I had my day off yesterday. I was very productive and went to Starbucks for breakfast and did some studying. I went to the grocery store, did some more unpacking, and buckled down again for more homework. I have completed nearly everthing for both of my classes and now just need to take finals.

Iris, one of the trainers and my roommate, left for Brasil today to visit her boyfriend for a month. So last night a group of us went out for dinner to wish her well on her trip. It will be nice to have the place to myself for awhile to get settled in, and we will have a few things to work on when she gets back to see if it's possible for us to continue to live together. She does not like my dog, for one thing, and says his nails on the floor in the morning wake her up, so I have to pick him up and carry him outside. Also, I confronted her about taking some of my food without asking, and she got really upset about that. Everyone else out here has been really super though, and I feel like they are starting to be my friends.

Today I worked 7 horses and rode 4 of them. I had 3 good rides and one not so good ride. My last ride of the day was on a 5 year old that had only been under saddle for 2 months. He has some clients coming to look at him this weekend and I am going to be showing him. He has a tendancy to curl his neck, so we work a lot on getting him to stretch out, but his steering is not so good! Young horses are so funny in that when working on a circle in the arena they will cut in on the side of the circle away from the barn, and bulge out on the circle on the side that is towards the barn. Keeping him out on the circle is not a problem, but I had difficulty getting him to stay in on the side he bulges out on, since he would just curl his neck in, get heavy in the hand, and escape through his shoulder. I had a problem with him a couple times in the canter where he actually went left instead of staying right on the circle. The answer in that scenario is to let go of the inside rein and gaurd his shoulder with the outside rein in addition to using the outside leg - which is easier said than done when careening towards a wall! We will try it again tomorrow.