home again, home again

I am back in Denver, back to the ol' real life again! It's been chaotic learning how to transition out of b&b mode and back into other things, odd to be able to get so much sleep and pick out what clothes I am going to wear that aren't the same clothes I wore the day before! Everything kind of happened at once when I got back. I missed the first week of school while I was in San Francisco, so I jumped into that pretty behind and confused. I forgot how much ground can be covered in a few lectures! I took some time this weekend to slowly catch back up and am starting to feel confident that I won't entirely bomb my exam tomorrow. I'm working on finding work again, trying to get my foot in the door at one of the hospitals in the area. In the meantime I've been babysitting for a few of the families I used to help out, and it's been nice to be back in the baby section of life again. All the kids grew so much while I was gone!

School stresses aside, things have been really busy but great! JP and I moved in together, which is a big step for both of us, and it's been fun! Well, the packing/moving/cleaning/scouring/driving all over portion wasn't fun, but that is all over and we now have so much space we can barely fill it up! I don't have many belongings with me in Colorado, as you might remember I moved here with just a car load of things last fall, and both JP and I were living in studios that didn't exactly leave much room for extraneous possessions. We are now in a 2 bedroom house and are gradually finding chairs to sit on (previous count = 1 computer chair from JP's desk), a table to eat at, and other necessities at the many thrift stores in the metro area. We've even got a yard now, which Yin is beyond excited about. She spends most of the day moving from sun patch to sun patch, just lounging about taking in the scenery. It's a pretty hard life.

One of the first things to unpack was my Grandma's owl that always hung in her kitchen and now hangs in mine.

My bike arrived shortly after I did, a little worse for the wear, but mostly fine.

Transition-wise, I think I am doing alright. I miss everyone, and am constantly reminded of the trip everyday, but I think it was the exact right amount of time and I was ready for the end when it came. We e-mail each other multiple times a day, are busy uploading pictures to facebook and are planning the reunions to come. It should be good.