This or That Survey

I figured since I haven't blogged in awhile, a good way to get back into it would be to do a survey that I saw on another blog. Let's get to it! :)

Chocolate or Vanilla?

Absolutely no question, chocolate. I pretty much love chocolate everything: chocolate chip cookies, brownies, chocolate cake, chocolate ice cream. My favorite blizzard from DQ is Chocolate Extreme. :)

Innie or Outtie?

Innie! I don't have much else to say about this belly button of mine ha.

Hot, Hot Summer or Snowy Winter?

I would go with hot, hot summer because I love the sun and getting to spend lots of time outside. 

D and I taking advantage of the hot summer at the beach (Lake Michigan, not ocean!)

On the other hand, I don't really mind the winter either--I love just after it snows and it's so beautiful and peaceful. 

One time D said we had to test our tent in cold weather...see that snow on the ground?!

I hate being cold though, which is why I guess I'd have to choose the hot summer. :)

Save or Spend?

I think I prefer saving my money just because that's what my parents did while I was growing up, so it's what I'm used to. I try to remember to allow myself to spend money to have fun--one thing I actually enjoy spending money on is travelling!

Elliptical or Treadmill?

I feel like I am not coordinated enough to use the elliptical. I have tried several times, but I just feel awkward the entire time, and end up giving up pretty quickly.

Banana or Apple?

Definitely banana! I get tired of chewing apples about halfway though (this is one of the many things that D makes fun of me for), so unless it's a really small apple, I usually will pass.

Morning or Night?

Night. I really want to be a morning person, but it's so hard to make the switch. I feel so much more productive after about 8 pm at night, and I hate getting up in the morning.

Lip Balm or Lipstick?

Neither--I do use chapstick a lot though, especially in the winter months.

Alone or with others?

I was actually just thinking about this on my run today, how coincidental! I am definitely an extrovert, and I love being around people. However, maybe because I was basically an only child (my sister is 12 years older than me) growing up, I like my alone time too. I love getting alone time in a crowded place...for example studying at a coffee shop or reading in a busy park. 

Coffee or Tea?

Both! I drink coffee more, but I love chai tea, especially in the fall. For awhile I was trying to replace some of my coffee with tea just so I didn't feel so dependent on the daily coffee, but I guess I forgot about that. Maybe I'll focus on that again. :)

Straight or Curly?

It just depends! My hair is naturally wavy, which I usually like. If I sleep with it wet, it curls up a decent amount, and so I wear it like that at least once a week. 

Wavy hair

Generally if I want to look fancier, or if I want to guarantee that my hair is going to look presentable (the wavyness of the hair is really a toss up, so I have no idea what it will do day to day), then I straighten it.

Straight hair and a bonus pic of my sister :)

Three Squares or Graze All Day?

I'm not really a grazer. My husband is, and when we first lived together, I thought it was crazy how much he would snack (basically anytime he walked through the kitchen ha). I have since realized that many people are like this--who knew! :)

Right-handed or left-handed?

I'm right, but D and my mom are left so I'm kind of partial to lefties. :)

Beach or Mountains?

I would say mountains. I love the beach where you can really relax and soak up the sun, but I get bored quickly without having much to do. I prefer getting to camp, hike, and bike up the mountains.

D and I at Yosemite

Mac or PC?

I guess PC. There is a decent amount of engineering software that is easy to install/use on PCs and more difficult on Macs--since I don't know that much about computers, I stick with the easier option of the PC.

Shy or Outgoing?

I think I'm more outgoing, but it definitely just depends on the situation!

Una Boda en la Ciudad de México

Last weekend one of my good friends, Adriana, got married in Mexico City. I was so honored when she asked me to be a part of her wedding, and when I found out it was going to be in Mexico City, I was even more excited!

Adriana and I at my wedding

We flew down to Mexico City on Thursday morning so that we'd have time to settle in before the wedding festivities began. We got lucky and got put in an emergency exit row so we had plenty of room to spread out on the flight. 

Thursday was spent exploring the area and having some delicious food. Friday morning we saw some ruins in the city, and then walked about 3 miles through the area. We ended the morning with the Diego Rivera museum where we were able to see his huge mural--it was beautiful and tells a long story. Friday afternoon we had the rehearsal followed by a dinner for anyone who had made the trip to Mexico City.

