running.

This week I embarked upon my summer fitness mission - to get in shape. Sounds simple, right? And in theory it is. Wake up at 7:00, go run for half an hour, come back and get ready, go to work feeling healthy and refreshed. However, that does not take into account the immense amounts of motivation necessary to make myself roll out of bed at 7:00 am and go run.

I've done it, though. For 5 whole days. Go ahead...be proud of me.

Every morning I've taken off down the path behind my house, bathed in the soft light of morning. The air is still cool and fresh, untouched by the heat that will inevitably come later in the day. The path winds through the greenbelt, and I look at all of the backyards as I pass. Each one is a little glimpse into a life. Swing sets, swimming pools, hammocks, patio furniture, gardens, and dog toys all give a hint as to the lives encased in each of the small green areas. The shade from the trees and the houses falls across the path. The dappled sunlight that comes through the aspen leaves is my favorite. Not completely sunny, not completely shady - it's the perfect balance.

Every morning, right before I get to the main street I have to cross, I've passed power-walking lady. She wears a mint green sweatsuit every day, and a khaki bucket hat. The temperature doesn't seem to matter - every day is the mint green sweatsuit and the khaki bucket hat. She walks quickly. This is obviously not just a pleasure stroll for her, but a mission similar to mine. As we pass every morning I smile through the quick breaths caused by my lack of practice in the realm of exercise combined with the lack of oxygen in this very mountainous climate. Generally when you smile at someone you pass on the path, they return the favor. Not power-walking lady. No way. The response she gives me is a look of absolute disdain and disgust. Maybe she thinks I'm insane for running by choice. Maybe she's disturbed by how clearly out of shape I am. Or maybe I've disrupted her routine. Maybe I've interrupted her time of solitude and quiet before yet another day of chaos begins. And, honestly, I can respect that. So, while I won't stop smiling (to stop smiling simply isn't in my nature), I will try to keep our interactions brief and let power-walking lady enjoy the solitude and the peace of a quiet Colorado morning.

I cross the street and suddenly I'm in the midst of a beautiful area of open space. The Rockies are directly in front of me, and the gold morning light is illuminating what seems like every individual blade of grass and every leaf on every tree. The whispy white clouds of the morning are floating above the mountains. The world seems right at this moment. I come to the end of the path and approach Sarah. I've taken a cue from a dear friend, and I've begun to forge a friendship with this bench, planted here in the memory of Sarah. She has a small garden of flowers planted around her, and she sits on the top of a hill, facing the majestic mountains. The flowers aren't in bloom yet, and Sarah looks rather desolate. But as I approach her and take a moment to rest on her black metal slats, I'm amazed by the beauty that surrounds her. And right there, sitting on Sarah, still wheezing from a run that really shouldn't have been that hard for me, I feel at absolute peace.

After a few moments I stand and start back home. Another day of chaos is awaiting me, and I can avoid it no longer. But as I run back home, passing children walking to school and moms standing on the back porch waving goodbye, I know that tomorrow all of this will be here, waiting for me. The dappled sunlight, the abandoned toys in backyards, power-walking lady, Sarah, and that feeling of peace will be here for me. Maybe that's what keeps getting me out of bed at 7:00...

mom.

Also...my mom asked me today if I'm depressed about being home. A legitimate question, to be sure. Her reason for asking, however? My hair was dirty.

Oh, silly parents....

how much i love them.

love.

I'm sitting in my rocking chair (a recent acquisition in my room) next to my wide open window, enjoying the first of many summer evenings to come. The last rays of the sun just disappeared behind the mountains, and now the sky is a canvas of varying shades of blue. The breeze coming in the window is blowing in scents of summer - freshly mowed grass, a neighbor's barbeque dinner, and the smell that I can't really describe - the smell that is Colorado. Clean and fresh and comfortable. I can hear the neighbors in the backyard, finishing up their dinner. My parents are downstairs talking, and somewhere in the neighborhood kids are playing a game of baseball. It's all so familiar and so comfortable.

Each house on my cul-de-sac houses a family. Obvious, I know. But take a moment and really think about that - each house is a network. All over the world there are people who know and love those inside each house. And maybe those networks will never cross. But they exist.

