Francophile in the West

Once again, I find myself at the end of another quarter of school; overwhelmed and exhausted, but making progress. I can hardly believe that my first year of graduate school is two weeks from being over!! It is truly astounding how quickly time flies. So far, May has been a great month. I have my internship in Geneva all set up, plane tickets home have been bought, train tickets to visit Seattle are in the bag, and international flights have been purchased.  I'm only lacking my Swiss visa and housing upon my arrival (slightly worrisome...) to be fully prepared. Well, and still I have to pack up my apartment, complete my final papers and projects, pack for another séjour in Europe, etc., but things are moving forward! I was able to run away with some Korbel folks and go for a great hike outside of Boulder a couple of weeks ago, as well as make a weekend visit to Seattle to see Kris. The following are photos from my times of relaxation:  The view from a hike at Mt. Sanitas,

Alas, here again is my once-monthly blog post. As soon as school is over for the year and I start my next round of European adventures (round number 3 since I started this blog in 2009!), I hope to get this thing back up and running to at least once-weekly blog post capacity. In the meantime, some highlights from April: Spring has arrived (albeit in a bipolar manner, weather-wise), so hiking is back on the activity list! There were a couple of Korbel hikes in April: a quick hike around Red Rocks on the Trading Post Trail, and 5ish miler on the Maxwell Falls Lower Trail loop. I'm looking forward to going on another hike tomorrow morning outside of Boulder. A random abandoned love seat in the woods at the Maxwell Falls Trail. Also in April, I finally went to the Trader Joe's that opened in Denver in mid-February. I loved me some TJ's when I lived in Seattle, and I knew that the reception of TJ's here in Denver would be insanity, so I figured I'd give i