hibiscus

our first plant! this is the hibiscus plant brooke and jason gave us. the angle of this photo makes it look deceptively small. it is actually a couple plants. one has yellow flowers and the other has orange and pink ones. all of them sit in a beautiful turquoise container. i'm excited to see how it takes off!

since arriving back in austin, i've bumped my training back up. i've decided to shoot for the cactus rose 50 miler on october 30. its held out in bandera, tx and has some tough crumbly, limestone trails. its a two-loop course and we have to bring all our own aid...which definitely makes the cost of the race drop a bit! this jump in training has made me able to sleep on command. i hit the pillow at night and am out...and then i can take naps in the afternoon and still sleep the following night. so far i've run and biked to and from work. one evening we also took the bus home together just to see how long it took and where it dropped us off. if i can get away with it, i plan to bike as much as possible.

we had our first sunday in our new ward (church congregation) this morning. there seem to be lots of young couples who are also grad students. there is a family who speaks french so eric will get to put more of his french skills to use and i'll continue to learn at least one word a day. the best thing about this ward so far is that it is packed. if you arrive late, you basically don't get a seat, which is refreshing. i'm excited to meet some new people and get to now a few people who i have seen around the institute but never had the opportunity to talk to much!