Settling in

So I will now retract my previous statement about it not raining alot. It has rained EVERY DAY! I can't say I'm sick of it yet, but it does get annoying. I want to see this "beautiful summer" everyone keeps talking about! In time I'm sure.

I am officially done with my first week as an intern. I sat thru 2 days of very boring staff orientation then Wednesday was my first official day. I'm working in St. Vincent's hospital in their fitness center called Wellness Works. We work with the centers in 3 other hospitals around the Portland area. They offer a place for employees to come work out on their breaks. But the main thing we do is the corporate wellness program for all 7 Providence Hospitals in Oregon- that's about 14,000 people! There are always events and promotions going on, but the one about to kick off is called "Wellness Adventure" and its a 12 week challenge for the employees to reach health goals. They set goals for anything they want- weight loss, quitting smoking, stress management, etc. and we give them support the whole way to help them acheive their goal. The cool thing about it is the hospital is donating $1 per participant to the food bank and then another $5 each to whoever sticks with it the whole 12 weeks. It's a great program- much much bigger than anything else I've worked with.

In addition to that, Molly- my supervisor- is letting me poke around in other departments in the hospital too. I will (hopefully) be sitting in on an open heart surgery pretty soon, and also want to help with a program in the nutirion department helping educate parents on childhood obesity. I'm hoping to milk this internship for all it's worth and see how much I can see in my 3 months here.

In an attempt to make some friends, I signed up to be put on a soccer team in the area. NUWS (Northwest United Women's Soccer) is a non-profit association dedicated to promoting women who want to play soccer in Portland. There are TONS of teams, so hopefully I meet some cool people.

I'm still waiting to get internet hooked up, so hopefully pictures soon! Hope everyone has a good weekend!

xoxo

Kelly