5 on Friday

1. This Video

think about it.

Definitely gets you thinking about food, what is acceptable for fast food chains to put in their "food" and what we willingly put in our bodies. I am not saying that I don't eat the occasional bad-for-me treats, but I do overwhelm our diets with healthy meals that include lots of veggies with carbs and cheese in moderation. This also gets you thinking about how one person can make a difference. No more excuses! Lets make a difference for ourselves, our society and our future! 

2. This Video

hilariously funny.

(yes...I went there) I love using hashtags, though sometimes I forget to, they are fun and I have definitely seem some that crack me up! However, when they are used in excess, I want to explode! C'mon people! One, maybe two, is enough.

3. Job Searching 

Alright, in all seriousness.... I need a job! I have been searching high and low on job posting sites, I am working with recruiters and networking, networking, networking! I know I haven't been on the search for too long, but I am starting to get restless. Do you all have any great tips to share? Please send them my way! Thanks soo much in advance!

4. AGD

I am proud to say that my collegiate chapter is going through recruitment this weekend and I am more than excited for them! I know that they are going to ROCK it and recruit amazing women to join our sisterhood!

I would also like to brag about the chapter that I have recently started to support in North Carolina - they pinned 15 new members this semester bringing their house up to chapter total! I am soo honored to be apart of this exciting time of year! What a great adventure! I can't wait to see what comes during their formal recruitment in the spring!

WooHoo!

5. This Blog (The Law Student's Wife)

Don't all of these recipes look freaking a-mazing!?

I want to make this, this, this, this, this, this and this. Oh and maybe this, too!

Was that too much? Sorry...I'm not sorry.

both videos were sent to me by one of my dear friends, you know me all too well! - you know who you are, thanks!

Weekends are the best!

 

We started this weekend off with a playful date night on Thursday. We played a little soccer, made dinner and watched the series finale of our show: Frasier….yes we are old people…but we finally finished it and now we don’t know what we are going to watch! All suggestions welcome – preferably 30 minutes shows.

 

Friday night was filled with a celebratory dinner in honor of my sweet friend and sister for her birthday! Dinner, drinks and lots of time chatting and there may have been some dancing involved as well…

 

 

 

 

On Saturday, we woke up to a torrential down pour! I pulled on my rain jacket and boots, hopped on BART and headed to my hometown for its Art & Wine Festival. I met up with my mom, ran into my brother, and spent the day with my girlfriends from high school.

It is always a great time spent with these lovely ladies and our mothers!

 

Then dinner at my parents house was joined by Rich and a couple of other friends! After dinner we decided to show our out of town friends the local dive bar so we all headed down there for some shuffle board and karaoke!

 

 

Our song was a total hit – I mean when you hear Journey “Don’t Stop Believin’” All you want to do is sing along!

 

 

The rest of the weekend was spent visiting my alma mater and helping my old sorority chapter with recruitment preparation. It was so fun to meet new faces and spend time with familiar women!

Chase Meaning. Don't Avoid Discomfort

This is an awesome video that a friend shared and I had to post.

Watch it, I promise you won't be disappointed. 

Advice on Traveling to Peru

Now that I have recapped our entire trip – sorry for putting you through that, but it was amazing for me to relive it! – I want to give some quick tips on how to make the most out of your trip :-)

~ Book your trip as early in advance as possible. We bought our plane tickets in April for our trip in July, the tickets were much more expensive than when we looked at prices in December and January. We ended up getting booking the Salkantay Trek and the airfare through

~ We booked our airfare and our Salkantay Trek through STA Travel. They were great to work with and offered us the best deal!

~ STA Travel works with Bamba Experience to book their Salkanta Trek. The office is located in the Milhouse Backpackers & Hotel - Calle Quera 270, Cusco, Peru (a place you can stay as well, it seemed to be a young backpackers kind of spot, a bit loud but there were always people around)

~ On the trek we were asked to give tips to the cooks, the porters and the guides. Bring enough cash for that as well as incidentals. Along the trek there are a lot of little stops to buy water, snacks and toilet paper.

~ Have toilet paper with you at.all.times! And don’t skimp on the hand sanitizer!

~ Update on the toilets: beware that the toilets rarely have toilet seats let alone toilet paper. Some you even have to manually flush!

