Wowza!

I wanted to honor the title of my blog today. Today is a new day! This week started off great after a long and emotional weekend. In lieu of said weekend, my room mate and I made a pact to take our fitness to the next level. We want endorphins and lots of them. Not to mention rockin bodies! We're doing this Olympic style. Thanks to the motivation and drive that we are surrounded by each and everyday (and the calorie counts that are listed above every food in the dining hall) we started our "I want to...PUMP...you up" challenge. It began with a 6am weigh in, followed by the first of our tri-weekly, morning workouts. These will supplement our post-workday endeavors with the rest of the intern crowd. We are focusing on these three elements: 1)Abs (steel baby, steel), 2)posture (No hunchback old lady for me) 3) "Chicking" Chris Lyden in the Anna/Chris, pre-mission contract, triathlon race (a must-see event that, if you miss the live version, will be documented and presented on this blog, and may even be crowned as my YouTube debut...yeah, you heard me...YouTube!)

I would like to enlighten you with a new exercise technique that you too can torture yourself with. Combine this (very technically illustrated below), with a length of forward crab walk, backward crab walk, forward bear crawl (butt low), and backward bear crawl, and you have yourself soreness x 100. In the bear crawl I imagine myself as a tiger stalking my prey, ready to pounce at any moment. Then I realize that I'm exhausted, sweating all over the floor, and all the figure skaters are staring at me. "Hey I'm bigger then you, and can beat you up!," except I'm pretty sure they could toe pick me to death and have medals to prove it...Well, without further ado, the drawing (p.s. the blue stuff on the head is the sweat that you will most definitely have).

Ah the Weekends

This weekend was quite another adventure! Friday's work day started me off with a filing endeavor worthy of a medal. I was kindly titled as the "Records Specialist", which meant I had the opportunity to spend three lovely hours with the OCD filing lady...and I mean OCD. It was exhausting! It made me wonder if people with that disorder exhaust themselves?!

So I was excited to get off work, an hour early, to go see a concert at Red Rocks. It was amazing! Everyone should see a show there. It's outdoors and you can see all of Denver from the top row, and the gorgeous stars, shining above you. Rock on! It also was loaded with two of my favorite things, thousands of drunkards, and thousands of pot smokers. Yikes! Let's just say, next time I need at least one sober friend to enjoy the festivities with. We saw G. Love & Special Sauce, and the John Butler Trio. It was a really good show, including an ample amount of guitar, drum and base solos.

On Saturday we found an AMAZING outlet mall. It has everything...GAP, Coach, Polo, J. Crew, Nike, Banana Republic, Columbia, etc. etc. etc.! I did very well for $70 at Banana Republic. I will be back!

Cliff Jumping

It's intern bonding time! We went on our first mini-road trip together, to a little place called Guffy Colorado. It was about an hour away from the complex so we piled into a few cars and headed out to do some cliff jumping.

It was a beautiful 15 minute hike into the small, freezing, waterfall. I was so happy to be outside exploring! I was in my element: a swimming suit, a hike, sunshine, and the great outdoors! Yay! I'm going to brag now...I was the first girl to do the jump, and I was the only girl to do the higher jump. Hooray for courage! Especially for someone who is afraid of heights. Bet you didn't know that. Anyways, I posted all the rest of the pictures on my facebook page so check them out there! And please don't be afraid to fall in love with Colorado!

And So it Begins!

Ok I'm officially here in CO Springs. It's been quite a whirlwind of adventures. I'm meeting more people then I can keep track of and it's supposedly super dead around here right now. Phew!

My boss is funny. Her name is Elisabeth and she is originally from Sweden. She's super relaxed and kind of loopy right now just getting back from Bejing. We'll have a lot of fun! She took me to lunch yesterday and showed me all the favorite bars that the interns really like. I'm glad those will come in so handy for me. Ha ha.

I'm a very unique intern since I'm LDS. We sure are a peculiar people. Everybody stops their conversation when anyone begins asking me church questions. I've noticed the athletes eavesdropping on it as well. I've talked about the church more in the last two days then I have for the last year at college. I'm the only LDS person here that I know of so far, and of course the only LDS intern. I'm sure there's someone else around that I'll find.

Anyways, the dining hall is great. I eat with all the athletes and I guess they all come party with us on the weekends too. I've met a triathlete that seems to take particular liking to the interns. He's entertaining, and has been helping me a lot with triathlon stuff so he's a nice resource, and a great source of entertaining conversation at dinner.

The complex is really cool and CO is soo beautiful. I could totally agree to moving here permanently if the right opportunity presents itself. I saw the curling team here today I'm pretty sure. It was a bunch of older men, but they all said hello and were coming from the dorms so that's all I could come up with other than maybe squash or raquetball?

Ok well my living quarters are just dandy. The rooms are nice for dorms. A little bigger than Helaman Halls with a really nice, swiveling, wall mounted tv with built in DVD player so we can watch from our beds. We have a sink in the room, and it, along with the floors get cleaned for us by the janitors. What a deal. I live on the same floor as all the interns, boys included, just a couple doors down. So that's been new. A little taste of an average college life I guess. My room mate is great too. She's a super chill girl named Kelly from New Jersey.

Well I haven't had any work to do yet hence me writing right now but next week they promise it will pick up. Speaking of next week, it should be great. I get to help in the performance lab with a Taekwondo selection camp. I get to help with testing them, which I'm not sure I'm trained for, but what is an intern for? Anything and everything you can think of.

Oh and I've totally been taking advantage of the facilities. They are great. One of the strength training interns jobs, is to create training programs for any of the interns who are serious about training...so, of course, I told him I wanted one. We'll see what I get. I plan on going in there most every night from 6-7 (which is our designated time) and a few mornings from 6-7, with a swim at 5 right after work, until they shut down the outdoor pool. The indoor one is being refurbished until November, which I'm pretty bummed about, so I'll have to go to Colorado College or something until then. That's where the triathletes and paralympic swimming residents will go when it gets too cold.

Well I love you all and want to thank everyone who's been keeping in touch! It means so much as I get established here! Let me know what kind of info you all are looking for here, or if you want any merchandise and I'll help you out!