Denver

As some people may know, I am spending this semester in Denver, Colorado, at Wartburg West, a program of Wartburg College .  I will be taking a religion course (Christian Faith and Politics in America), an an ID course (The Metropolis: Place of Convergence).  We get started with both of those on Monday, so it should be interesting. In addition, I am doing an internship at the Boys and Girls Club of Metro Denver which I start on January 4.  I will be working with their marketing and events department, but that is about all the information I have so far.


So, I've now been in Denver a couple of days, and I think I am starting to like it.  At first, I wasn't sure.  The first night was super hard and I was super nervous.  After a frantic, crying filled call home to mom, I started feeling a little better and finished unpacking and went to make some new friends.  Nicole and I missed the memo about having your ENTIRE family come out, so we said good bye at home and then loaded the car and left from Iowa City headed to Denver on the 27th.  

The loaded car

Before we Left

We again missed the memo to stay in Kearney or North Platte and drove to Sidney, Nebraska (Cabella World Headquarters, just FYI) for the night. In the morning, we took off about 9:30 headed for Denver.  After a SUPER boring drive, we hit Denver traffic, found the apartments, and say and twiddled our thumbs for a few hours before being able to check in.  We spent the night unloading, unpacking, and meeting the people we didn't know from Wartburg.


On the second day, we met the program directors (Bonita and Nelson Bock) at the church about 6 blocks away for a little orientation, then headed on the bus downtown.  Some of us bought January RTD (buss and Light Rail) passes, and we caught the free bus to the 16th street mall (sort of like a more glorified version of the IC ped mall) to see the visitors center and catch the light rail to the Bocks for lunch and more orientation.  After that, we came back to the apartments (on our own), mapped out our route for todays scavenger hunt, and then headed out (Nicole and I and a friend from Wartburg) to an NHL hockey game.

Go Avalanche!

Today, we left around 8 am for an Explore Denver type activity. We had 8 different sites we were supposed to try to visit in order to learn about how to travel the city, which parts were poorer, more affluent, had shops, etc.  We made it to 6 of those places by 2:30, when we pooped out.  We also celebrated Nicoles Birthday today! We took her out to lunch at the Old Spaghetti Factory where they sang to her and tonight after dinner at the Community Cafe, we watched a cheesy love move and had a glass of wine (all were 21, no worries).  On our tour of the city, we visited the Museo de las Americas, the capitol building, Larimer Square, Starbucks, the African American Black Research library, the 16th Street Pedestrian Mall, Larimer Square again, Tattered Covers bookstore, and Cherry something Mall.  It made for a super long day, but we had fun!

For New Years Eve, I think we are headed back the the pedestrian mall to hang out and see a couple of fireworks shows!  Should be fun!

Happy New Year All! 

(more pictures of the explore denver adventure on facebook..)