Introduction

Amber Shannon, 30, shares about her life in Helotus, Texas, military background, love for music (except rap), interest in documentaries, travel experiences, family life, gardening, cooking, and educational journey. She aspires to teach Spanish, previously aimed to open a coffee shop but changed plans due to relocation. Amber describes herself as blunt, caring, driven, and witty. She values family time, avoids excessive phone use, and looks forward to future endeavors. My name is Amber Shannon, and I'm 30 years old, for a few more weeks, my birthday's on the 16th, then I'll celebrate my 21st again. I live in Helotus, Texas, right now, my husband and I both did 10 years in the military and then got out, we were both Air Force, Security Forces, by choice, not by ASAP score, we could have done other things, but I kind of love what I did with Security Forces and my job helping people and responding. A great person in my life would be my dad. I grew up in the middle of nowhere in Oklahoma, it's a small town in the Panhandle called Boy City, and unless you have like a fascination for windburn and boredom, you really don't have a reason to go because it doesn't have much to offer, which is great because I grew up with that, but for some people, it is not adventurous like you would want. My dad's awesome because he's always been there for me in my life, I ran cross country and track, back to nothing better to do, we won state like four times, he would always be at the finish line cheering me on, and catching me when I'd pass out after I ran as hard as I could, so that was a fun time. Music, I enjoy everything pretty much, from country to sublime to the Lumineers, Our Last Night is one of my favorite ones, they just take all these amazing songs and turn them into like this half screamo stuff, it's great. I don't like rap. The old Eminem is okay, but anything crazier than that, I'm just going to take a hard pass. I also enjoy documentaries for murders and podcasts, for Halloween my husband and I were Mama and Ed Gein, that stuff is horrible, awful, even worse now that I have kids, I don't know, I like to listen to it and hear about all the crazy things that happen. Other than that, when I get to spend money and go out and do stuff, I like to travel, that's why I kind of joined the military, was for stability, travel, stay out of trouble. I've been to 19 different countries, my favorite place to live was Japan, my favorite place to vacation is Thailand, you can live like a king and a queen for like 20 bucks a night, like with a private pool and food, I love green curry and pad thai and all the amazing different stuff to try. So if you look outside my window right now, I'm sitting in the kitchen because my children are upstairs asleep so I'm trying to knock this out real quick, I see a backyard full of love. I have trampoline and balls and a patio that we just had built with a fireplace and a sandbox and a fig tree, which I've never had figs before, I moved here, no I lied, I've had some in Africa, in South Africa, but I love having my own fig tree and I get to share them with my 80-year-old neighbor who also was security forces way before me, she's become one of my better friends. For apps on my phone, I have all the basic stuff that everyone has, Facebook, Snapchat, Pinterest, but it wouldn't be unlike me to throw the phone down and not pick it up for like 8 hours, I don't like staring at technology, at the screens, and I don't like letting it leave my life, so these moments that I have now with my children, I'll never get back because it'll only be this cute and fun and love mom and dad like this one time in my life and their life, so I'm soaking it all in as a mom. Alright, anyways, inside my fridge, like I said, I grew up in the middle of nowhere so cooking was one of the habits, gardening and cooking, so I garden a lot of my own food, okra and janit and jam and I make my own jam, tomatoes, lemon cucumbers, I do all that and then here in Helotus, Texas, it's hot like 10 months out of the year, we get like 2 and a half, maybe 2 and a half months of winter, which I say winter lightly because it's like oh my gosh, it's 31 and everyone freaks out because it freezes for like 2 days and goes back to being 100 degrees, so my fridge is full of leftovers and home cooked food and bikini bread and all that kind of stuff. Adjectives that describe me would be blunt, caring, driven, and witty, I think sarcastic would be a bonus one there, but that pretty much sums up my life and I guess my education, I should probably talk about that, I started off with my CCAF or police science because you know security forces, that made sense, then I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, I just knew that my body hurts a lot so I don't want to be doing crazy listening stuff anymore so I went on to the Air Force tool and took a test and it said HR would be good for me so I got a bachelors in HR and I wanted to open a coffee shop because we were supposed to actually live in Kerrville, Texas, it was going to be called Pour and Play LLC and it was going to be a coffee shop with a kids play place and I wanted it to be affordable instead of like raising the bank, I wanted it to be for like moms and families to be able to come and meet other people and families, especially it would be helpful if you were like me and you move all over the place all the time and meeting people is easier if you have a platform for doing it, so I was trying to provide that, but my husband was working with a job there through the Skilbridge program and got undercut $30,000 for his job so we ended up coming to San Antonio for the pay raise and now I have to figure out what I want to do with my life instead, so I think I'm kind of leaning towards teaching so that means after that I'm going to have to take some Spanish courses and start talking to the neighbors in Spanish and learning how to fluently read, write, and speak Spanish before I can pursue that job, so I looked up the certifications, it says between 18 and 24 months for that, we'll see what comes in the future after this class. Well, it was good to speak and I actually enjoyed it, it's kind of fun because I haven't, I've had like one or two other assignments throughout this path that I've been on with APUS where we've actually had to use the speaker notes or speak or give an actual video presentation so this is cool. I look forward to working with you guys, I was a little nervous about the assignment load and then I kind of read through it during a preview about the artifacts and stuff so hopefully it won't be as hectic as I had initially before I had read over everything anticipated. I'm on Facebook, Amber Shannon, it's probably, it's a picture of me with my children, I'm pretty sure. If you guys need me or want to reach out or if you live in the area and have kids too, hit me up. Thank you.