Mile High Club

Matt and I ventured to the Mile High City for University of Denver's Admitted Student Day 2 weekends ago. It was a last minute trip (my favorite kind) and we flew into Denver's biggest snow storm in over 10 years. We were anxious whether we were going to be able to fly in but apparently they were allowing flights in but no flights out. The flight was smooth enough, even when we couldn't see anything during the descent and when we landed the plane kicked up all the snow. I'm not going to lie, I never get nervous when I fly and I was a little nervous...

After we took off from Baltimore

After the landing

Denver has a carousel just for skis! 

The drive to the hotel from the airport was nerve racking considering the roads were not plowed well and I don't handle driving (or riding in this case) well in bad weather. We had an 18 mile drive to downtown Denver where we were staying and I was so relieved when we got there safely. 

At the hotel, more snow then I've seen in a while

After hunting down food at the grocery store we watched some basketball and then slept like logs.  The next morning we woke up early and wanted to see some of Denver before we had to head over to the open house. We thought about going to the aquarium but decided our time would be better served to walk around downtown.  It was still snowing a little in the morning but it was sunny and very pretty, except for the roads, there were slushy and yucky. We walked quite a bit around downtown to the LoDo section of the city and found a really cool mongolian bbq place for lunch. After lunch we headed to University of Denver and the Admitted Student Day. 

Denver is not the best at plowing...

Glad I brought my muck boots.

Dodgers will play at Coors Field 12 times this season

Check out the beautiful mountains across from Coors Field

We had some time to kill when we got to the campus so we checked out the gym. It was REALLY nice and is right next to the law building. Matt of course gets to go for free (well not really free, several 10's of thousands of dollars a year) and I can join for less than what I'm paying now. They also have an olympic sized swimming pool where you have more than 15, 25 meter lanes. 

Look how many lanes!

I was impressed by the student and faculty panel which UD presented. I enjoyed listening to the faculty banter discussing their different teaching styles and trying to scare the pants off the students. At the end of the panel one of the faculty said, "we decided to scare you before we came up here but I want to let you know, you will all do fine and are supposed to be here; our admissions department does not make mistakes." The facilities were really nice with video cameras in each classroom which can tape lectures if requested ahead of time. The student on the tour told us to refrain from web surfing though, you will get caught red handed. We sat in on two groups, one of environmental law and one on financial aide. We learned all about the federal money that is available now that was not available when I went to school. Overall, I was very impressed. I think in a group of 100 students, I only saw 3 sets of parents. The students just seemed more mature and of a higher caliber than what I saw at Pace. 

Sturm College of Law building

After the open house, we headed back to the hotel and saw a great sunset on the ride home. Matt researched an all vegetarian restaurant and we took the hotel's courtesy van in which the we don't think the driver had any idea where she was going. That's ok though, she was really nice. We went to WaterCourse Foods in downtown Denver. I was happy to look at a menu and see that all the choices were something that I can eat, instead of 1 or 2 choices. The food was delicious and the company was better :-)

Our Denver weekend was short but I think we saw what we needed to in order to make an educated decision about whether UD is the school for Matt. 

Matt will be traveling to Syracuse next weekend. I am hoping to go but I doubt I will be able to get the time off of work. 

Matt has to put his seat deposit down at University of Denver this week so unless he is totally blown away by Syracuse it looks like we will be in the Mountain time zone come early August. I am very excited about the prospects of Denver. It has an urban feel but is laid back and has so many options for outdoorsy things. I can totally see Matt and myself in Colorado. I will miss family and friends back East but it's just a short 3 1/2 hour plane ride away :-)

This weekend, Matt's and my parents are coming to visit. They are meeting for the first time and it is exciting; i'm sure they will get along great. My plan is to get everyone a little sauced by taking them wine tasting so that should be fun ;) I think we are going to Viramar to an event they are having involving chocolate and reds...yummy.