The San Francisco Treat...Ding! Ding!

Jeff will probably think I'm lame for including the sound of the cable car in the title name, but it is part of the commercial. It was necessary to include, especially since I've been hearing that sound ALL the time here. The boy I nanny for always says, "Cable Car! Ding, Ding!" I ride the cable car everyday to get to my new job (nannying), and I hear it when I walk home (I'll walk down the hills...I'm not THAT lazy). The picture above is where I hop on every morning - Union Square.

Since we last posted, there has been a lot of things that have happened. In May, I finished teaching - yahoo! In June, Jeff and I finished being Resident Assistants - double yahoo! At the end of June, I finished my ESL Endorsement and we moved - FINALLY! We stopped in at Jeff's parents for a few weeks in Modesto. They were nice enough to let us hang around, help us pick up our stuff from the moving company depot, keep all our stuff in their garage, give us free furniture, and feed us.

We moved into our apartment in the middle of July and it is AWESOME! I keep telling Jeff that I never want to move the whole time we're here (I really hate moving). Jeff quickly asks me what we'll do with our child when we have one...and I'm not quite sure. I haven't figured that out yet, but I will :) It is a small apartment, only 570 sq. ft., but it's cute.

Our ward here is AMAZING! (Sorry if the all caps thing is getting annoying, but I'm really excited about how everything has worked out so well...so it probably will happen again.) The ward members have already invited over for dinners, stopped by to say hi, and baked us things.

I got a nanny job that is just part time, so it's been the perfect job since Jeff won't go back to school until the end of September (isn't that crazy?!), we've gotten to hang out together all afternoon and evening.

Okay enough yapping...here are some cool pictures of our recent adventures.
Oh yeah...we went camping in Moab in June for our 2 year anniversary. We camped at a BLM campground that was right by a river and was only eight dollars!




I got a happy birthday peach when we went to the farmer's market at the Ferry Building on my birthday. It was the best peach I'd had in a long time. Mmmm...I love peaches!


Jeff bought Giants tickets for my birthday and we sat in the bleachers. It was an awesome game, until...
A girl threw up right next to us after she'd been drinking and chewing tobacco - BLEH! So...


We moved to way better seats with no throw up in sight! Ahhh....Happy Birthday! We also enjoyed watching the Bush Man on the piers on my birthday. Jeff's been watching him since he was 10 years old and he still laughs so hard he almost cries. It's surprising how it doesn't get old. The piers are definitely a favorite hang out spot because there's always stuff to see.

I also saw a cute Giants onesie that I wanted so bad. But Jeff said it didn't make sense because we don't have a baby. But we WILL have a baby, so why not get it, right? It made sense to me. But I didn't get it and have regretted it ever since.


Then we went to another Giants game in way better seats later that week. Jeff bought some tickets from Dreadlocks Bill (or Bull...neither of us can remember his name) and they were the best seats I've had. I liked them better than the club level we've been on. You could see everything and we were right behind home plate. I'll sit in those seats again any day. The awesome deal on tickets got included a $5 off coupon for concessions, so we bought Boudin bread bowls with clam chowder, which never get old.

Then we went to Berkeley's Kite Festival and rode on this Salsa party bus, which Jeff says looks exactly like the buses in Guatemala, ha ha.


And saw these kites and some other kites that were dancing to Stairway to Heaven (seems very appropriate song since we were in Berkeley). There was a kite fight as well with an MC giving a play by play, but lets be honest...kites are kites, so we didn't stay there long. Watching kites can only be so interesting for so long. We probably should've brought our own and then we probably would've stayed longer.

The most RIDICULOUS part of the trip was when an ambulance came and there was so much traffic it couldn't get through. We were on our shuttle riding back to our car, so we were surrounded by a lot of people from that city. The ambulance had no choice but to drive over the shrub covered median in order to SAVE A HUMAN LIFE. The woman in front of us started freaking out and cried, "Oh no! That poor grass. They're just killing that grass!" This completely inappropriate comment was shortly followed up with a comment from the lady behind us who exclaimed, "They've just destroyed that habitat's ecosystem." What what? Really people? Really? You've got to love Berkeley residents, right?

We've also been lucky to have two beach trips this summer - one at Santa Cruz and one trip in SC with my family.

I'll have to post all those pictures soon...

It's official...

We FINALLY had our housing acceptance from UCSF's student housing! We will be leaving Provo June 30th and moving to San Francisco. This is what it'll look like:

I'm really, really excited that we'll be living in a forest. Helllooo trees! I've missed them so much being in Provo for so long. It'll be so wonderful to look out our window (we get to be on the third floor, whoot whoot) and just see green!

