Growing up in Denver was amazing! I got to learn the bus system from a young age and was able to get around by myself by the time I was 14 years old. I love Denver because it is also very close to the mountains. I grew up skiing, and once I got a job and began making enough money to buy a season ski pass, I began to ski almost every weekend! I still ski a lot, and recently I have been getting into camping, hiking and backpacking. Backpacking is the best because you get to experience beautiful places in the wilderness where most people will never go. I have gone on a few multi-day backpacking trips. I would highly recommend going on one!
In high school, I worked at a local ice cream shop. I got to eat ice cream every day. Imagine that! The shop had over 400 flavors that they rotated through. I loved "Samoan cookies" and "graham cracker" the best. If you ever visit Colorado, you have to go to Liks Ice Cream! In high school, I played on a lot of sports teams, including baseball and soccer -- this was my favorite part of school. I also continued to learn Spanish and I took my studies very seriously.
After high school, I made the big decision to not go directly to college. I decided to do a foreign exchange year with Rotary International in Lima, Peru. This was the best experience of my life. I got to live in a city much larger than Los Angeles. I got to travel around the beautiful country of Peru, which has desert, ocean, mountains and jungles. It is truly a wonderful place and I know I will go back. During this time, I lived with different host families. These families would become people I really trusted, and after a year I was almost as close with them as my actual family. I learned Spanish because my host families didn’t speak English.
