my year and a half in the US 🇺🇸

I slept I this morning and realized my host family was gone. Therefore I took the dog for a very long walk in Cottonwood Park. By the time I got back my host family was back as well and the kids wanted to play with me. So we jumped on the trampoline for a while and played some board games. I spent the rest of the day together with them and helped with some chores.

My host mum had a work trip coming up today so once she left with the kids I had the house to myself. Of course I went back to bed first. Later I took Grizzly for a walk in the park. Then I cooked some great lunch and prepped dinner. Afterwards it was time to pick up the kids. We just got home quick and Mia got changed into her gymnastics clothes. Then we had to drop her off already. Back home Tyler ran over to play with Jackson and was gone all afternoon. By 5:30 I got him back, we ate, he changed into hockey clothes and I drove him over to his dad's work.

Today I had a bunch of laundry to do. Totaled 3 full loads after not that much time. Those kids are maniacs. Besides that I chilled and updated tumblr. I picked up the kids the usual time and we did homework. Luckily we got done by 5 so I was able to leave for class. I was looking forward to class because psychology is really interesting me. Since I started at the uni here I'm really thinking of studying psych when I'm back home. I have to look into it.

The kids had off today because of an official holiday. Also we got loads of snow overnight and it was chaotic on the streets so they would've gotten off otherwise anyways. The kids were super happy about all the snow and wanted to play in it all day. Jackson, the neighborkid, rand the doorbell right by 9am and he and his little brother dragged Tyler and Mia outside to play. We spent all morning out there and went inside by noon for lunch and a little warming up.

Sunday morning started early but that wasn't a big problem since I went to bed early. I drove over to the boys' house and met Dominka there. Together with Adrian and Kristof we packed up the car and drove towards the mountains. Destination: White River National Forest for an off-trail hike.

We arrived after a two hour drive and took a dirt road as far into the wilderness as possible. Then we got out, chose one of the peaks as destination and started walking. We didn't have any trail so literally the first part of the way we chose was climbing down a cliff to a river and crossed it. Then we had some meadows uphill and made it on top of the first mountain. We had a break on top and continued through forest. Every now and then we passed a meadow or took a break. The views we got were beautiful and the sun and fresh air felt good. After another meadow we came to my favorite part of the hike: an aspen tree forest. Since those leaves turn yellow in fall the forest we walked through looked bright, colorful and amazing. Just look at the pictures and you get an idea of it. At some point we had to jump on fallen trees and walked on top of those for a while. By then we made two more peaks and the final one was coming up. We also then realized it was 3pm already and we've been walking for several hours. It was going to be dark soon so the four of us decided to turn around and try to find the car since we had to walk the whole way back.

We took a different way and ended up on the top of a plateau. The views were the best we got on the peak that we originally planned to climb. We took a break and pictures. Then we kept on walking downhill through forest and made it to the meadow with the river. From there we only had to climb up the steep cliff which was more difficult then climbing it down. Afterwards it was only 15 minutes dirt road to the car. We made it, hopped in the car and cracked open a cold one. By the time we made it back out of the wilderness on the first real road it was pitch black outside and 6pm.