I remember when I flew back from home at the end of spring break this past semester, I was sitting on the plane when this idea struck me. To my right was a mid-thirties advertising executive from New Jersey whose main goal for the two hour flight was to get me to explain the "basic plot" of Moby Dick to him. (A big white whale bit of a guy's leg, now the guy is mad and is trying to kill the whale in revenge. Profound, I know). And to my left was the window. And as much as I tried to maintain focus out the window, Thomas won out every time. You see, as annoyed as I was with him, I just kept thinking about the person waiting to greet him. All the people so excited for him to be visiting. People who love him in California, and people who inevitably miss him in New Jersey. Just like I had people excited to see me in California and people missing me in Colorado. Maybe it should have been an honor for me to meet this man, Thomas, who had people loving and missing him all over the United States.

I wonder what it would look like if I always considered it an honor to meet someone new. If I always thought about how many people love and respect those I interact with every day, how different would those interactions look?

I'm not sure...I guess it's just another thing to think about.

I pray for you today, that you would see beautiful sunsets and skies of wondrous colors, and that you feel just as loved as you are.

home.

I have recently been inspired to start keeping a blog again. I don't know why I've had such a negative "blogging" connotation in my mind before. Perhaps it was the fact that friends of mine had online journals in high school that were closer to a Mean Girls status burn book than anything else...and I found myself the one being burned just a few times too many. Yeah...that's probably it! But I've come to realize that, as an adult, this is a place to reflect, to share, and to keep in contact with those I love. Not that I think my thoughts are overly important...but hey, what better place to share my mediocre thoughts then in the midst of the world wide web?!

So here I am...at "home." I use the phrase tentatively now, not because I don't consider this home anymore, but because it is one of multiple homes. It has taken me a while to get settled in. I've found myself longing for the sun-filled days of Santa Barbara, spent lounging with my best friends. Instead, I've been weathering the weather of Colorado with the company of my parents, my dog, and my overly-vocal cat. My two homes are so very different. Life in Santa Barbara is faster, more social, more stimulating. Life in Littleton is quiet, calm, solitary. Neither one is bad...they are just so very different. My challenge right now is learning to be content no matter where I am.

When I got home last week after a 19 hour drive with my mom, the rest of the summer stretched before me very much like the roads I had just travelled. At the outset they were incredibly daunting...the drive seemed that it would last forever. But now, only one week in, things are seeming much more manageable. I believe that, like the drive I just completed, this summer will be over much more quickly than I anticipate. As I lay here on my blue and yellow comforter, looking out the window past the newly budded aspen leaves towards the Rockies that burst out of the ground only about a mile from here, I am realizing that I am content. Today I have chosen joy in this place, and have allowed a small bit of peace to enter in.

I pray for you today - that you would find new green aspen buds, snow dusted mountains, and warm chocolate cake. And I pray for peace in the place where you are.

When in Rome...

...don't stay in a hotel that is forever outside of the city, because the public transportation stinks! We stayed out in the suburbs of Rome, which was a good idea in theory, but because the public transportation was so unreliable, it made getting around pretty difficult. In retrospect, though, it was probably for the best, considering we had a final during our week in Rome. It made it a lot easier to be motivated to study when we couldn't go anywhere else!

The few times we did get out, however, we saw SO much every time. One day we went to St. Peter's, the Vatican Museums, the Colosseum, the Roman Forum, Trajan's Forum, and the Monument to Victor Emmanuel! Needless to say, it was a crazy day. I think my favorite part was the Colosseum, although St. Peter's was up there. The Colosseum is just SO big and SO old...I couldn't get my mind around it. Standing there I had one of the moments I've had from time to time this semester where I can't believe I'm actually where I am, doing what I'm doing. I kept saying..."it really happened here - gladiators fought here, people died here! Right here!" It was just really unbelievable. Anyways, it just blew my mind how old everything is, and that it is all still there. St. Peter's was really great, too. We got there pretty early in the morning, so it was glowing in the early morning light and it was really beautiful. Then we got to go inside, and Michelangelo's Pieta is in there, which is one of my favorite pieces of art. We also got to see the Sistine Chapel, which was every bit as cool as I imagined it to be.

We spent a lot of time in Rome studying and taking tests, and when we weren't doing that we were trying to figure out the public transportation!

Florence

Florence is a great city! Our hotel was right at the base of the Duomo (Florence's famous cathedral). Every time I walked out the door I passed about 17 gelato shops within 3 minutes...I think I gave in to the temptation about 2-3 times a day on average! Anyways, most of our time in Florence was focused on art - some of the most famous art out of the Reniassance is housed in Florence.

