Ben's Visit!

After a dry spell of no visitors, on July 2nd Ben came to see me! I know some people go months and months without seeing each other but Ben and I had never gone more than about 2 weeks before this summer, so we were a little excited! I picked him up from the airport Thursday night around dinner time and where did we go? Chick fil a, duh. We sat and caught up at dinner and then went back to the Carlson's house to see Dave and Mary, who I have to say by now are like my family :)

Friday morning I had to get up and go to work but my supervisor Tiffany was nice enough to give me a half day so Ben met me at my office where I got to show him around and then took me to lunch. After lunch, we met Dave and Mary back at the Broadmoor for a tour of the property. After this it was on to the tourist activities. First stop was Garden of the Gods:


After exploring around, we came back to the Carlson's and to include Ben on my new love for raw fish we made sushi! Like literally made it...I'm so proud.



Saturday, we got up early and did a nice little hike called the Mount Cutler trail which had great views and was just the right length. PS, our way to the trail my fears were confirmed...in the next door neighbors yard just walking along was a Black Bear. Ben was really intelligent and grabbed my camera and ran AT the bear to get a picture, to which the bear turned around and started walking towards Ben...Ben screamed like a girl (so did I) and we escaped safely with a cool picture to show off/terrify me the rest of my time here.



To finish up, probably our most memorable activity was a hike called "the Incline" which had been suggested to me by a number of people because its just a good thing to say you did. So, thinking that I was way more in shape and athletic than I am, Ben and I decided to try it. WHAT a mistake that was. The incline is not just a "hike", its a straight up vertical staircase up a mountain side leading to an asthmatic's death. I tried my hardest not to faint but after about 30 minutes, I was seeing black spots so I forced Ben to go on without me. While I sat there watching him go, I looked to my left and realized that the massive amounts of flies around me were because of a huge pile of dog droppings right beside me. This was enough motivation for me to get up and take it 100 steps at a time to get to the top. So, about an hour later I had made it to the top...oh wait...the "top" or what you see from the bottom as the top is really HALFWAY. I wanted to die and almost had a temper tantrum but by that time Ben had already made it up to the real top and down to the half way mark to meet me. We decided to head back and spent the afternoon in Manitou Springs, the little hippie town at the base.
Look at what we climbed!


Anyway...the rest of our time was spent visiting with friends and one of the best memories we'll have of this trip was Monday night being treated to dinner at a VERY nice restaurant at the Broadmoor by the Carlson's. We had such a great time on our little double date :)

Ben left on Tuesday, July 6th to go home to a whole new life in Burlington, which will be so strange to go home to Raleigh without him living there. But we are both so excited for what's to come with his new job! But before he goes on to become a farmer, hes taking an awesome 10 day back packing trip with 7 of his Young Life guys who have just graduated from Broughton. They will be back packing through Canada and sharing some great time together, so be praying for Ben and those boys!

I Have Friends!

So, with a little push from Mom to update the forgotten blog that I once kept up with so well...I'm BACK! The last I think I wrote about was our visit from Grace and seeing Sally in Boulder. Since then, I have continued working 8-5 at the Broadmoor (unpaid) everyday. I have 2 other girls working with me so that makes it a little better, and I have to say I've really enjoyed working in the Sales and Marketing office. I feel like I've learned more this summer by actually getting hands on experience than any class I've taken in college. I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing...but I'm thankful for the experience anyway! I get a lot of questions about what I do on a day to day basis and really, the only way I know how to explain it is that I do whatever anyone in the office needs me to. After working for about 2 months I feel like I've finally figured out most of what the office does so now I feel like I'm helping instead of being a burden. I do things like help with summer marketing efforts (basically make calls to solicite...which if you know me was a nightmare to be on the phone with strangers!), help write up contracts, take prospective clients on tours etc.

Anyway, on to the fun stuff...I finally have friends! I met a lot of people my age during my orientation but didn't keep up with them much for the first couple of weeks. One day while trying to eat my french dip at the employee cafeteria (which smelled like a Golden Retriever), my friend Alex came and sat with me. During our lunch we basically agreed that neither of us had friends here and all we were doing was working so we needed to hang out and have a life this summer. After that, we basically formed a little group of friends (people we had met through orientation) who were in the same boat as us and we've been hanging out ever since!

Being the planner that I am, I decided that we should put together a "List O' Fun" with activities that we want to complete before the summer is over. Here are some pictures of things we've done so far...
Some of us at a Rockies game


My friend Jess and I downtown eating Sushi at an awesome place called Fujiyama...Jess is great, shes from San Diego and so much fun. She left about 2 weeks ago because she had started earlier than most of us :(

Cosmic Bowling with the group and Sandy! Sandy is here doing an internship with Focus on the Family, its so great having someone here from home. More pictures to come...but all of these people are SO different from me. They are from California, Pennsylvania, Chicago, Oklahoma, Texas, Maryland blah blah. They all think I'm an alien for being from the south and saying things like "ya'll"...also my favorite story about differences so far has to be a conversation I had about flip flops. One of the guys I work with needed new flip flops so I asked him, "Do ya'll have Rainbows where you're from?" He then said, "Yeah, after it rains." Dead serious.

Even though its so different out here and NO one is even a little bit like me, its been great to get to know such different people and to get out of my little comfort zone that is Raleigh, or even the South for that matter.