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Sunday, April 15, 2007

Weekend Recap - Monterey

This weekend was a girls getaway weekend in Monterey. Of the girls who were on the trip four of them are friends I met five years ago when I studied abroad in England. It's pretty amazing that after five years we're still in contact with each other, let alone still travelling together. If you had asked me five years ago where our friendship would be today, I would have probably told you sending emails back and forth occasionally. I would have never guessed that one of these girls would have been my roommate for 3 1/2 years, I would be living in the city that four of them live in, and that we would still be travelling together. It's crazy!
 
And that's also a good way of describing the weekend. We all met up in Monterey on Thursday night, well I guess technically it was very early Friday morning. After a short night of rest we hit the city for a wonderful breakfast followed by a day at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. I absolutely love this aquarium and it was awesome to share it with my friends. Strangely enough on our way home we found ourselves at A Taste of Monterey ( http://www.tastemonterey.com/), a tasting room which represents over 70 regional wineries. Here we quickly made friends with the wine server and sampled quite a few delicious wines. I think it was supposed to be a 6 wine tasting, but after 10 we lost track which made the walk home very enjoyable.
 
On Saturday, we decided to continue our love of wines by visiting some tasting rooms in the gorgeous Carmel Wine Valley. We drove into the heart of the valley to visit two tasting rooms and then headed back towards the coast for a tour and tasting at a third winery. I've been on a few brewery tours before but I believe this was my first winery tour. Let me just say, if you are ever in Carmel Valley, make reservations with Chateau Julien for their wine tour, it's well worth it. Afterwards it was finally time to return my lovely birds to my parents and then make a surprise guest appearance at A's Birthday BBQ. I don't think there are words to describe the amount of shock, happiness and disbelief when I appeared in her garage door. It was awesome!
 
Sadly, most of today was spent in the car driving home. It was strange walking through the front door and not having the birds chirp out their hello, but I have to admit it was nice to know that I was going to have the whole evening to myself to unpack and get things settled for the week. The last couple of weeks have been super busy between getting my Master's project turned in on time for corrections from my committee and taking care of the birds. I definitely wouldn't have survived without the weekend breaks I have treated myself too.
 
This week is a short week, I am only home for three days before I fly to Northern California to attend the California Dietetic Association's Annual Conference. I want to put everything on hold until after I return from that, but unfortunately I will be receiving the corrections to my Master's project once I return. With only a week to make the corrections and then turn in the final project, I have no choice but to work as hard as I can this week so next week I can solely focus on my project.
 
In other words the next 15 days can be broken down like this:
  • 3 days of catching up from the last two weeks while sorting out school, work, and my rotation
  • 3 days of networking and professional development
  • 1 day off for fun
  • 5 days of balancing school, work and my rotation while finishing my Master's project
  • 1 day off for volunteering
  • 1 final day of Master's project fun
  • Freedom!

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