March 8-21, 2010

Another couple weeks in the books...

Monday started out crazy as usual. I ride the transit bus to work and it's becoming increasingly popular. It's a shorter 15 passenger bus and on Monday morning it was stuffed full. As we were leaving a parent with 3 kids drove up wanting a ride to school because they were late and had missed their bus. During my workout hour at work I decided I wanted to run up the mountain on the back side of the clinic. Just a couple weeks ago I snowshoed to the top of it. So, I headed over the same way as before, trudging through the mid-calf deep melting snow getting my shoes and socks wet. On one particular step I felt my foot get especially wet but didn't think much of it. The next step I found myself standing in freezing cold water up to my waist. Apparently under the snow here was a creek. And since it was a nice day out in the low 40's I was wearing only my running shorts and a sleeveless shirt. So I climbed out of the creek and decided to find another way across. After trudging back and forth along the creek bank through snow and thorns and finding no way across, I decided to just run the mountain on the front side of the clinic. It was a nice run with a beautiful view of the rez at top. My shoes are still drying from this adventure....

Monday night I attended a vegetarian cooking class/seminar on sucrose, fructose, and high-fructose corn syrup and the horrible damage HFCS causes, including being a main factor in the global obesity epidemic. To watch the seminar online go to you tube and search for "Sugar: The Bitter Truth" by Robert H. Lustig. I highly recommend everyone watch it.

Tuesday I run up 4 more mountain tops on the Rez during the day, and as soon as I got home I ran to the college and rock climbed for about an hour, ran back to the apt., and then hung out with Heidi, Emily, and Emily's brother and sister at Emily's house. Wed. I ran up the same mountains, except I had a dog run with me. After work I taught boot camp and then went to The Bridge, which is a building where the youth from 5th Avenue Christian Church meet. I hung out with the kids from the church and played a game called Smash Face. It's way fun and involves spiking a volleyball as hard as possible into other people. The kids love it.

Thursday I taught our Learning About Diabetes Series (LADS) class and cooked lunch for the class. We made baked sweet potato fries, kale chips, veggie quesadillas, hummus, and salad. They loved the food and the class. Thursday night I went running and hung out with Heidi, Emily, and her sis and bro again. Friday after work I ran up to the church and hung out at the big youth rally they were having.

Saturday was a busy day. First, I woke up super early to drive a group of Diabetics from the Rez to Great Falls (2 Hours away) to run in a St. Patty's Day Dash. It was a lot of fun and I got 3rd place overall in the 4 mile race. After lunch we drove back to the rez and I played basketball for about an hour, went hiking in the Bear Paw Mountains, and then went to the youth rally and played on inflatable games all night. They had a bungee run and a huge boxing ring where 6-10 of us would be inside with jousting sticks and boxing gloves and just pumble each other. It was quite the fun and exhausting time. Sunday I went to church, rode my bike, and went ice skating.

Highlights from the next week include: Boot camp, Seeing the Rez with most of the snow melted (it looks completely different, but still very beautiful!), starting the 1/2marathon training program at the Rez, hosting a salad luncheon for the clinic called Big Green Salad Day, playing football and soccer, running around Havre seeing a completely different town now that most of the snow is melting. As I ran from the gym to the youth group at The Bridge Wed. night I several four-wheelers zooming around on all the grass and dirt hills, found some horshoe pits, saw kids playing basketball on a couple outdoor courts, found some baseball fields, saw a kid hitting golf balls from his house into a cemetary, and found some cool running trails. Had fun with the youth learning about God, playing foosball, and playing more Smash Face. Thursday entailed cooking and teaching for the LADS class again. Friday was cold, icy, and snowy so I played basketball with the locals during my workout break. After work Heidi, Emily, and I hung out at the Manuel family's house. They have 5 really fun kids and tons of cattle. They took me driving around their land where the cows are kept and we looked for newly born calves (this is calving season). Then we ate a delicious meal of halibut and salmon caught in Alaska, a great salad, and pesto pasta. Dessert was a raw banana cacoa ice cream type dish with dandelion coffee (not really coffee...it's made out of roasted dandelion root- they say it's a good replacement for people trying to quit drinking coffee). Oh, and this family is very health conscious as they make lots of raw dishes, eat mainly organic foods, raise organic, free range cattle, and grow organic veggies. They also home school. I played drums, guitar, battleship, and knee hockey with the kids and then we all played some game called Last Word (I think). We had tons of fun and stayed up late. Saturday morning we woke up early and Emily, Heidi, and I drove up to Canada and went cross-country skiing. It took us about an hour and a half to get to the trail. We skied for about 2 hours 45 minutes up and down huge hills. Sunday included running up and down hills and around town followed by church, more running, watching some March Madness, and catching up with old friends via the cellular.

All in all it was a fun-filled, exciting week!

Don't forget to check out ventureexpeditions.org to donate towards my mission trip in Turkey this summer. Thanks.