A Colorado New Years

For New Years this year, I traveled to Colorado to visit John and do some skiing. I have never skied outside the East Coast, so I was excited to experience the wonders of Colorado skiing. I flew into Denver on December 30 (if I remember correctly) and John and I spent the afternoon driving around the city. We ate at a Mexican restaurant called Rio Grande (not to be confused with the Rio Grande chain out East), stopped in the Patagonia store, and then went to the giant REI store.

This is Union Station in Denver. I thought it was really pretty.

These are some photos from the REI store. It was inside an old factory building, so it was enormous. The first photo shows the big climbing wall in the middle of the store. I actually ended up buying a tent for $40 (originally cost $120) at their members-only garage sale. The garage sale is when they sell all items that have been returned for reduced prices. On every item they say why it was returned. The tent I found is a Kelty 2-person tent and the only problem with it was that it was a little short for someone over 6' tall. We set it up in the room where the sale was taking place and it seemed to be just fine otherwise!

That night, John, his sister Anna, her boyfriend, John's college friend Tom, and I went to the light show at the Colorado Springs mountain zoo. It was a lot of fun, even if it was freezing cold and snowing! They had most of their exhibits open (both indoor and outdoor) with Christmas lights lining the buildings and paths. The coolest exhibit to me was the tiger area. I experienced a little primal fear seeing the tiger pace around the area, melding in and out of the darkness as he went from the back of the area (which was wooded) back to the front (where we were).

Looking out over Colorado Springs.

This was a cool light set-up: It is a tiger placed over a path. So, as you walk down the path, it's like you are getting eaten by the tiger and you walk through his body (see the ribs).
The best exhibit though was the giraffes. I think John told me it's the largest population of this type of giraffe in America (or the world?). You could buy cookies to feed the giraffes, so it was really easy to get them to the fence to take a photo.

This photo cracks me up!

There was a baby there too!

So I of course decided to buy some cookies and feed the giraffes. :-) It was hilarious.

I started out with just one...Then two...

Then three! Then I ran out of cookies.

These were some really cool lights they had down a hillside that looked like water coming down the hill.



The next day we left for Breckenridge. Due to all the snow, the highway from Denver was closed. The road we were taking was also closed in the morning, but then opened up. However, it caused a huge backup. So we moved VERY slowly down this mountain pass, which was fine by me!

John's parents had gotten us a condo in Frisco, a little town between Breckenridge, Keystone, and Copper Mountain (the three resorts where we were going to ski). When we arrived, we first went to dinner at the famous Dillon Dam Brewery by the Dillon Dam. Unfortunately, due to the crowds, they were out of the item I was most anticipating -- buffalo burgers. But it was good food none-the-less. We went straight from there to Keystone, where they were having a light parade and fireworks for New Years. The light parade is where ski and snowboard instructors go down one of their slopes at night carrying a flare in each hand. It was really cool!

Here are some photos.

At the end of the slope, all of the participants put out their flares, then started shouting and lifting their boards and skis in the air. I felt like shouting "We've won! We've conquered the Germans!" Or something along those lines. It seemed like we had just won a battle or something. :-) Then we waited around for the fireworks. They were very good!

After the fireworks, we booked it back to the car and the condo. It was seriously cold. Probably about -2 degrees or something. This is a shot of the little town at the base of the mountain.

Once back at the condo, we watched the countdown on TV and fooled around with our cameras (John had gotten a new one for Christmas and he was actually reading the manual, unlike me. So he taught me how to do some things.)

We got up the next day and made our way to Breckenridge (or, Breck, as I found out the locals call it). See how chilly it was? And that was off the mountain, not counting wind chill!

The mountain.

The great thing at Breckenridge was this gondola that they put in to transport people from the parking lot in the town to the base of the resort. It was awesome.

My one complaint about Colorado skiing is the time spent in lift lines and on the lift. Since the mountains are so big (which makes for a good long run), it just takes a while to actually get to the top.

I accidentally got on the lift chair behind John and Anna.

John's sister, Anna.

No doubt that the scenery was beautiful!

I was proud that I actually did mostly blues while I was out there. I guess I can officially call myself an Intermediate skier now.

