It's easy." The first few hours were pretty laid back, because there was no one in the house. However, things started picking up around 8 pm. People came back from dinner, new guests were checking in...and they needed tours, someone asked me a really complicated question involving a refund, I was hungry, dishes needed to be put away, people were watching tv, someone turned on loud music, others were cooking, the owners came by and started chatting with guests, people were talking shop about gems, the shower curtains had to be washed, someone needed her lock broken off her locker because she lost her key, one guest couldn't sleep because of another's snoring, and around 11:30 pm - just when I was taking the guest who couldn't sleep across the street to our overflow dorms - a stressed, young French woman came to the hostel looking for a place to stay because she couldn't get a hold of her friends in Phoenix and almost cried because couldn't afford the rate ($35/night).

Yeah. Cakewalk.

There was so much stimulation that it was difficult to do one thing at a time.

However, one thing I enjoy about my job is making guests happy, because I like to make people happy. Going the extra mile to clean someone's dishes or calm them down or find them a better room or make them comfortable is really rewarding when they become relieved or content. Tonight, I definitely did all of that - people were happy (even the stressed French woman, who we charged a lower rate). Believe me, it's not easy...like when someone leaves his dishes in the sink and says, "I have no problem with you washing my dishes if you'd like," and then walks away and doesn't come back. But sometimes that's the way it is. Life isn't always cool, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be.

All in all, it wasn't bad. In some ways, it was even fun.

Living and Working at the Hostel

I now work at the hostel where I'm staying. The deal is a work exchange: I work 3 shifts a week and get a place to live in return. It's nice for someone who doesn't have a place to stay or know anyone in the area. I get my own private room, furnished with a bed and dresser, and I have access to a full kitchen, free wi-fi, and free laundry. Essentially, free room and utilities in exchange for 24 hours of working a week. With my rent taken care of, I now have to find a job to buy groceries and other things that I might need. The nice thing is that they're really flexible here, so if I do find a job, they'll try to work around it.

I like being at the hostel, to be honest. At least for right now. I meet so many interesting people every day. Here's a brief list:

Young British people (several individuals) who quit their jobs to travel
A cycling crew going from Tempe to Tucson
Students from Ohio taking a week-long nature course
A young woman heading out to LA, who is writing a book about her crazy life
A massage therapist
A yoga teacher in training
Foreign exchange students from East Asia
Students from Virginia who brought quail eggs for cooking
Egyptian army men - parachuters here for training (it's fun to watch them cook in the kitchen)
A cake decorator from Buffalo - she's my age
A Dutchman biking across the southwest
A gem seller from Toronto who lives London
Two young women (not together) traveling around the US figuring out where they want to live
A man who practices shamanism and likes wheat grass cocktails in the morning - he told me he liked my energy and that I was like his spiritual "sister"...which made me chuckle :). He's a nice guy.

I like meeting all these people and hearing about their lives. It's reassuring to find people my age and older who are in transition and don't always know what they're doing with their lives. It's also great to meet people who do know what they're doing and to find out how they got there. The gem seller, for instance, told us about several jobs he had. One of them was a pillow factory. He had to jump off a high platform and land on the pillows as part of his work. I imagine that's fun :).

Every day is interesting and it's never the same. The only thing I wish right now is for a little more privacy. I don't have my own room yet, because the famous gem show is coming and all available space is given to guests. I also need to spend my first two weeks as an employee living in the dorms - it's part of the protocol. So I'll have to wait a little longer before I really have my own place.