Arriving in Denver

Hello all!

I will be trying my best to keep entries flowing into this medium for you all so you can see what I'm up to . . . right now I have access to internet and I have some time, so I'm taking advantage of it! Yesterday, I arrived in Denver International Airport without trouble and was met by many representatives from Up with People. They helped me find my suitcase in baggage and then gave me a bus ride to a nearby recreational center where about 50 other fellow castmates were there hanging out. After I registered and such, I spent the next five to six hours talking and getting to know all the variety of people there (and believe me, there was SUCH a variety!). After some Dominoes pizza, I paired up with my host "brother" (another castmate who will be living with the same host family as I) -- a 19 year old named is Kristian from Denmark. He has been great to hang out with. Today, with the NFL playoffs on, I've been trying to teach him American football without much success. I never quite realized how complicated the game was until I tried to explain it! Anyway, today we also drove around with our host family and went to Boulder, CO, which is nearby and nestled up against the Rocky Mountains (which are amazing by the way). I was lucky enough on my flight in to have the plane pan the right way so I could see a great panorama of Denver set in front of the Rocky Mountains behind. Beautiful. Today, as I said, we drove to Boulder and took a short drive up to some looking points, where I was able to see the Mountains better than before (and a great view of Boulder, too). After that, we went back down to Boulder and ate at Old Chicago where I had (what else) a hamburger :). You can take the kid out of Iowa, but you can't take the Iowa out of the kid!! ;) So far, the only difficulties I've had is with the elevation. Not so much that I'm having a hard time breathing or anything, but when I ride in vehicles, my car sickness jumps into full throttle. Riding in vehicles seems to make me tired and sick, so I'm trying to remedy that with lots of water and Advil :). It'll get better though.

Other than that, there hasn't been much happening. Today we have a day off, and Kristian and I are just trying to get oriented to Denver (he more than I since it is an eight hour difference from Denmark to Denver). Though I didn't talk about it too much, the five hours of conversation and meet-and-greet yesterday was amazing and it just flew by. There are so many interesting and exciting people here, so I'm really looking forward to getting to know them all . . . though learning all the names will DEFINATELY be interesting!!Until my next post!!

Dan