Transportation

In researching ENMU you may have noticed that it's a little far from just about everything. That includes airports, train stations, bus stations, and car rentals. It became a difficult task to get my husband back to Albuquerque after driving my car from Los Angeles to Portales. I wasn't about to drive him 7 hours round trip to drop him off at the airport. Here are some of your transportation options within and to and from Portales and other major cities.

1. Cars: I would recommend coming here with a car. There is no parking fee and the neighborhood is fairly safe, so the biggest obstacle is getting your car here. My husband and I did the 16 hour drive from Los Angeles but I know a few other people who made an even longer trek. It's worth it becasue you can bring as much stuff with you as you can fit in your car (instead of whatever you can fit into luggage) and then you'll have a car once you're here. The reason you'll need a car eventually is that in Portales you can essentially walk everywhere or find a friend in the program to drive you BUT if you need anything outside of the tiny town, your closest bet is driving to Clovis which is 20 miles away. The nearest car rental is also in Clovis. Here's a tip! If you rent a car from the Clovis Enterprise they will drive to Portales to pick you up. Also another tip, if you are driving with someone from your hometown and they need to get back home, stop by the closest airport/train/bus station that they will be traveling from once they separate form you and pick up a rental car so that they can drive it back. The return fees if you pick up a car in Clovis and drop it off in ABQ are insane (last time I checked it was $160 drop off fee, plus the car rental). My husband and I drove through Albuquerque on the way from LA and picked up a car and then we both drove the last 3.5 hour leg to Portales. That ended up being the cheapest option even though it's not very efficient.
2. Airports: The closest airports are Lubbock and Amarillo which are both about an hour and half away. I have also found that flights in or out of those airports are also a lot more expensive than ABQ. Therefore, it's often time saving and cheaper to fly out of ABQ despite the 3.5 hour drive. At least for flights to LA, since you can't get a direct flight from Lubbock or Amarillo, you usually have to take 2 flights and a layover, plus the 1.5 hour drive. If you fly from ABQ it's a quick 2 hour direct flight to LAX. It takes about the same time of travel but it's cheaper and you get the bonus of going through the big city of Albuquerque which has a lot more shopping options (like Whole Foods and Trader Joe's).
3. Train: Amtrak has a 16 hour overnight train that goes from LA Union Station to ABQ and it's fairly reasonably priced at about $70 each way. It's a really great deal so long as you don't mind sleeping in a chair on a train. At least it's better than a plane since you can get up and walk around.
4. Bus: There is a Greyhound bus that runs from ABQ to Portales but that takes over 10 hours. Do yourself a favor and find a buddy with a car if you ever need to travel to ABQ. There is no bus system that runs within Portales; however, I have heard that you could call the city if you needed to get anywhere (such as a doctor's appointment in Clovis). There are a couple of specific shuttle services to get around town. The local bar Dawg Houze will pick you up and bring you to the bar. You can either ask them to take you back home or you could call the ENMU safe ride. They are they to provide you a safe ride home from wherever you've been drinking to help prevent drunk driving.
5. Bike: Portales is very bikable. The flat roads are a dream as compared to hilly Los Angeles. I brought a foldable bike with me in my trunk. A friend of mine who didn't bring a car eventually broke down and bought a $100 bike from the Walmart so that she could get around. If you don't bring a car, I would recommend buying a bike. I think it was a good investment for my friend.

Made it to New Mexico!

Last Thursday was my first morning off without having to move in or go to Orientation so I wrote up the following to my family and just now realized that it might be good for the blog. 

Husband and I made the long 16 hour drive from Los Angeles CA to Portales NM in 2 consecutive 8-hour days. The first day we drove through Pheonix and had dinner with my niece. Then we continued on to Holbrook, AZ where we stayed the night (tip! it's cheaper to say in small cities than in large cities along the way). The drive from Pheonix to Holbrook is very strange. You go through Tonto National Forest so you basically go from a desert landscape to a lush woodsy one. We stopped to get some gas and to share a Sonic Shake and it was our first sight of snow/ice. I snapped this pic from the drive through so sorry it's all blurry. Coming from Los Angeles makes this a rare sight for 2 reasons--one being the snow/ice and the other that we don't have Sonic Restaurants.

From the Sonic we drove down the hill continuing our route through this tiny town and didn't notice that the speed limit had changed from 45 to 35 (that's right, whilst going down hill) and we got pulled over by a cop who "clocked us in at 46". Luckily he was super nice and let us off with a warning and warned us, as out-of-towners, to slow down because there's lots of Elk around. Elk?! I thought this was Arizona? We drove the rest of the night (and the rest of the next day) paying close attention to the speed limits after that.