The church where they got married

Saturday morning we woke up ready to start preparing for the wedding. They had hired a great team to come to the hotel and do everyone's hair and/or makeup. All of the bridesmaids looked great. :)

Getting my hair done with my cute "Bride's Entourage" shirt

After we were all ready, we walked the block from the hotel to the church. This doesn't seem like that far of a walk, but when the bride has a 5 foot train, it gets a little tricky. :) We all worked together to make sure that she arrived to the church looking perfect.

Preparing for the walk--her dad looks so proud :)

The wedding was half in Spanish and half in English--a beautiful, very unique ceremony. After the wedding we took quite a few pictures with friends and family in the church, and then walked to the large plaza to take pictures with the bridal party.

Bridesmaids with the happy couple in the church

The plaza that we took pictures in is the largest plaza in the western hemisphere. At the end of the plaza is a huge, beautiful church, so the pictures were incredible.

The bridal party with the couple--church and Mexican flag in the background

After the photographers felt like we had taken enough pictures, we headed back to the hotel to wait until it was time for us to arrive at the reception. The reception was only half a block from the hotel, so all of the events of the day were within one block--this was so convenient! Once we entered the reception, the party started! The dinner was incredible; very different than what we expect from weddings in the US, but absolutely delicious. 

Cutting the cake--notice all of the extra sweets for the guests!

Afterwards, the dancing (and tequila shots) started and didn't stop for hours and hours. 

Bridal party taking the first tequila shot of the night

We had such a great time and I am so happy that I got to be a part of the weekend.

Tired, exhausted, but so happy at the end of the night :)

July Running Recap

Hello all! I was a little disappointed with my overall running mileage for July: 51.75 miles. In both May and June I was over 60 miles, and I wanted that number to keep increasing until my half in November, but when I take a close look at the month, it's not as bad as it seems.

The first 8 days of July, we were in Spain, and I only did 1.15 miles of running. :-o I did do a pretty monstrous hike on Saturday, July 5th...it was over 10 miles and very tiring. Once we got back from Spain, I was more consistent, especially these past two weeks. On top of my running, I also cycled 61.85 miles, which isn't too much in the cycling world, but it's pretty good for me. :)

In addition to the training I did, I was happy with my performance in the Eagle Creek Triathlon (recap here) in the middle of July. In addition to running/cycling, we also went mountain biking for the first time and kayaking which was fun. July turned out to be a great month!

In August I have a conference in Columbus, Ohio, then a wedding in Mexico City in the middle of the month. School starts back up again on the 24th. I hope to run at least 60 miles, cycle 100, and get some solid swims in. I am considering doing an Olympic triathlon at the end of September, so August has to be a solid training month. :) Have a great Sunday, everyone!

New Bike Trainer!

I have been searching Craigslist and local stores for a bike trainer for almost a full year, and I finally found one for a decent price! :) The brand is Kinetic by Kurt and it is a fluid trainer. Basically there are two options for bike trainers: magnetic and fluid. Generally magnetic trainers are cheaper, but louder. Since my trainer is going to hang out in our office, I figured I should go with the quieter option if at all possible--I don't want to drive D crazy while he's trying to work.

Kinetic by Kurt: The Road Machine

I like using the spin bikes at the co-rec, but I love that now I can knock out a workout in no time at all (since I don't have to even leave the house), and that it gets me used to riding on my actual road bike. It's still important to do rides outside to get used to wind, hills, and other natural influences of being outdoors, but it's nice to be able to get some extra riding time in such a convenient way.

Part of the reason that I pulled the trigger to buy the trainer at this particular point in time is that I am thinking about doing an Olympic distance triathlon this fall. The Purdue Triathlon Club sponsors one at the end of September, which means it's a local race, it's affordable, and it's at a great time (far enough away from now so that I can train properly, but still 6 weeks before my half marathon, so I'll have time to recover and refocus my training). I haven't fully committed yet, but I created a training plan that is a mixture of a half marathon training plan and an Olympic triathlon training plan, and I have been following that this week. Hopefully I'll feel confident enough within the next few weeks to actually sign up. :)

In other news, tomorrow D and I are going to Brown County State Park to go mountain biking for the day! I have never been mountain biking, so I am extremely excited. :) We are going to camp in the park Saturday night and then maybe do some hiking or exploring on Sunday. It should be a great weekend!

Race Recap: Eagle Creek Sprint Triathlon July 2015

My friend Bethany recently completed her first triathlon, and she had suggested we do one together at some point this summer. I had done the Eagle Creek Sprint Triathlon in the past (two of them in 2013), so we decided to complete the July race together. Since I had been in Spain, I was slightly worried about being undertrained (D and I had run in Spain, but not nearly as much as I had been running previously, and I didn't do any biking or swimming), but I figured it would be a fun experience either way.

