Greetings from Philadelphia

When did the layout here change? It's adorable. Anyways, so I've been in Philadelphia for about a week now. The city is pretty cool, lot's of neat architecture, nice parks, historical junk. Pretty much everything is a museum. The city as a whole is obsessed with Benjamin Franklin. You can't really go anywhere without seeing his name or his face or a sculpture of his head or some motif of kites, keys and lightning. The neighborhood I live in is also nice with cute little cafes and things like that (though admittedly I often find myself at the starbucks and wholefoods nearby). But of course the highlight of my day is the quality time I spend with Claire Martin-Doyle along the Schuykill River. I think she is having alot of fun being back in Philly and around Vesper, she seems particularly jovial. The other people around Vesper are super intense. There's other pre-elite summer programs going on for lightweights and others. And let me tell you, these guys (and girls) are beasts. I stay out of their way as much as possible. So we've been sculling for one week now and I'm still getting used to it. My left hand in particular is not pleased with the transition from sweep rowing and is letting me know it by forming some pretty nasty blisters. We've gone out in doubles, quads and singles (I still haven't graduated from the training singles though, maybe by the end of summer). Claire likes to put me in bow which freaks me out but I'm getting used to steering and navigating the river so I guess it's a good thing. But I'm out of my comfort zone for sure. There's about four other girls in the group right now (including MIT alum Kate Hoff) and they're all really nice. I think a couple more are coming this week. We're going to be racing at the Philadelphia Independence Day Regatta the weekend of the fourth and then at Club Nationals toward the middle of July. So that will be exciting (and by exciting I mean terrifying). I'll let you all know how the racing goes when the time comes. So that's it I guess, just accumulating alot of strokes one at a time and hopefully getting better with each one.

I miss you all terribly and can't wait for next season to keep building the momentum we've been working on!