However, we still managed to do lots of other stuff during our time in Florence, too. Our first full day there, a big group of us got up super early and walked to the train station and then got on a train to Cinque Terre, which is this region on the West coast of Italy made up of 5 little towns. There are trails and train tracks between each of the towns so you can travel between them. We got off the train at the first town, Riomaffiore, and walked to the next town, Manarola. The walk was along the coast on these incredible Mediterranean cliffs - it was SO beautiful! Also, between those two towns is the "Via dell' Amore" - the tunnel of love. All along the tunnle people write their names and messages to their loved ones. Everyone with a boyfriend or girlfriend was writing their names, so those of us who are single wrote our names with a blank spot underneath to be filled in at a later time. We called it the Westmont Singles Wall :). After the tunnel we took a train to the thir town, Cornglia, and had lunch. The guys left us to hike to the 4th town and go swimming, but they missed out on some incredible spaghetti with pesto! After we ate we split up some more and a couple of us took the train to the fourth town, Vernazza, which happened to be my favorite of the five. It was tiny and cute with a little harbor. We walked around the corner at the harbor, and there were our guy friends jumping off a huge rock into the ocean. In November. We sat there watching them and enjoying the sun for a while before we got on the train to go to the final town, Monterosso. There we sat on the beach for a while and ate gelato (for something new and different!). I can't really explain how serene and beautiful Cinque Terre was - it was a great day!

Along with lots of museums and churches, climbing to the top of the Duomo, and our day at Cinque Terre, we also go to celebrate Thanksgiving in Florence. Due to availability of the church, we didn't get to celebrate until the day after Thanksgiving, but it didn't really matter, because they don't have Thanksgiving in Italy, so we just pretended :). In the morning we had "Eurobowl '07" aka Thanksgiving morning football game. We all walked over to a little park and had a great football game. I didn't play because I had to leave early to go pick up some pies for our dinner, but I watched everyone and took pictures and enjoyed the pretty park we were in. Then I left with Barb (our professor's wife and our replacement mom for the semester) to go pick up pumpkin pies for dinner. After that, we met everyone at the church we had rented out for the night, and we started cooking! Somehow, between us all, we managed to cook an AMAZING dinner for 47 people. We had tons of turkey, garlic mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, fruit salad, green beans, yams, rolls, cranberry bread, pumpkin pie, pecan pie, apple crisp with ice cream, hot chocolate, and hot apple cider...it was a great meal! It was a great day with our Europe family. We all ate around one (REALLY big) table and I was completely content. It was truly a time to remember just how blessed we are!

overall a great, gelato-filled week with my Europe Semester family :)

Venice

Hello from Colorado! Yes, its true - I am home. I'm unbelievably exhausted, and really jet lagged, but so happy to be home! I am sorry, once again, for the delay in updating, but finals took precedence, so here come all of the updates! I'm going to do my best to finish updating about the end of my trip in the next couple of days.

So anyway, Venice. Venice was really cool. Somewhere along the line someone had tole me that Venice was overrated, so I really wasn't expecting much, but I was pleasantly surprised. Something about the canals and the old buildings and the winding passages has this incredible, old-European feel to it that I just found very endearing. I spent a lot of my time in Venice just wandering around the city (sometimes on purpose, sometimes by accident!)and finding more and more beautiful canals.

Our time in Venice was very artistically focused - we had a lot of classes, and we saw a lot of different churches and examples of Italian Gothic architecture. We got to see Titian's Assumption of the Virgin (a famous altarpiece from the Venetian Reniassance) which was absolutely incredible. We also saw a performance of Vivaldi's The Four Seasons. Its such a beautiful piece of music, and hearing it in a big old church with incredible acoustics was great. We ended up getting an unexpected free day in Venice because one of our full day excursions got cancelled, but the conditions for our free day was that we had to do something "reimbursible" (meaning something possessing some sort of educational value), so I went to a couple more art museums. One I went to had a whole room of Jackson Pollock paintings, which are so interesting to look at. I also went to an exhibit all about Leonardo da Vinci - someone took his drawings of machines and actually built them and they were all on display. The night of our free day, a small group of us went to see a performance of La Boheme. It ended up being in this tiny little modern theater, and it was possibly the worst thing I have ever seen! I mean, it was actually so bad that it was good, just by sheer entertainment value. I love performances like that (especially since we got reimbursed for it!)

Apart from academic and artistic excursions, we didn't do a whole lot in Venice. We did, however, go to a little island just off of Venice called Murano. Its famous for its glass blowing (the home of Venetian Glass). We toured the factory and then went shopping :).

Overall, Venice was just a great, stereotypical European experience. We had lots of sunny days, blue skies, and pizza :).

more to come soon...