I've been home a while now...

I returned from Europe with many stories and some amazing inner peace.  I spent the last part of my trip on a small family farm in Avolasca, helping with the harvest and learning to make wine. I took a quick 24 hour trip to Interlaken and was amazed by the jutting mountains and numerous waterfalls. Then a plane ride from Milan took me back to London where my journey began. I finished off the trip with four English boys in a few British pubs, who I've managed to keep long-distance friendships with for three years now and I don't see them coming to an end anytime soon.

Then a long flight brought me back to the US, where I waited in LAX until I caught a flight to join my friend Tom for 2 weeks of Tahoe adventures, including a wedding for his best friend.

That brought me back to San Diego where, though I was living on a different friends' couch each week, I was the most settled I'd been in approximately four months.  I first arrived back in San Diego, the original home of Sun God, the UCSD version of a 'flat stanley' that I took with me as I traversed Europe, on the 13th of October.

My first week back in San Diego, I met with numerous friends, mentors, and acquaintances sharing details about my trip and trying to finalize small details like paying a $5 fee so that the university would send me my diploma.  Oh, and I began the mission that is still driving me today, my post-graduation job hunt.

A week into my return, miraculous fortune struck me and I was hired by the UCSD Alumni Association to work on a 50th Anniversary book project. For the next 7 weeks, I would be working at the Alumni Association on a book of images that was supposed to be published in coordination with the university's Founder's Day celebration.  I contacted departments, some of the first faculty of the school, learned how to acquire a copyright and ISBN for a book, and wrote and edited long captions, an index, and a photographers list.  It was an amazing project and I learned a LOT while doing it. It also helped that I'm kind of a UCSD fanatic, I mean, I did bring a miniature Sun God with me everywhere I went for my trip across Europe...so what i'm saying is that the project was perfect for me. I got to bring to light many of the traditions, myths and people who helped to make the university what it is today.

But during all of this, I was still living on a new couch each week. And I'm so fortunate that I could even do this, it is definitely thanks primarily to the wonderful, amazing friendships that I was fortunate to develop while at UCSD.  Unfortunately, one can only live on couches for so long. I wasn't eating many fruits or vegetables (what could I have done, transported a mini-fridge of all my food each time I switched couches?) and I must say the whole living out of a backpack thing had gotten old after 5 months (especially now that I was wearing business clothes to work, ironing was a pain!)  So after about a month and a half, I took another opportunity, and to the winter I went!