Why does it always seem to be that the new year starts in turbo mode?
Before you know it you’re halfway through January and you barely finished reflecting on the past year before your calendar for the next one starts filling up?

Well, not that my last days of 2018 were the least bit intolerable. After leaving Nicaragua, I met up with a happy, and slightly jet lagged, gang in San Fransisco on Christmas Day. The next three days were spent waking up at almost ungodly early hours (when aforementioned jet lagged people wanted breakfast), walking 20k+ steps a day, eating lots of good food and biking across the Golden Gate Bridge. San Fransisco is definitely a place to come back to. We also visited Muir Woods National Park which was amazing.

After a couple of beautiful days in San Fransisco we squeezed into a Range Rover, that looked large on the outside but was rather small on the inside, and headed south. We stopped by Mavericks and a beautiful lighthouse before we landed in Monterey. My biggest impression from that place was the authentic american breakfast at a local cafe with pancakes the size of pizza plates, served with extra everything. The next day we passed through Carmel by The Sea, Santa Cruz, plenty of beaches, lighthouses, steep cliffs and hairpin curves and landed in Morro Bay. The village is mainly a big harbour protected by a natural lagoon that smells of fish and where both seals and otters were swimming amongst the many boats.

After spending the night in Morro Bay, we headed onwards to Solvang, an authentic Danish village, in California, complete with log houses, (swedish) candy stores, and a small mermaid statue. At last we came to Santa Barbara where we welcomed the new year with a nice dinner and somewhat weird champagne. No firework show lighting up the sky other than what mother nature put on herself. Most enjoyable.

After saying goodbye to my father and brother, who headed back to San Fransisco to fly back to Sweden, the remaining parts of the gang made our way to Los Angeles, hit the boardwalk for a bit and ate burritos before continuing onwards to Laguna Beach. 

Waking up the next morning it was my 25th birthday (or did I turn 25 nine hours earlier in Sweden because of the time difference? This confuses me…). We had a really nice breakfast and drove the last few miles to San Diego. The remaining days were spent hiking, surfing, hanging out with great people and watching sunsets. 

This morning I waved goodbye to my mother and sister and suddenly found myself back in the class room and normal everyday schedule. This quarter I’m taking one extra class, potentially a busy time ahead, but all classes seem super interesting so far and it’s a good balance between topics and theory/practical work, so I’m very much looking forward to it.

As always, thank you, take care and I hope you have a happy start to 2019.