~ Don’t drink the tap water if it hasn’t been boiled. I was told not to even brush my teeth with tap water. I was very careful and still, unfortunately, got food poisoning.

~ On that note…don’t eat in the Market…enough said…

~ I was told that most places accepted credit cards, we found that that was typically not the case: most places did not accept credit card. Bring enough Peruvian Nuevo Sol and also know that a lot of places accept American dollars too.

~ Buy something alpaca! I promise you would love it! And don't fear the "baby alpaca" labels - that just means that the alpaca has never been sheared before! :-) 

~ When at Machupicchu, stamp your passport!

Our trip to Peru was amazing. We saw beautiful sites, met fantastic people and made lifetime memories!

Machupicchu

This is the last post recapping our trip to Peru. This post also happens to be the main reason we chose to go to Peru – this allows me to relive our time at Machupicchu! We had some amazing views along the way, we got to experience some pure Peruvian culture and we met some of the most awesome people.

*Fun Fact: We visited Machupicchu on the anniversary of its discovery by Hiram Bingham on July 24, 1911. 102 years later and this site is one of the Wonders of the World (depending on the list you look at) and its popularity continues to grow each year. Check it out here.

We woke up around 4am, got our things ready and headed down to the bus terminal. We were on the 3rd bus up to Machupicchu. We waited in line and were let in at 5am, when the site opens to the public. The sun hadn’t risen and there was this beautiful glow about the ruins that offered this magical feel. I have to tell you that when I first saw the ruins, I tears welled in my eyes. It was a hard 5 days, but seeing this beautiful place made all of the muscles aches and blisters on my feet totally worth it.

Our first picture of Machupicchu, and our awesome guide Simba! (It was pretty chilly before the sun rose)

 

 

 

Before the sun rose over the mountains, there was a breathtaking view of the moon.

As the sun rose over the mountains and onto Machupicchu.

Can you see the face?? The mountain in the background: the face is facing the sky, the right is the forehead, moving left: the tall point (Huayna Picchu) is the nose, then the mouth and the point all the way to the left is the chin. Do you see it now??

 

 

 

 

 

This is a stone that mimics the shape of the mountains behind it.

Once the sun came out the temperature rose!

 

This is the house of the Condor. This is where the Inaca’s would bring their offerings to the Gods, leave it on the stone on the ground and then the Condor would come, pick up the offering and take it away. Can you make out the shape of the Condor? On the ground is it’s head and the two large boulders on the upper portion of the picture, on both sides, are its wings.

The terracing. Amazing.

 

We decided to take a short walk to the Inca Bridge.

 

The Inca Bridge is behind me.

One of the cameras in our group was able to take Panoramic pictures. We got an awesome shot of the group with Huayna Picchu in the background!

We spent a long time roaming around the ruins and imagining the Inca people living there. It was such a beautiful place and such and amazing experience, it is almost hard to put into words.

We left and headed back to Aguas Calientes for lunch and to catch our trains back to Cusco. Peru was amazing. Machupicchu was breathtaking and a definite must see.

Salkantay Trek: Day 4

We woke up and all piled into a van to go Zip Lining over the Urubamba River at Cola de Mono. It was beautiful outside and zip lining with these views was spectacular. I had never zip lined before, so this was totally out of my comfort zone…but totally worth it! We got to go on 6 different lines, back and forth over the river. Rich and I both got to go face down, aka: Superman & SuperChica, and we were also able to go together on a line.

After the first line, waiting for the second.

Rich getting ready for the Superman!

Superman!

SuperChica!

So, as mentioned before: I wasn’t feeling well on this hike…and so it became a joke between everyone that we would give a run down of the toilets and encourage our group to go or to hold it. This was the view from the toilet at the zip lining place. Yeah…amazing! {and they even had toilet paper!}

After zip lining we rode in the bus for maybe 2 hours to the start of our last portion of the actual hike. We stopped for lunch and then hiked for a couple of hours into Aguas Calientes.

We got to the town of Aguas Calientes, we put our things in our room, met up with some of our group from a beer and then showered and headed to dinner.

We had dinner, got the run down for the next day: Machupicchu, and all headed off to bed. We were getting on the first bus from Aguas Calientes to enter Machupicchu when it opened to be there for the sunrise (and when it wasn’t so crowded)