drama llama

more drama in the kitchen- apparently i flopped on both baking things i did. so really, lets just leave me out of the drama and i'll just do some back stuff like bulletin boards and putting dishes out onto tables...it's amazing how different personalities clash and i'd rather not be the one in the middle. i'm getting where both the chefs and the dietitian are coming from, but it would be nice if they could communicate w/ each other and not have me as a middle funky ground.

today's vermonting walk/hike was hawk walk, which starts at hawk mountain resort. i took 2 of the more gung-ho ladies up salt ash road which had some snazzy houses on the mountain. i wish i nabbed a shot of lunch (mac and cheeseeeeee, man, i wish i could live off this stuff...which also was apparently too salty...). after four weeks here i think i finally got the wednesday self-serve lunch plate servings down. minus the part where i went back for 2nd helpings of the mac&cheese:D i may have finally found a mac&cheese that i like more than the kraft box version. i got to showcase my cardioboxing skills (my nutrition supervisor joined in on the class in her skirt no less!) and then the highlight of the day- spontaneous decision to go swim in a lake!

the fitness/intern coordinator lives in a house by lake echo (it's a private lake except for the state park section, which is still not re-opened since hurricane irene damage) and she offered to show us how to enter through her section so we asked the kitchen to hold our dinners and we just drove there after work still in our workout clothes (i had like full workout pants on). there's a little dock and a floating platform a bit further. the water was actually warm (it probably helped that it was in the mid-90s today) and you couldn't touch the ground, which was really nice b/c the storm apparently brought lots of ickies to the bottom. it was sad when i couldn't haul myself onto the platform...so some more upper body is necessary or else i will just have to keep pretending that i just like to float around in the water all day...lol. 

now i can say i swam in a lake! i think i'll use my vibrams as water shoes just so i can avoid the murky bottom by the dock and walk up onto the beach when i don't even have the energy to flop onto the deck like a beached whale. you'd think as a fitness instructor i would have some mad muscles, which i think oftentimes the women here judge me for when i'm not as strong or as quick as the other intern. sometimes i think they see me as more approachable b/c i look more like them, but sometimes i don't know if they take me seriously b/c i don't look like joy bauer or jillian michaels. but it's something to adjust to, and it's always a work in progress, but it was really fun jumping into the lake (much less daunting than the cliff diving).

happy first day of summer!

nature's stair master

lake echo from vista trail

 finished two weeks here now and PA and i went all out today exploring. there's 5 lakes in the plymouth area and we wanted to explore but the state park is closed until the end of june and the lakes are pretty much private so we went back to the plymouth vista lake echo trail we did yesterday w/ the participants so i could get some good shots and we could walk around more. so w/ the participants it took about 30 minutes to get to the top for the view (PA and i charged up in about 10...so we took some detours). 

it's finally not raining in vt, i'm sure it'll change but we took full advantage and explored the trails. then grabbed some maple creemee- which was vanilla soft serve w/ maple flavoring. i'm not sure if i can ever get used to the maple syrup in all my food (w/ my pasta was probably the weirdest so far). 

at the sugar house there was a dad losing his mind and cursing left and right at his wife...so awkward to get back into our car right next to them. but the sugar house has really cute vt stuff- shot glasses, shirts, jewelry to food stuff (i need to get my hands on some grade B maple syrup before i leave this state).

man, this is gonna be a long post- but lunch was tempeh surprise. the potato "fries" were amazing w/ siracha (my best friend) and ketchup. i'm off and on again w/ the tempeh but i'm hoping for some chili tonight!

going up the tower

after lunch, PA and i headed out to okemo so she could climb the mt and we could both finally go up the tower and get a view of vt. we went off the rd and took the ski trails (kind of brutal on the low back and calves but broke up the monotony of transversing the rds). we got a little mixed around but finally saw other people and they pointed out the fire tower to us. 

the 360 views from the fire tower were absolutely amazing! you could see the lakes, ludlow town and our home for the summer. it was also very very very windy and the tower would shake, so that was kind of freaky and fun. the total walk, up the ski trails and down the rd took us about 2.5 hours

tired

today was a long day...i'm feeling wiped out, but it's still the beginning of my internship so it's going to take a couple weeks until i'm in a sort of semi set schedule. i think i clonked out around 9:30 last night and got up a bit before 6 am. PA and i are on day 1 of training for this tri so we took road the bikes right out of our building towards rutland which was a bad decision b/c a) it was freezingggg and b) it was uphill. a highly amusing way to reintroduce yourself to biking. haha, so maybe not biking for a bit. one of the staff participants walks the golf course before it opens in the morning so i think i'll try running that tmrw.

today was bizarre weather all around (maybe it was from the venus sun thing yesterday, which we couldn't figure out how to watch here w/o blinding ourselves, so today show this morning was of course a great way to pretend we did). we on and off rain and rain w/ sunshine. but we did get this great shot of clouds just hovering over okemo mountain which was really cool. sometimes in really stormy weather the whole mountain is impossible to see. 

lake echo in plymouth is part of the view for one of our walks off "campus" (vermonting). we got back to the car right before the rain started (yay perfect timing). this area is also big during the fall for tourists ("peepers" not sure about the spelling) to come see the leaves. that's "peeper season" with buses and cars going 12 mph taking pictures of all the leaves. and seeing the number of trees around it would be pretty spectacular. our supervisor took PA and i on a trail by our place and boy does she walk fast! i feel so out of shape here, maybe more than i did at the fitness expo in february...time to do more running and strength training. 

today's lunch was serve yourself again and i always get so confused putting my own food on my plate so i try to follow the same layout we do for the plates that are made for us, but i still get a huge amount and get flustered. so feeling just like a participant on wednesdays. but it's nice and colorful:D 

ooooh, the snack today was the apple truffle again. man, that will probably never get old. dinner was also great today- tofu, roasted potatoes and all sorts of veggies (forgot the pic of my salad again).


so glad the week is half over- just got to get through 2 more days :D hopefully next week i'm scheduled for more nutrition stuff (although the lecture tonight was really good, but i felt like i was in school all over again trying to learn about all these hormones and nature vs. nurture). gotta get my thinking cap on! have a good night, as usual, my night is ending wayyyyy early.