Boulder, CO

Pictures: (1) View one of the Alpha Phi house at CU. It was some sort of father-daughter day so I was thrilled to see a rousing game of pong going on in the front yard. The girls were very sweet and welcoming and the house was gorgeous! In this pictures you can see the moat! (2) View two of the Alpha Phi house. Better than you since 1872! :) (3) This is a view from one of the student study areas that happens to be on a deck area off of one of the buildings. There's a mountain... right there! Love it! (4) This is a buildling on CU's campus. You can see the flags that I mention my blog on the lawn! (5) A view of Boulder from the lookout. The red roofs you see are primarkily CU. (6) Mountains from the top lookout point we visited! Standing on a flat, rocky area overlooking the mountains and valley. Beautiful! (7) Me and Brady with a terrifying dropoff behind us. :)

And so it has been weeks since my last post. I am horrible at keeping on top of this, primarily due to the fact that I am currently in the midst of not one, not two, not three, but FOUR employment endeavors. Furthermore, we decided we were sick of having flaky internet in the townhouse, so we disconnected it. So now we have no internet. It totally sucks, because generally I would only update this blog after midnight on a daily basis, but clearly I don't always feel like going to the nearest internet- the office- at that time of night. So I fall behind. Apologies!

I do have stories and pictures to update, but first, here are basics:

I decided to continue my internship with CAMPUSPEAK through July. I'm pretty excited about it, a little more time to continue interactions with fabulous people and maybe meet some more campus pros and the like. Good times.

As a result, I do not beleive I will be able to make it home for Christmas. Bummer, I know. I haven't not gone home for Christmas since..ummm... EVER. This will be my first Christmas away. What a blower. But unfortunately, airfare is obnoxiously steep this close to the holidays, and furthermore, I really can't afford to miss much work. So here I am. Blower. Maybe I will get home for a week or so in the spring- I don't know. We'll see.

Part time jobs, I am still juggling J.Crew for the time being, and I was hired at Kaplan Test and Assessment as a Student Advisor, which starts tomorrow. I am doing some work on my free time for a friend of TJ's who runs her own business and needs a little support. I was offered a potential position last night with the mechanical bull company that works at Buck Wild's and The Stampede. I am seriously considering this primarily because it would be SUCH a fun way to make money. Sit around, wear a cowboy hat, look cute, and get people to ride the bull. No complaints!

And for the purpose to this specific post... our trip to Boulder. A few weeks ago Darren and Laura took me and Brady up to Boulder for the day to look around. It happened that it was the same day CU played Kansas (I think?) so there were students everywhere, drinking and partying. It's such a cool town- it seriously lays right at the base of this cluster of mountains, so it's really weird to look next to you and see this huge mountain in the middle of the town. (That was a very not-eloquent sentence.) CU is a very cool school with a beautiful campus. They have so much awesome Student Services type stuff- there is a bowling alley on campus!! It rocks! The campus is gorgeous with a very cool quad area. On this particular weekend, there was a demonstration on the quad for which white flags were placed on the grounds to represent the number Iraqis who were killed in the war, and red flags to represent the number of American soldiers killed. It was a very eye-opening visual, and it was refreshing to see a campus where the students are so aware and involved. Anyways, Darren and Laura took us up to this awesome lookout point (see pictures) and we chilled up there for a while. It was absolutely breath-taking. It's cool to see something like that and gain a little perspective on how small, indeed, we are.

So we did that, and then they drove us around to the Greek houses. We went into Brady's house (Zeta Beta Tau) and of course, the Alpha Phi house. ZBT was a pretty cool house with an awesome deck area. The inside was a little startling, but I guess it was to be expected from a fraternity house. (I could tell I have aged and am no longer accustomed to this lifestyle...haha.) The Alpha Phi house was GORGEOUS. It was absolutely amazing, it seriously looks l ike a castle! There is a moat around it, which is unbelievable, and the inside is beautiful. Their chapter room is everything a chapter room should be, complete with beautiful furniture, charters, and all sorts of meaningful chapter history items, as opposed to ours back home which resembles a dirty storage unit of some sort. :( Even more interestingly, these women have idea how great they have it! It was like they couldn't get their minds around the fact that my sorority house was a slight rung above a dorm. And we don't have a moat, or hardwood floors, or a foyer that rivals that of my parents' house. I would love for them to appreciate it as much as they can, because not everyone has such a situation.

After this, we went and walked around the campus a little. Beautiful place, students who are proud to be Buffs. It was awesome.

Then we ate at a little hole-in-the-wall place downtown where students were partying and watching the game, and then we went downtown to the super cool mall area (that I can't remember the name of.) We found a super cool bookstore (and were thrilled to see our buddy Shawn Decker's new book there, "My Pet Virus". It you haven't seen it, definitely pick it up NOW and read! It's a great read, very funny, and very i ntimate look at growing up in rural HIV. Highly, HIGHLY recommended.) It really was an awesome day. :)

I love Boulder and could totally see myself working there or going to grad school at CU. We will see. :) Hope you're all doing well, love and miss everyone!