Jeff also officially graduated! It's been a couple of weeks since graduation, but I thought I'd post about it anyways. We had an awesome time with friends and family and Jeff is now enjoying life as a free man - no obligations until August.

My family was able to help my sister move into her dorm at BYU for spring term that same weekend, and we're enjoying getting to see her a lot more now that she's at the Y (even if it'll just be a couple months before we move away).

I get finished teaching the last week of May and unfortunately have to finish some graduate credit classes in June. The classes will feel like I'm still teaching since they'll be from 8am-4pm everyday, which is quite unfortunate. But they'll be finished on the 25th and then...LET THE FUN BEGIN!

We're also stoked that this month is the last month we are working as Resident Assistants. We still have to pack up our apartment and my classroom, move it all to CA, buy furniture for our apartment, and I still have to find a job. Bleh...but it's all very exciting!

We'll miss our friends and family in Utah, but we're very excited to move onto the next phase in our life.

A Change Would Do You Good

So...we are changing our plans. We are moving to San Francisco for the next four years and Jeff will go to UCSF for dental school. Hurray!

Hopefully people will still visit us even if we aren't going to be living in New York. I mean who wants to live in New York anyway right now? I mean look at it...

Miss Honey or Ms. Trunchbull?

So I had parent teacher conference last week and all went well, which is good because I heard some horror stories from my co-workers. I was also told a cute story from a parent. One of my students was watching Matilda, turned to her mom, and said, "Ya know Mom, if my teacher's hair was a little different color, she'd be Miss Honey!" I guess that's always a plus to be thought of as the nice teacher instead of the evil teacher in the movie. It's always hard to know how your students perceive you, especially when they're getting frustrating and you're stressed. But it was good to hear another mom say whenever she gets upset with her boys (I have twin boys in my class) they always tell her, "Mom stop yelling! Our teacher never yells at us when she's upset." Hopefully my students next year will think of me the same way...it will be very different teaching in NYC and I'll have to adjust culturally once again. You forget while you're teaching mostly LDS students how different their lives are compared to kids everywhere else in the country. When I was testing my students during reading benchmarks, I was reminded of this unique situation I've been teaching in. My student had read a book and I asked him the same question I'd asked the other students and said, "What kind of person was his dad?" The right answer and the one most students respond with is that he's a good person and they proceed to explain why. This particular student answered, "I think he's a missionary." I was a little confused and asked why he'd said that and he replied, "Because he helps people." What a good answer! Then I started to laugh because I can only imagine what a non-LDS teacher some where else in the country would have thought about this student's answer. I know that will be me when I enter into another culture in NYC. I felt it once and I know I'm going to feel it again - like an outsider. I'll be the different one. I'll be the one that isn't in the "club." It's been so comfortable understanding what my students are always talking about because it's things I talked about when I was eight as a mormon child. This next year will be good, but it'll be so different. I've enjoyed seeing what education can be like in good communities, with stable families, and lots of supportive people. I've realized the huge difference involved parents can make in children's education, and I've realized what type of parent I want to be. Each morning as I drive among the picturesque mountains, I feel like I'll really miss this beautiful rural community I've grown to love and respect. I know I've learned a lot and I know these experiences have all been for my own good.

Big lights will inspire you, let's hear it for New York, New York, New Yooork!

In case you haven't already decoded Jeff's encrypted messages about being "In the Empire State of Mind," it is official that we are going to NYC next year. Jeff got into Columbia University for dental school, so we will be there for four years. Jeff got an email yesterday and received his packet in the mail today. We still are in disbelief but extremely excited! Jeff didn't even want to tell people until he officially received his packet in the mail because he said it just didn't feel real. He's worked very hard and he deserves it. After talking about it since the acceptance, Jeff is confident this is the school he wants to attend for dental school. President Cecil O. Samuelson talked to Jeff's pre-dental class last winter semester and advised them all to apply to at least one school they didn't feel qualified to attend. Columbia was Jeff's school that fit into that category. I guess President Samuelson was advised to do that from his dad, which resulted in him applying to Johns Hopkins and getting accepted. It was advise he continued to follow as he searched for jobs and applied to teach at Duke Medical Center and was given the job. Jeff decided it sounded like good advice, so he applied and got in! It's not going to be cheap, but it definitely will be an experience we will never have again. Let's just say in our excitement we've heard Jay-Z's "Empire State of Mind" song over and over and over again. The next step is for me to find a job. I am excited that I get the chance to teach again in an urban environment since that's what I went into teaching to do. I guess it worked out better than we could have ever imagined it would.



So anyone want to come visit us next year?



Can you believe that will be our home?