Perhaps California is not quite the "world's end," but it sure felt like a world away from the life of studying we had in cold DC, just before the break. Here are a few pictures to document the trip.
Christmas Eve after dinner and before church. By this point, we had both racked up lots of extra hours of sleep, gone running on the beach, played tennis, read for fun (well, sorta), and done all Christmas shopping and wrapping.
If you look closely, you'll see the corner of the puzzle we started on the coffee table. We became quite obsessed quickly. Stefanie has a long history of expert puzzeling, but Jonathan is catching up quickly. We spent several hours sitting in front of the puzzle with home made apple cider and generally feeling very relaxed.
Stefanie's father gave Jonathan tennis lessons for Christmas! We have been playing a little tennis in DC, and are hoping to make this our "life sport" that we can play together forever, or at least until we need to learn wheelchair tennis. Jonathan's lessons were with Stefanie's old coach, Suella! She's great. She still calls us both "kiddo," and has been nationally ranked (in the top 3) for her age bracket for the last 20 years! Don't let the looks of a cute 69 year old southern lady with an awesome drawl decieve you- she's fierce on the court!
Jonathan improved a great deal. Pretty soon, we were able to have more steady rallies and really enjoy the game together.
After one of Jonathan's tennis lessons, we drove to the top of Mt. Soledad to check out the awesome view of San Diego that you can get from all sides of the mountain. It was a little cloudy that day, but you can still see what a beautiful city it is!
After all the excitment of Christmas, we had the celebration of Stefanie's mom's birthday. We went out to breakfast at the La Valencia, where Stefanie's parents had their wedding reception.
And of course, there was lots of walking along the beach. Even though we spent a lot of time relaxing, being active, and having fun, we managed to get some work done as well. Jonathan prepped to teach his 3 week intensive course for the first three weeks of January. Stefanie started to do some studying for the Step 1 exam in June.
Jonathan began teaching his class yesterday and has enjoyed it so far, feeling encouraged that the kids seem interested and engaged. Still, it is lots of work!! Stefanie started her 4th semester today, diving into the GI unit. We've gotten a lot of questions from friends and relatives about what it is like to be married and be students. While it isn't exactly the most romantic way to spend our time together, we couldn't imagine going through grad school any other way. We are learning to become good study coaches of one another, study break takers, coffee and snack makers and bringers, back massagers, accountability partners, and post-studying exhaustion nappers.
While we do spend most of our time busy with school, we've managed to knit ourselves (or become knit) into a wonderful little faith community here in our neighborhood. This Sunday, Grace Meridian Hill is officially launching its full worship service, and we couldn't be more excited to have gotten to be a part of planting of this church and to now be with this community as it transitions into this new phase.
We didn't make any concrete New Years resolutions, but we're both hoping that this year will bring some deepened frienships with folks in DC and play tennis together.