We had originally planned to go night skiing at Keystone, but decided against it since I was exhausted and it was SO darn cold outside! The next day, we went to Copper Mountain, John's favorite resort. Luckily the weather was great for this day. I think it was in the 30's. We got a lot more skiing in this day. It reminded me a lot of Snowshoe in West Virginia.

Me with John's family (except his other sister, Kate, who lives in Florida.)

John convinced me to ski on the backside of the mountain. I couldn't believe I agreed to it since all I had ever heard about backsides of mountains was double black diamonds where experts skied through the trees and down steep unkempt slopes. But he said there was one blue slope back there we could go on, so I agreed. The view was breathtaking!

You can see the sign behind me in the photo on the right for that blue slope. However, once we started on it, John convinced me to go down a black diamond. It didn't look so bad from my vantage point, but I discovered it was much harder than it looked. It was full of piles of powder, which are difficult for me to ski through. I fell several times and got very frustrated, but in the end, I was glad I experienced my first black diamond and survived to tell about it.

A video of John snowboarding down the mountain.

We drove through Breckenridge on our way back to CO Springs, and it was so pretty with lots of lights. Most of the photos I took didn't come out, but here are a few.

A short video of Breckenridge. Kind of looks like our fake Dickens Village!

It was a great trip, but next time I would like to plan more time out there so I can get more skiing in. I would recommend it to anyone!

Christmastime

Ah, Christmas. My favorite time of year! And this year, due to different family schedules, it lasted a whole week! First, we got together with my dad's side of the family the weekend before Christmas. Everyone came into our house this year for the first time (that I can remember) and holed up at our house. It was like a gigantic family sleepover and I loved it. Then on Christmas Day, it was just my mom and dad and me. Finally, on the Friday after Christmas, we celebrated with my brother, Annika, and my mom's side of the family. A lot of the time that night was spent solving the abundant riddles and puzzles in my brother's house. He painted the nursery in stripes that actually spell out a coded message (still haven't figured out the message, but am looking forward to working on it more when I come home), and there is also a fun treasure hunt. Anyway, here are some pictures. (Since it is so annoying to re-arrange all these photos, they are not in the correct order, but hey, that's okay by me.)

Makoto had positioned himself on the back of the couch, in between the pillow and the back of the couch. I think he was scared of the unwrapping of presents. :-) He is resting his head next to my cousin, Dan.

How adorable is this face?

My cousin, Tom.

Yuki looked like he owned all the presents.

I took a bunch of photos of our Dickens Village, which is one of my favorite parts of Christmas. I tried to be a bit artsy.

This year we had a river and a waterfall in addition to the skating pond.

The village at night.

The village in daytime!

Our lovely waterfall. :-)

Me and my cousin, Christina.

Our Christmas tree.

The infamous, Hip-Hop Santa!

My dad and grandmom.

My aunt Sharon, Christina, and Annika.

My cousin, Ben.

Makoto had just jumped off Steve's lap (note his little butt on the bottom left).

Makoto had positioned himself this time in the crevice between Annika and the side of the chair, with his little paw up on the arm of the chair. So adorable.

Long Time, No Blog

Hello faithful readers (if there are any of you still out there)! :-) So I know it has been a long while since I posted anything. I was so much better at this over the summer! Since my last post, we have had more snow, I have accepted a full-time job, celebrated Christmas and the New Year, and embarked on my last semester at business school. I'm going to post a bunch of things, so stay tuned and I'll try my best to keep this up in a more timely manner. :-)

A Job, A Job! Finally.

I finally have a job lined up for next year. It was such a relief not having to stress and prepare for any more interviews! I heard back from Google around Thanksgiving that they were not making me a final offer. It was a bit sad, but I count myself very lucky to have made it that far in the process. Without that offer and with the FBI interview not until Dec 17, I had to make a final decision on Toyota. I ended up getting the FBI to move my second-round interview up by about 2 weeks so I could tell Toyota my decision one way or the other.

I flew to DC for an interview on Dec 6 (found out I was doing this just a few days before). I was very nervous and excited, but the interview went well. I interviewed with 5 different divisions and got to hang out with the other MBA grads. It was great! I found out the next day they were making me a full-time offer. Although I did not officially accept until about 2 weeks ago, I pretty much knew that was where I wanted to end up. So next year, I will be moving back to DC and working for the FBI! I don't want to put too many details about the job on here, but I can tell you each more about it off-line.