January Ups and Downs

I'm sorry for not keeping up on this better! I have so much to catch up on. But I have a few free hours since it was President's Day and I sort of had most of the day off. So here's some catching up.

I did eventually get over my Christmas break sickness, just in time for my January up! Which was my friend Katya from Iowa City visiting San Diego for a math conference. Oh, its nice living in city where your friends travel to for conferences. :)  'Cause it means I get to hang out with them!  Katya stayed with me and commuted down the conference center and we had quite a nice time sharing our evenings and most of a Saturday together. We saw some of the sights of San Diego. Below is a picture of us checking out La Jolla Cove. And I even got to sneak in and see Katya present her research too!  We had such a nice time chatting and learning that we had more in common than we knew!  Including the fact that we have coordinating rain coats! :)  Thanks for coming Katya!

But some of the month was rather down. I know that I just got to see a lot of my friends and family over Christmas, and had one friend had just come to visit. But nonetheless, I was really really missing friends. I think it was mostly because I'd been having some frustrating weeks at work trying to push things forward and feeling like I was getting nowhere. And making mistakes. And in the midst of the frustration, I just needed a close friend's couch to cry on. And that couch (or a varied possibility of a few peoples couches) is 1500 miles away. So I was feeling quite lonely.

But February will be better!  I'm taking some good advice from a friend and trying to get out and have some fun (with people). And trying not to let the frustrations at work get me down. And I can look forward to visitors again in March!  I think I have truly been blessed with the best friends ever.

One of the neat things that I did get to do already in February is to go with a gal at my church to an orphanage in Tijuana with a group of others from San Diego. It certainly helps me put the frustrations of my life in perspective to spend a day with some kids from two years old to teenagers who don't have any family and have it much worse than I do, and who can still smile and have fun playing jump rope. Hopefully I can make it down sometime again. Maybe it will be good motivation to try to brush up on my high school Spanish :).