Back in Beautiful San Diego (Just for a Week! How I Miss You!!)

Sorry for the 2-week silence - we were in San Diego for a week and when we got back, work was pretty crazy. So this is going to be a belated post about my week back in my adopted hometown, San Diego! Although I moved to Louisville without any hesitation because I wanted to be with Fernando, there's no doubt that I miss San Diego and all my wonderful friends there loads and loads. Going back for a week was fantastic but it also made me feel like we still live there and are only in Louisville on vacation! Nevertheless, I maximized our short time there by cramming in as many social activities as possible (when I wasn't working of course!)

Early in the week my friend Rosa and I headed to La Jolla Cove, probably my favorite place in San Diego. I used to get up early and go running down this stunning sweep of rocky coast and blue water, back when I was an energetic grad student who rolled into the lab at 10 am:) We walked all the way from the Cove to Windansea beach, climbing up and down rocks. I never knew you could do that before!

I spent a couple of days in the office putting in face time and reminding people that I'm more than a disembodied voice over the phone. I was touched that everyone wanted to go out to lunch with me and people were greeting me with, "Welcome back, Stranger!" in the hallways. Ahhhh, the life of a mini-celebrity. Everybody wanting a piece of you...!!

Of course I had to go to my coffee mecca, Peet's Coffee and Tea, in La Jolla. Besides my friends and the beach, that's something I really miss about San Diego, as anyone who's heard me wax poetic about Peet's will attest. Was a bit bummed to see that none of my coffee guys who were fixtures at Peet's for more than 10 years and who knew my name were at the La Jolla Peet's. But maybe I should feel happy for them because that could mean they've moved on to bigger and better things (though it's hard to believe anything is better than Peet's!) Fernando and I shipped 8 pounds of coffee back to ourselves - that should keep us until our next trip!

We rounded out our week with dosa at Bawarchi Dosa with my good friends and future bridesmaids Julie and Rosa, Japanese noodles at Nozomi, and salsa dancing at the Marriott in La Jolla. I danced my first bachata (the basic step is 2 steps left followed by 2 steps right) with Fernando, which was fun and relatively easy for a novice like me. I'm going to try to find a salsa teacher in Louisville - I felt bad for Fernando because he can't really pull out the fancier dance steps with me right now. However, I could definitely dance well enough for the closing party on the last night of Fernando's conference. All of those chemists getting down on the dance floor was a pretty scary sight! We had fun though, at least until 10 pm when the band played its last song and the lights came on. Well, it was a scientific conference after all;)

After drinks (yummy pina coladas that she made - I'll try to wrangle the recipe from her) and shopping with my friend Sharon, a delicious homemade Columbian brunch with our friends Elvia and Andreas (and munchkins Andreasito and Valentina), sushi with my friend Kirsten, and a wonderful day at Sea World with Fernando's sons Marco and Alejandro, we left San Diego extremely satisfied and with all my pent-up need for socialization fulfilled. It was sad to leave San Diego and even harder to leave the dear people there, but a part of us was looking forward to getting back to our apartment and routine. We're definitely getting old!