The James Family: Seniors Kick Butt!

This week has been a fun, but exhausting week! Tuesday afternoon I left with a couple of friends to volunteer in St. George for my gerontology internship, at the Huntsman World Senior Games! First off, since I was not coming home until Friday, this meant I would miss a whole week of class, and unfortunately I had two papers, and a large finance project due while I was gone, along with a test Friday when I came back. The previous weekend was General Conference (which I loved! Elder Holland! Need I say more?? Amazing) so needless to say not much was accomplished. That meant I had Monday, and Tuesday morning to complete everything. I was very stressed and didn't think I would make it! I finished everything by Tuesday afternoon, and was very relieved.

We left Provo late afternoon for the 3 1/2 hour drive to St. George. When we got there we had housing set up by members of the church, who volunteered their homes for BYU students! It was really great. St. George was beautiful as always, great red cliffs, and weather warmer than it had been in Provo the last couple of weeks!

The next morning I woke up at 5:30 (which means I got to sleep an extra hour than I usually do) to be at the games by 7:00. I forgot to mention what I was doing there. Well we were there to give the athletes free health screenings, some of the screening can cost a good amount of money, and for being in the games they get them for free. The seniors take this very seriously and everyday we were there they were lined up by the door, before we even got there to get their screenings. Screenings lasted from 8 am to 4 pm. and we were busy non-stop.

I was able, the two days of screening, to participate in the Blood Sugar, Osteoporosis, Blood Pressure, and Balance Testing. I was also trained to do eye sight and pressure, but I wasn't very good at it so I didn't dare try to screen these seniors who took their screenings very seriously! :) My favorite was the Blood Sugar testing. It was just a lot of fun to draw blood and to test it, I felt so professional! LOL.

The Huntsman senior games are truly amazing. It was for seniors age 50 and above ( just recently they allowed 50 year old's. In the past you had to be 55 or above.) You might think that most of the athletes would not be that old, but I can tell you that a large majority of these athletes were over 70. The eldest I saw was in his 90's and had been going to the games for over 20 years. One man I met had six gold medals around his neck and he was 88 years old! Very inspirational. It makes you want to set goals to be 88 and able to have a body that functions as well as his does.

Almost every single sport you can think of, and some, were represented. Most common was track field, and softball, and table tennis, but some of my favorites I heard about were Cowboy action shooting, and Square Dancing (apparently, St. George is the only place in the world were you can compete in Square Dancing. Everywhere else it is just for fun and not competitive.) Those who Square dance told me that they square dance 3-4 times a week for about 2-3 hours each day! Again not your High School PE square dancing! A lot of athletes participated in multiple sports. One women I was screening was in her 70's and participating in a 5K, 10K, and swimming. That was quite common.

When it says "World" Senior Games, it does mean the world. Not only did people travel from the States, as far as NY to California, but there really was people from all over the world. To name just a few that I met; Barbados, Canada, Austria, Brazil, and Taiwan. I am sure there are more, but those are the ones I met.

It was a great experience that I really enjoyed. I loved talking and laughing with all the seniors. As volunteers, the gave us shirts, feed us (really good food I might add) and even gave us movie tickets. The group I went with also decided to take a tour of the Brigham Young House in St. George. It was a really pretty house, with all the original paint colors and furniture. Apparently Brigham Young lived in this house when he was overseeing the building of the St. George temple. He quickly learned that health wise, he did a lot better in St. George, so every winter he would leave his Salt Lake house and live in St. George. All the trees are trees Brigham Young planted. In the back there were fruit trees that he planted, and the tour guide let us go and pick pomegranates off his pomegranate tree! I wish I would have taken a picture, but I ate the fruit. But now I can say that I ate fruit from a tree that Brigham Young planted! ( not to mention fruit that is actually really expensive to buy in the grocery store, at least here in Utah anyway!)

All in all it was a great trip, that left me exhausted when I got home, but I am happy to say that I still passed my test on Friday, after all of that! So I am not complaining!