Ahhhhhhh California

California living. Sunshine, yoga, ocean vistas, good food, espresso, everybody feeling wonderful. I understand why people come from all over to move here. It is 0 degrees Celsius in Edmonton and it snowed this morning! I was very eager to leave Edmonton after residency to do work in Neuropsychiatry at UCSan Diego. I felt I had moved to paradise and it still feels that way!

I slept well, I slept in, I took a yoga class, I ate Moroccan food, I hiked up in the hills over the valley with an imagined view of San Francisco in the far far distance. It was up and up and hill after hill and more hills. What a wonderful life my sister has in this beautiful place. Drinks, wine, steaks on the grill, conversation with delightful young people planning their lives and adventures. My niece and nephew are just starting their adult lives and there is so much good energy here.

I feel that I am starting this new life of mine too. Leaving the past, being open to everything and anything that presents itself. Before the end of July, I will be in Quito looking for a home, learning Spanish, getting Maya organized for her new school and activities. I am a little worried about the Spanish part. I have not been disciplined enough to get Maya started on learning the language. Everyone says she will have an easy time picking it up once we move there, but school will be a much better experience if she speaks and understands the language before she begins classes. I tried to find a tutor for her in December and January, but the ones I chose did not work out and our lives became far to busy to pursue it. We will stay with Erika and Isabelle in Quito for the first several weeks, and I will try not to speak English with Maya (a great challenge I think). Isabelle is eager to spend time with her and help her learn. I wonder if four weeks is enough. What I do know is that there is no doubt Maya will learn Spanish in our year there and that she will be appreciative of that in time.

Our house has been shown several times and there are possibilities. A quartet of college students were interested, but I do not think that college students would take good care of the house. A family would like to rent for two years, and at first that sounded impossible, but I am starting to see that as a definite possibility. We would return after our year and rent until our house is ready. We could live in an entirely different part of the city and have an entirely new and different adventure in Baltimore.

Sometimes it feels that every step forward is negated by one step back and that we make no progress at all. Perhaps being far away makes it clearer that we are moving toward our year away, or maybe just time passing and the day of departure ever so near simply feels like progress.