Maria Trip

Aaaaaand... it's September.
The seventh month. Yeah, right. (In a sarcastic tone if you so feel it).

Monday. Labor Day. Holiday. Indoors, alone, and I find no current focus. So... I thought to write.

No inner force pushing me to. No quiet anxiety urged to trap the freshness of the moment. It's simply been a long time since my last narration, and I do so enjoy reading them afterwards.

Recapping. Graduated from my Masters in CMU, lived in a farm for a month, bought a car, went to Montana Rainbow Gathering, stayed 3 weeks in an intentional community in Oregon, drove to the World Rainbow Gathering in Canada, drove to PA for my cousin's wedding, drove to CO for my brother's wedding, worked in Austin for a month, got contacted by Google, flew to Guatemala, met Aparna at San Marcos La Laguna, flew to Pittsburgh to find closure with Laura, NE roadtrip with Carlos & gang, interview at Google, flew to Singapore with Amanda, backpacked through Malaysia and Thailand, flew to Guatemala in a hurry, stayed for a month, got job offer from Google, moved to Mountain View, flew to China for 2 weeks to meet Echo and Scarlet, and flew back to Mountain View. Caught up!

Now it just so happened that back in November I had told Sharon, my landlady from Austin that I'd be flying to Southeast Asia sometime soonish. Then in December she sends me an email saying "hey, I know this nurse that works with me, she's also going to Southeast Asia soon, I think you'd super-get along, and she's hot. Talk to her! Maybe you can sync your trips!", along with her facebook link. Our trip dates didn't sync up, but when we actually got to talking, she was AWESOME. I LOVED finding her on facebook and sharing what we liked to do and listen and aim for in Life. We clicked awesomely, and I could tell that she liked me from afar.

So after coming back from China, still 10 days away from my job start date, she flies over to meet me! So that was awesome. My apartment had 2 (perhaps one too many) bedrooms, so there was enough space for everyone. She brought her violin, also! So we were able to practice and play a little before taking a roadtrip out through the woods of Northern California.

........
no, I don't want to relive it. Not yet, at last. It was great and happy, but it still pinches my heart when I go too deep into it. For the sake of the story, though: we went to Stanford one day and lay on the grass, then I went to have lunch with my future team at Google on Monday noon, and after that we packed up on stuff from Trader Joe's, and went out camping!

We stopped in San Francisco on the way. Parked near Haight & Ashbury, found a friendly salesman, spent $40, drove up further north to Muir Woods, and spent the night camped up in a hill. Actually, we walked downhill and up the street looking at the full lunar eclipse that just happened to be that very night. It was, at the time, a magical happyning.