Christmas Eve in San Diego

The weather was unusually nice in San Diego this Christmas Eve.  In the early afternoon as the temp stretched up to about 70 degrees, a group of friends gathered to decorate bikes with as many sparkly things as you could get to fit, dawn Santa hats and ride up and down the ocean walk while playing Christmas music from an iPod system strapped to the back of one of the bikes.

I enjoyed riding leisurely at the back of the pack where I didn't need to think of the pace (as it was being set for me) and where I could hear the music well.  The spectators seemed to enjoy it as well.  My companions chose red as their dominating color of choice.  My green shirt (which I own for playing soccer in, it is our team's color) elicited one of the funniest responses...After a line of "Santas" someone proclaimed "And an Elf!"

Glad I could lend a little balance to the event.

The day also served as another reminder to not take yourself too seriously and to take the time to do the things you truly enjoy.  With the great possibility of misspelling her name due to hailing from Holland, I will give it a shot anyway.  Jutka, the lady with us in the white shirt has recently gone through many months in a hospital and many surgeries.  With her body on the mend, she was like a kid in a candy shop with her renewed freedom to "zoom around" on a bike in the sunshine. 

One section down

Been spending much of my time in the office recently working on the manual for the new San Carlos house project.  It is a big project and we decided to divide the manual up into 5 sections.  Today I submitted a draft for one of the sections to a peer, made some suggested changes and am ready to call that section workable.  Although there will undoubtedly be major changes in the future, there is a sense of completion and yes, some relief.  A Christmas present to myself.

Day Trip

While the group went to work on framing Bertha's house...

She was busy in her daughter's kitchen cooking away... she made burritos for the whole group.  They were delicious!

It was a pretty great day all around.

A Day Trip to Tijuana

What would trips to Mexico be without some soccer!

This guy has some skills.

The game this day drew quite a crowd.

These girls are having a great time burying
things in the pile of leftover rock from the house.

Noise

There is so much going on around us in our culture.  TVs radios telephones cellphones ipods gaming systems and computers keep us plugged in continuously with social networking tweeting facebooking google plus-ing and myspaceing keeping us "connected."  Sometimes it can be too much.  I am not sure we were meant to live at such a frenzied pace.  This is one of the reasons I like working in Mexico.  Generally there is less of...everything.  It is nice to have an excuse every now and then to not be in the loop on everything.

Well, that was interesting.  Now will get to what I was actually going to post about.

There is a classical radio station here that I tend to listen to regularly.  It has the identification letters XLNC which is pretty great, say it out loud and it is like an address to royalty.  On the way to work this morning they played some George Gershwin.  I would not really classify myself as super sophisticated but a few of the words that came to mind to describe this arrangement included enchanting and adventuresome, inviting and exciting.  A lovely way to start the day.

Mexico? Yep, It's still there.

Went to Mexico today with the fellow intern to do some preparations for the Christmas celebration we are going to have on Saturday with Amor's Mexican pastor's and their families.  We shopped for gifts in the Comercial Mexicana.  Packaged the gifts at camp and then stopped for a delicious lunch of  tacos, a torta (sort of like a taco sandwich with bread instead of a tortilla) and an apple flavored drink.

It was a beautiful day.  The sun was out in full force with a cool breeze to balance it.  As we were on our way back to the boarder, school was getting out.  There were lots of elementary aged kids milling about in their blue school uniforms, excited to see the parents there to pick them up.  Sometimes the landscape appears sparse in this area until you put these people into it.

A Snowless Christmas - but there are lights!

Although San Diego doesn't get snow for Christmas, they still play the same Christmas songs...and decorate like there is.  There is a street close to where I live on which everyone decorates in a grand way.  The type of street where you park and walk.  A few images...trying to capturing some of the thousands of lights.

December is here already!

Welcome Back!  (if I have not lost you due to lack of new posting)


With another trip to San Carlos, AZ in November and a flight home to Indiana for Thanksgiving week, the month of November flew by.  In the weeks that I have been in San Diego, the times have been busy.  Outside of work, between soccer, a couple of different church groups, softball, day trips to Mexico on the weekends, and for this week, walking a friend's dog I seem to be constantly on the move.


With a first very rough draft for the manual I have been working on for the Amor San Carlos house done, the tougher job of filling in holes and refining details has begun.  There are so many detail things still to be learned.


I hope you all had a very nice Thanksgiving and had some good visiting time with family and friends.  In lieu of the obligatory "Thanksgiving" post, I will pass on a thought that a friend of mine was pondering regarding being thankful.


What if you woke up in the morning and the only things you still had around you were the things that you thanked God for the night before?


 For what are you truly thankful?




Side note:  In case you were wondering, our soccer team is improving!  Our record does not look impressive (1-7-1) and indeed we are in last place, but we are not losing games by double digits anymore.  As a matter of fact we were quite close this week, I think even having the lead for a while in the 2 to 3 loss.