Not Your Average Thanksgiving

This year, my Thanksgiving is not going to be like it usually is.

Typically, I have a pretty normal Thanksgiving. I brave the ridiculous airport crowds to fly back to Indianapolis, where I have three Thanksgivings (usually) with about 100ish family members (probably an exaggeration, but oh well). I usually talk my sister or mom into going Black Friday shopping with me (although that was slightly delayed last year by a hangover), even though neither of them really want to.

My Thanksgiving this year starts tonight (technically tomorrow) at 2:30am, when I get to the Amtrak station in Salt Lake City. I'll be taking the California Zephyr train through the mountains to Denver, where I'll be spending two days with my former roommate and dear friend Karen. After two days in Denver, we're driving up to the mountains for the Nature Valley Aspen Winternational, a women's alpine skiing World Cup. After two days there, it's back on the train and back to Utah!

It'll be interesting. I'll definitely miss my normal, chaotic holiday that I love despite its craziness. I'll miss my family and our traditions, both old and new.

But stay tuned for an update on my 15-hour train trip and the ensuing Colorado adventure!

Mmm...Success!

I apologize for the lack of constant updates!  I've been keeping busy with work and new friends, so I haven't had much time for blogging here!  I am, however, keeping another blog for the USOC...it's called the All Access Blog.  Technically, there are four or five people who have the ability to post to it, but so far it's mainly been me posting to it because I really enjoy writing the entries.  You can click here to read my latest entry...click on the title at that page and it will take you to a list of the rest of the entries.

Thursday and Friday were both very exciting days at work for me.  On Thursday, my blog entry that I posted above ended up getting nearly 3,000 hits!  Apolo Ohno posted a link to it on his Twitter account, and Travis Jayner (another speedskater that I admire) and US Speedskating also retweeted the post (for those of you who don't speak Twitter, "retweeting" is basically reposting another person's post so that more people can see it).  Needless to say, I was pretty pleased.  It's been awhile since I've really gotten to write freely and creatively, and it appears that I didn't lose my knack for it!

On Friday, one of my supervisors took me to the downtown headquarters to some meetings.  I met with a person from Development because I rewrote a donor letter for them.  They LOVED it!  That one was about Lopez Lomong, a runner for Team USA in the 2008 Beijing Olympics.  It's really awesome that I'm getting these opportunities this early in my internship!  Hopefully, that means that someday I can get a job in this field!

Last night, I went out with some of the other interns.  Today's kind of a cold, rainy day here, so we're probably just going to hang out, watch the World Cup (Go USA!), maybe go outlet shopping and relax!