Back to life, back to reality

It's really nice when returning your 'life' is a good thing!! The week at work in the US was amazingly stressful, productive, rewarding, and fun all at the same time! I'm encouraged about my job, the future, and life in general. After a week full of family and friend visits, I rented a car and drove down to Columbia on Friday night, got to see my "Blythewood family" for an inspiring talk. Two of their four kids are working in a school for urban poor and refugee children (www.strawberryd.com) where I went a couple summers ago. They use Montessori and have had incredible success turning these children's lives around.

I also got to see my cousin and my kitty - since my cousin has 'adopted' Xai-xai while I'm in the UK, so that was cool. I stayed there and got up in the morning to head over to my friend's house for breakfast! She's due in May, and this was my first time seeing her pregnant - we've been good friends since 6th grade, so it will kinda be like being an aunt. :)

Left from there to drive on to Atlanta and eat lunch with a college friend at Fellini's Pizza - classic hotlanta yumminess! I was having serious nostalgia the whole day - mainly from all the trips I took from Columbia to Atlanta while with Mike, and just the whole intense experience that was living in Atlanta when I finally lived there.

Flight back to London was great - had a whole row to myself! First time since moving that I have flown overnight to arrive on a non-work day, and it was soooo much better. I got in, took a nap, got up and had a relaxing Sunday afternoon. Then, it was party time!! It was a friend's birthday, who is a dj, and thus has several dj friends so they found a cool bar to have all their friends over and they rotated dj-ing for the night. Much dancing and good times occurred...but I had to cut it kinda short so I could have enough rest to fight the jet-lag this morning!!

Tonight, the festivities continued with Mexican night - my flatmates dad (from Mexico) is visiting, so he brought his tortilla press and various Mexican sundries, and they made this amazing dinner - with some potently yummy margaritas! We had a bunch of people over, it was a great family feel, kinda like Christmas was.

I took heaps of pictures of both events, so I'll have to get those up on flickr soon. So far London has put on a spectacular display of reasons why I love living here so much! :) I played the piano after everything died down both nights too, it's hard to remember what I was whinging about...