We woke up at 5 am to leave by 5:30 since we had to pick up our race packets before the race. Standard breakfast of oatmeal with pb and brown sugar--no bananas though because I had completely forgotten to pick them up the day before. Boo. We got to Eagle Creek State Park with no issues, got checked in, and were ready to go. At the Purdue Triathlon I did in April, I found that french braiding my hair was very convenient for all three events--I talked Beth into letting me braid her hair as well before the tri started. :)

Very important pre-race business

Beth and I ready to go!

The swim portion of the tri is 500 meters long in a reservoir. I was a swimmer in high school and am very comfortable in the water, but open water swims still are very challenging for me. It's difficult to spot properly and there are so many people in the water around you that getting kicked is common. I just kept moving my arms and eventually I made it through the swim. :)

I ran to the transition area, grabbed my bike, and off I went. The bike felt really great! Typically I think biking is my weakest leg, but at this race I seemed to be doing quite well. I passed a lot of people, and even tackled hills without feeling like I was going to quit. :) When I got back from the bike, I was the first one to my rack, and so I popped my bike on the rack ready to go out for the run when all of a sudden I heard a loud clang....the bike rack had collapsed! I was so embarrassed and didn't know what to do! After a few seconds a guy at the next rack over ran over and helped me set it back up. I was so glad that only my bike had been on it, because some of the bikes are so expensive and I would have felt awful if I had knocked other people's bikes over. :-| A volunteer came to the rack as I was pulling on a tank top (needed it because it had a my number attached for the run portion) and told me not to worry and it happened a lot. I am sure he was lying but it made me feel a little better. :)

The run was disappointing for me because I just felt so exhausted. It was starting to get quite hot and humid by this time, and my legs were just not wanting to move. I ended up walking briefly twice: once near the top of a hill and once while getting water.

Luckily the race ends downhill so I at least had a strong finish!

I finished the 5k in 29:06 which isn't horrible, but I just felt like I could do better. Also my GPS watch froze after about 1 mile of the run so in addition to not feeling great, I couldn't even check my pace. Bleh! But I know that it was just a bad run and I will do better next time. :) Overall I ended up with a time of 1:18:26 which was about 4 minutes and 30 seconds faster than my time on the same course in 2013. Woo for improvement!

Beth and I after we finished

Spain Recap!

Hello all! Sorry I've been absent for awhile--between travelling to Spain, catching up on research, and doing a tri (more on that soon!), I haven't made time for blogging. First I wanted to give everyone a recap of my trip to Spain.

We flew into Madrid on Wednesday, June 24 and stayed until the morning of Sunday, June 28th. While we were there we went to the Royal Palace, the Prado, Reina Sofia, and ate lots of good food!

D and I after arriving to Madrid

At the Prado--taking a break after seeing so many great paintings

Gardens outside the Prado

Madrid is all about its green space, which I love! There are beautiful gardens outside of the Prado, outside of the Royal Palace, and there is a huge park called Retiro Park in the middle of the city (similar to Central Park in NYC).

Outside the Royal Palace

I've been to Madrid a few times (this was my 3rd time), but I had never been inside the Royal Palace. It was quite incredible! Each room has a theme, and some of them were quite extravagant. There was even a room with about 4 different Stradivarius instruments which was incredible to see--each of them is probably worth about a million dollars!

There are lots of pictures from Madrid, but I think the one above pretty much sums up the experience. We spent a lot of time eating and drinking (wine, beer, and sangria). They are so social in Spain--dinner is late at night (around 11 pm), but often outside, so even though it's dark and seems like things should be shut down, there are people everywhere out and about. We enjoyed Madrid so much!

The next stop was Seville which is where I had the academic conference that actually brought us to Spain. I don't have any pictures :( because most of the time was spent inside listening to various presentations, but overall it was a good conference. I gave a talk which I think went quite well, and I was happy with the response from the attendees (lots of people came up and talked to me afterwards about it). From Seville, we flew to Santander which is on the northern coast of Spain. My adviser and his wife have a flat in Suances (about a half hour from Santander), so we went to visit them. I had never been, so I was very excited!

Landscape in Santillana del Mar

One of the first things we did in Northern Spain was visit the town of Santillana del Mar--a medieval town that is somewhat frozen in time. There were lots of neat things that we saw, but probably the coolest was the Cave of Altamira. There are cave paintings here that are 40,000 years old!! Unfortunately you can no longer enter the cave (because they are trying to keep it preserved), but they have made a really nice replica that you can walk through. It is about 3 km outside of the town, so we walked there and got some really great views of the countryside.

