Marching into Spring

It's been a slow start to the year blog-wise, but my, how quickly time flies! Especially when life is busy with the best combination of stress, happiness, love, hard work, the prospect of new adventures, and all things that are good. 

I survived the Winter Quarter with my 4.0 intact (Wahoo!!) and followed up finals with a few days at home with my family in Vancouver, WA. While there, I enjoyed daily snuggles with Scout, the family cat, top-rope climbing with my sister, a day of skiing with my dad and sis, dinners with the whole family, French pastry baking, and LOTS of laughter. There's never enough time to enjoy with my family.

We made "Financiers", my dad's favorite French pastry that he discovered in Nantes!

Ski buddies at Mt. Hood Meadows.

Over the break, I received some most excellent news about an internship from some important people in Geneva... but I'm only going to tease you all with that much for now. Things are moving in a good direction, but I'm currently stuck in the limbo of international organizational bureaucracy, so I'm keeping the official word mum until I get the official official word. Stay tuned. :)

Upon my return to Denver, I met Kris at the airport, as we both arrived at the same time (he from Seattle, me from Portland). We then embarked on a 10-day Colorado adventure for his Spring Break (and my unofficial 2nd week of Spring Break, even though I had classes, which YES, I did indeed attend). First stop: VooDoo Doughnuts on Colfax with some Korbel friends for a literal bucket of delicious doughnuts. Yum! Amazed by the sheer mass of frosted, sugary goodness, Kris and I only kept a few (there were at least 35 doughnuts in there) and shared the love with my friend and some of our other Korbel group. A tasty, silly-fun way to start the week, for certain. :)

Bucket of VooDoo goo!

Kris and I spent the week walking ALL OVER Denver, exploring various neighborhoods, trying random and new bars and restaurants, meeting up with friends, and enjoying each other's company (it never happens enough). Some photos of our adventures:

Drinks at Beatrice & Woodsley on South Broadway.
This place is quite the find! I recommend it highly.

We visited Denver's branch of The Punch Bowl, a lively establishment
that originated in Portland, OR. 

Bouldering was a must-do! A great workout and always so much fun.

The swanky bar that is Williams & Graham (Kris' inquiry this trip: "Why do
so many places here have two names?!").

The first weekend that Kris was in town, we rented a car (since I am car-less) and drove up to Breckenridge to visit one of Kris' old friends. What a beautiful place! 

Beers in the sunshine on a lovely day in Breck.

Wednesday of this past week was spent exploring downtown Denver and a couple of its cultural treasures: the Denver Botanical Gardens and the Denver Art Museum. Both are fabulous! I loved all the orchids at the botanical gardens. One of them was bigger than us!

In the botanical gardens' conservatory.

This orchid relative, which the garden staff had christened "Big Charley" was H U G E and amazing!

So many cool orchids!

Sweet sculptures

Fitting in with the weird sculpture chair at the Denver Art Museum.

We loved the interactive exhibits!

We explored a new neighborhood (by City Park) and checked out the
Vine Street Pub and Brewery. Tasty beer!

Kris and his awesome thrifted Denver, Colorado t-shirt :)

Hiding from the wind in the Highlands/downtown

We spent this past Friday exploring Golden, CO. Thank goodness for the light rail!

In downtown Golden with Table Top Mountain in the background.

Cribbage and delicious beers at the Golden Brewing Company.

 

There were so many statues in Golden! My inner 7-year old was out in full force :) 

More tasty beers at Mountain Toad Brewery!

 

Fly away, butterfly! Fly away!

Drinks with some of Kris' friends at Forest Room 5.

That bar is AWESOME. If you live in Denver, go check it out!

Saturday was spent snowshoeing in Rocky Mountain National Park with some folks from Korbel. What a great hike! I had never been snowshoeing before, and man, did I enjoy it! We hiked straight up the mountainside for a bit and were mighty tired at the end of the day, but the view and a post-hike reward of beers and delicious Nepalese food made it all worth it, and then some!

I had fun taking panoramas of some of the beautiful views.

The wind at our peak elevation of about 11,000ft was super intense!

Yup, Colorado is freaking beautiful. I am SO happy I get to live here for a couple of years!!!

Success!

We saw a small herd of female Elk just off the road when we were leaving the park. Such majestic creatures, and SO BIG!

 

I feel so lucky to have had a two-week Spring Break! It was lovely to be home for a bit, and I had such a great time exploring Denver and spending so many days with Kris. Being able to go out and do fun things with my favorite person in the world was a great way to re-energize for the Spring Quarter and spend some time appreciating this beautiful state while I'm here! I'm looking forward to an exciting and busy quarter of challenging classes (Global Environmental Governance, Introduction to Epidemiology, and The Art of Forecasting), planning for Switz, and more fun times around town. 

And finally, as much as I love sweater weather, I'm really excited for spring in Denver. With all the sunshine and highs already in the 60s, it's looking to be an excellent season! :)