Highlights so far: The mountains. The snow. The fact that I can now say I live in the west. Finally prying open my mailbox after it was frozen shut, thanks to the nice Provo postal worker with his boxful of tools and sprays and gels.

The biggest problem so far? Going to do laundry for the first time and finding my detergent frozen solid – I forgot to take it out of my trunk.

I came to Provo from Peoria, Illinois. Before that, it was Seattle and Ohio, and before that, New York. I’m excited to be the new photo intern here at the Daily Herald. And really excited to hear that there’s hog wrestling and rodeos.

I took the photo above this week during the inversion (new word to my vocabulary, thank you Utah Valley). I was warned my first week about how bad the inversion was, but I couldn’t really visualize it until I got up high. Yeah, it looks pretty bad. But those mountains look pretty great, and make me really excited about what will be my home for the next 6 months. Utah, here we go!