Another highlight of Northern Spain was hiking the Picos de Europa. We took a cable car to the top, and then hiked about 10 miles (mostly down, although there were lots of small, rolling hills) back to the starting point. The people who accompanied us (my adviser, his family, and several of their friends) brought several types of cured meats, cheeses, and bread on the hike, so we had a lovely lunch on the side of the mountain. 

About to take a cable car to the top

During the hike we saw several herds of sheep, goats, cows, and even horses! It was a gorgeous place, and I feel lucky that we had people who know the area well to take us on this fun trip. :) The day after the hike, we went to a cave that had cave paintings from 24,000 years ago. This cave we were allowed to enter, so we actually got to see the paintings first hand--the paintings were of deer, and although they seemed simplistic when you first looked at them, the tour guide pointed out that the artist had actually used perspective as well as several other complicated techniques. How incredible!

Before we left Spain, we spent half a day in Santander where we went to the beach and rented bikes to ride around the town. We took a train back to Madrid and had a couple days there before we left. We mostly just explored the city and made sure to try lots of different kinds of food. We left on Wednesday, July 8th after being in the country for 2 weeks. We had an incredible time and I can't wait for our next adventure. :)

Month of May Recap

May was a surprisingly busy month for me despite the semester finishing up. I still had a lot of research to work on, and it's always interesting getting into a new schedule.

The first week of May I had finals, which ended up going quite well. I had two classes: Design and Analysis of Robotic Manipulators and Regression Analysis (statistics class). I thought that both of them were pretty hard, and wasn't entirely sure how they were going to turn out, but everything ended well. :)

The weekend of May 16th started with one of my very good friends, Helen, graduating with her PhD! Here we are getting lunch at the Farmer's Market before her final defense.

Of course after she had defended (and passed!), we had to go out and celebrate. It was a lot of fun--also the first time I have ever had Fireball! :-o

Saturday morning, she walked in the graduation ceremony, and then had a cookout for lunch. It was delicious and nice to see everyone. It was also rather sad because she lives in Michigan, and now that she is done with her PhD, she doesn't have any official reasons to come back to Indiana. Hopefully she'll keep coming back just to visit. :) I left from the cookout to go to a cabin at Starved Rock with two of my roommates from college. Here is a picture with them from my wedding!

We had a really good time making a fire, cooking brats over said fire, making s'mores (with Reese's! If you haven't done this, you should try it), and just in general catching up with each other. On Sunday we went hiking at Starved Rock State Park which was beautiful! We ended up walking around 7 miles, so it was a fun and healthy trip. :)

The following Wednesday, May 20, my mom called and told me that her and my dad were going to drive to Atlanta to see my sister and family the next day. She asked if D and I wanted to come--I initially said no because that seemed crazy to just go on a whim, but then we decided that we should go since we didn't have any reason not to. :) We rode down with my parents (four people in a car is a little much for 10 hours ha) on Thursday morning, and stayed until Sunday morning. I love visiting my two crazy nieces--they are growing so fast that every time I see them they are basically different people!

Isabella, the blonde one on the left in the picture, is 6, and Emily is 4. Whenever we visit, we try to spend a lot of time with them, and we always do at least one educational activity. This trip, we brought small rockets down, and they were able to put them together, decorate them (probably their favorite part ha), and then we took them to the local baseball field to shoot them off. They were pretty neat, going about 500 feet in the air! The girls seemed to really like them. My sister and the family are moving to Las Vegas soon--she used to live there and work as a blackjack dealer at Hard Rock Casino. While they are moving, my parents are going to watch the girls, so hopefully I'll get to see them quite a bit in the next month or so. :)

The last weekend in May we didn't do much, mostly just tried to catch up on research. I did get to do some good workouts with my friend Beth which brings me to my summary of my running in May. I set a goal for myself to run 60 miles this month--I wasn't sure if I would be able to do it, but I did! Highlight workouts were: a pub run with the local triathlon store (running + beer will always be a winner in my book!), running with D in Atlanta (I thought I might not make it due to the heat, humidity, and hills), a brick with Beth (30 minutes bike, 30 minutes run), and a long run with Beth the following day (8.15 miles--more than I have done since my half marathon back in November!). I ended up at 61.89 miles, so I barely accomplished my goal! :)

That's it for my recap of the month of May. Sorry I have been off the blogging radar for awhile--I am going to try to keep up with it much better. I do still read all of your blogs everyday though. :)