Summer 2012



Wow.  It's been a while.  My only excuse is that this has been a pretty crazy summer.  I've hardly been in any place longer than a week and a half at one time. 

On the way home from Kazakhstan, I met my parents in St. Petersburg.  They never got the chance to visit me when I was there, but they wanted to see the place I called home and meet my friends there.  The trip didn't turn out exactly as planned... we somehow managed to show up at half of the museums/sights on the one day of the week that they were closed!  But as my mom pointed out, they were there to see me and my life, not the tourist destinations, and we did plenty of that.  We did a LOT of walking and gathered an impressive amount of blisters, but still managed to have a pretty good time. 

My parents in front of the Hermitage

After visiting a gorgeous Orthodox church in Petergof

One of the cool things we were able to do was to celebrate my parents' 38th wedding anniversary in a particularly Russian fashion.  It is a tradition in St. Pete that when a couple gets married, they put a lock on a bridge and then throw the key in the water.  We found the perfect spot on a bridge just across from the Church on Spilled Blood (only about 50 feet from the spot where my roommate got engaged the year before).  I took about a million pictures, but these are some of my favorites:

Once we got home, we had a week to get over jetlag before my mom and I headed to San Diego to spend the 4th of July with my grandpa and his twin brother Jack.

93 years old and still going strong-
good to know longevity runs in the family!

A few weeks later, we were back in California for the Mammoth Lakes Jazz Festival.  We heard some amazing music, and I took the opportunity to teach my dad some swing dancing.

On the way to the festival, we took a wrong turn that took us about an hour out of our way.  It was the best mistake we ever made.  We ended up going through an absolutely beautiful mountain pass and saw some unbelievable rock formations.  On the way home we took that route intentionally, and detoured to visit the Patriarch Grove- a grove of some of the oldest trees in the world.  These trees, bristlecone pines, can live up to 5,000 years.  The oldest ones look almost dead until you look closer.  One of their survival techniques in hard times is to redirecting all nutrients to a few limbs and let the rest of the tree die. 

We didn't see the Methuselah tree (over 4,800 years old) since it was too far a hike, but the oldest trees we saw were well over 4,300 years old.  They could have been there when Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt!  I just can't fathom that!

I spent a week and a half in Atlanta, visiting my sister and her family.  I had such fun hanging out with my niece and nephew.  Will is 5 and started kindergarten a few days after I left.  He spent a fair amount of time riding his bike around with the neighborhood kids, but we definitely bonded over a soccer ball and a few imaginary shark attacks.  Carson was shy for about 2 minutes, and then she was attached to my hip for the rest of the trip.  She always asked me to sit next to her at dinner- that is, until my last day when Gammy came to town, when she asked me if I could move so Gammy could sit next to her! :)  Aunt Molly quickly became old news! 

The cutest kids in the world: my niece (Carson) and nephew (Will)

While in Georgia, I sold my car.  It's been there for the past two years, but now that I'm starting to think that my life will be working overseas, it was time to sell it.  It's kind of weird. Bit by bit I'm selling off/giving away my life in the states... first all my furniture, now my car.  I was a bit emotional over it (embarassing, I know) because it was the first car I'd ever bought with my own money.  I'm sure I gave the guys at Carmax a good chuckle when I asked them to take a picture of me with it.

And finally, off to Pasadena for training.  It's always one of my favorite times of the year.  Meeting all the new teachers, going to Conal's for milkshakes, seeing old friends... despite the work teaching sessions and training the new teachers, it really is a wonderful break.

My new roommates, Rachael and Colleen



Hanging out after the last night of practicum-
we may or may not have been a bit giddy :)

This training had something extra, though.  One night I was at Starbucks with two friends, Rachael and Elizabeth, and we noticed a lot of police cars and people in lawn chairs across the street.  We asked what was going on and it turns out that they were filming an episode of the TV show "Criminal Minds"!  We immediately gathered our things and went down the block to gawk like tourists.  The best part is that they were filming a scene with our favorite character, Dr. Reid.  I took plenty of pictures, mostly to remember what the scene looked like for whenever I see that episode.  It was a pretty great "We're in LA" moment. :)



So, that was my summer. It has been crazy busy, but great. And now I have two weeks at home to hang out with my parents, pack, and eat my favorite American foods one more time. I should be writing an entry soon describing the change of plans that happened this summer (I'll be in Azerbaijan instead of Kazakhstan), but right now, I need to go to bed. So goodnight everyone!