Ups and Downs and Round-and-Rounds

My beautiful grandma, grandpa, madre, and I in Monte Carlo

In the past month, I've:

*been in San Francisco - exploring most of it on my own
*worked at a school teaching English
*went to Monterey Bay Aquarium
*fell in love with San Francisco & the Castro district
*flew to Alabama to be with family
*had too much down-time a.k.a. thought entirely too much about too many things

Basically, not much has happened this past month since I've been back in the States. The most pivotal experience since I've been back has been the death of my grandma. This was the grandma that I had just seen on the cruise, the happy, healthy, bubbly grandma. The innocent, wholesome, loving grandma. The grandma that wasn't supposed to leave us quite yet. No one expected this at all. She may have been sorta old (but not really), but she certainly wasn't in bad shape at all. It sounds like it was a freak accident of a sort that took her from us; we are still waiting for the autopsy results. Since it happened, last week, I've been in Alabama with my family. It was nice being with everyone, but, unfortunately, it was under tragic conditions. These sort of things make me realize just how important family is, and just how loving our family is. It's really too bad that something like this had to happen in order to jolt me out of my dream and straight into reality, without any kind of preparation, but so it goes... It hasn't been easy, as one can imagine, but we are all doing the best that we can. Days go by slowly filled with the occasional sob or three and more and more laughs by the day.

Since I've been here, with little to do, I've been doing much thinking. It all has to do with what's next for me. As I'm not entirely sure of this, I will not be posting it here, but will update this as soon as I know. So far, Sarah and I will be driving back to Oklahoma on Tuesday where I'll be until the 21st of August, when I will be flying to Virginia. I'm not sure (weird) how long I'll be there, but Sarah and I bought tickets to a Redskins game for the 18th of September, so til then at least.

Peace, love, & sunshine always.