The next morning we were shocked to discover that the forest we drove through had disappered. It was like we had never driven through it, Instead it looked like some creepy flat nothingness. Again, doesn't really scream Arizona to me.

But then right around the New Mexico border it cleared up to what people call "big skies".

Everything was going great. We were right on track on timing. We had to be in Albuqueque by 1:30 to pick up Husband's rental car (long story which I will get to) because the Enterprise closed at 2. We had 4.5 hours to make a 3.5 hour drive from Holbrook to Albuquerque but then we ran into traffic from an accident. It was a DEAD STOP. We were only 40 minutes from ABQ with no traffic but we were not moving at all and hadn't for a while. After re-calibrating the google maps estimate, it told us it was going to take us 3.5 hours to get out of that mess! So we decided to drive through the median and take a detour. It was really lucky that we did and that a detour even existed. For most of the drive there, there were no other options but to take HWY40. Also a bonus, our detour took us along Route 66. We still ran into some traffic and at times the speed limit was posted at like 20 or 25 but at least we were moving. 

We finally were back on track and passed the accident. It was awful. Both sides of the freeway were closed. Apparently two big rigs had collided.

The traffic that we passed on the other side was crazy. A full 25 MILES after the accident was at a dead stop heading west. Since both sides were shut down, we esitmated that the eastbound side was probably backed up that much as well making for a full 50 miles of cars that were stuck on the freeway that day unable to move. That's like the route from Pasadena to Riverside with everyone stuck on the highway with no detour (no side roads to take as an alternate). We seriously lucked out.

So we made it to the Enterprise pretty much right on time. The story with the car rental is that Portales is in the middle of nowhere so there is no bus, train, shuttle, or anything like that that gets you out of Portales without a car. Since I was keeping my car here, Husband needed a way to get back to ABQ for his flight back to LA. We could have picked up a rental car closer to my town but for one, the Enterprise in Portalesclosed down as we were planning this trip, and secondly, the drop off charge for picking up near Portales and leaving in ABQ was going to be $170...not including the $50/day car rental charge. So the cheapest way to get Husband back to the airport was to drive 2 cars the 3.5 hours toPortales so that Husband could get back. (The other option of me driving 7 hours round trip to drop him off was out of the question).

Before leaving ABQ we got a recommendation to eat at Frontier's restaurant. We ordered one burrito and 2 soft tacos and this is what we got.

So the two soft tacos took up the entire plate because they were wrapped in a full flour tortilla. Seriously, fold that tortilla differently and we call that a burrito. the burrito came with a flour tortilla on the side. But by far the strangest part of that meal was that it came with 3 packets of honey. Weird. We ended up having a full soft taco as leftovers.

We arrived in Portales Sunday night with no incident. There were some slick ice areas so we had to drive really slowly. We got in after dark so there really wasn't much to see. I checked into my apartment building and met my apartment mate, Michelle who is also from LA. We unpacked my car and set up the bed. The sleep was AWFUL. It turns out Husband and I don't comfortably fit on a twin sized bed.

The next morning was the first glipse of what it looked like outside my bedroom window. Looks a little sad with the grey skies and brown grass but I'm sure by early spring it'll be nice with blue skies and green grass.

It was really was cold that morning (I think the day's high was in the low 30s) but Husband and I still took a walk around the campus to explore a bit.

There is a surprising amount of snow on the ground for what you would expect from New Mexico. In fact, the locals have since told me that this much snow is pretty uncommon. The rain and freezing cold though is pretty typical which sounds pretty awful. By far the worst part about the weather is trying to walk down the sidewalks without slipping on ice. You really have to pay attention to where you are walking.

We spend the day unpacking, setting up my room, walking around town and taking care of some school stuff like getting me my student ID and junk. Husband, being the genius that he is, had the idea of stealing the couch cushions so that we didn't have to share the twin bed again. So Husbandtook the twin bed and I slept on the couch cushions on the floor along the bed. I certainly wasn't the ideal way to spend our last night together but at least we were both able to get better sleep. As we were in our respective beds, Husband checked the weather and it said it was snowing so we looked out the window and it was! So at midnight, despite being tired and having to wak up early the next morning, we threw on ALL of our warm gear and went outside to play in the snow.

The next morning Husband left and I started my Orientation. I won't bore you with all of the details of that. Most of it was pretty standard but I did learn that the clinic closes during spring break so i WILL be able to come home probably from March 13-22. I'm so relieved that I'll get a break from being here and get to spend some time in my real world.

I have to leave for CPR training in a bit but I will write again soon giving you all a glipse at my living quarters and maybe some more pictures of the campus.

I am happy to report that this morning I woke up and it was nice and sunny with a high of 58* today! Here's the view from my window this morning with the blinding brightness. It's already looking more welcoming than that first day...even though it still smells like cow outside.

Congrats on your acceptance! Now what?

I applied for the spring term so my application was due on September 1st. After 7 rejection letters preceeding it (we all know how competitive Communication Disorder grad programs are), it was a welcome sight to see the chubby little envelope. The letter arrived on October 20th via USPS.

The letter gives you a lot of info but doesn't come near to preparing you for all that you will have to do before you actually arrive to the campus. Of courese, most importantly you have to submit your intention to accept the offer. Do it right away! The sooner you do, the sooner you can get started on the registration process.

The acceptance letter also gives you several links. Some of the links take you to course options and when you can take them and also gives a link to all of the books you will need. You are encouraged to start buying your books right away but at this point you won't have a schedule yet. What was probalby the most helpful was the page that notifies you of what requrements you may be missing. I was missing two undergrad classes.

It seems like there is no proper way to figure out your schedule other than emailing Dr. Swift. She will basically just tell you what classes to register for. Some people who were smart also asked Dr. Swift for their student number. Once you have that you can set up your student account and start registering. I did it the roundabout way and called up the registrar. I had to give them a few details about myself (birth date, SSN, address, etc.) before they would give me the student number but once they did I was easily able to set up my student account, email account, and then register.

Once I registered I started buying the books. Buying books is a beast! I needed a total of 19 required books for my first term. I decided not to buy two of them that seemed to be mostly reference (we'll see if I regret that decision) but for the rest of the 17, it cost me just over $600 and that's buying almost all used. Make sure you make room in your budget for books!

In additoin to registering, as soon as you accept your spot at ENMU starting looking for housing right away, especially if you are starting in the Spring term. The rest of the students are already settled at that point following the Fall term so you have to hope and scrounge for a vacancy. I will write a post later specifying housing options.

Finallly, what I took away from this first step in the acceptance process was that when in doubt, email Dr. Swift. After chatting with a few other new students, it was the consensus that emailing Dr. Swift is how most people navigated their way around the initial process.

After a few weeks, Dr. Swift will drop a massive email with about 20 things to take care of before your arrival, including information on how to sign up with Certified Profile. When I first got that email, I freaked out! It seemed like an endless list and I had no idea where to start but once I started tackling the items it wasn't so bad. But again, more on the Certified Profile maddness in another post.

If you've made it this far in the post then I'm guessing that you were one of the recently accepted students. Congrats and welcome to the ENMU family!

About the blog

Hello everyone. My name is Deanna and I recently was accepted to the Graduate Communication Disorders program and ENMU which starts in January.

Ever since getting my acceptance letter in mid-October, everything that has to be done has been a little bit overwhelming and I've felt a bit lost through the process.

Although I'm guessing a lot of my experiences are going to be CDIS specific, my goal with this blog is to help all ENMU future students, who are coming from all areas of the country to have some documentation of what they should expect. I'm coming from Los Angeles and it's my first experience trying to figure out important things such as housing and such while out of state.

As I meet more people, I'm hoping that I can have others contribute to this blog in guest spots. So far my blog topic ideas include housing, what's up in Portales including stores and restaurants you can find and reviews of them, stuff about ENMU, program specfic things like steps I took from admission letter to orientation, etc.

Also, this blog will essentially tell a story in chronological order. In other words, as I gain more information, I will update old blog entries or even write a new blog on the same topic with more detail/pictures. A lot of the stuff that I blog about before January I won't know much about since I'm out of state, but rest assured I will try to update things as they come along. Oh, and don't hold me to anything that I say. I'm sure I'll make mistakes through the process and I'll try and go back and update any misinformation.

Please be warned, I am very ambitious in starting this blog right now. I currently have plenty of time to work on it and gather my musings but depending on my workload once school starts, this whole idea might fall to the wayside.

Enjoy and please leave feedback and/or blog topic ideas. If you have any questions, please contact me and ask away and I'll try to get an answer for you and blog about it.