Since the Grand Adventure....

Not all that shines is gold; not all who wander are lost. J.R.R. Tolken

Since our travels out of the country, all adventure has not ceased. Although we haven't been lost in the faucets of a foreign journey, we haven't halted our inquisitive endeavors. It is true that we remained within our own country and worked a job, five days a week. It was a blast.

We flew into Sacramento California, from Manila. My brother picked us up from the airport on a rainy December evening. One of our first stops we made was to Winco. Winco, Really? Yes really. After five months in Asia it was overwhelming to view the variety of cheeses, and whole grains. What an intro.
We stayed in our hometown over the Christmas season, and enjoyed every bit of family that we could before taking off on a flight to Southern Baja to visit Jess's parents, sister and niece. While we were there we visited family and ate lots of tortillas. Also, we sailed our catamaran in the Sea of Cortez. The closest city to where we stayed is called Santa Rosalia. It is an interesting area of Baja with a rich history of ingenuity within it's beginning.
The city was founded in 1884 by a French mining company called El Boleo. It was a copper mining city until around 1954. And unlike other mines which would dismantle the mining structures, Santa Rosalia still has all of the original structures in place, which happen to be in the center of town. Most of the buildings are constructed of California Redwood which was shipped down to the baja on the return ships that carried the mines goods. It is one of the few cities in Mexico that you would see constructed of wood.
There are three volcanoes nearby and the city is powered by geothermal electricity. It is also known to be the squid fishing capital of the world, where the giant Humbodlt squid migrate to and produces excellent fishing commerce. Jesse had the opportunity to go fishing with some of the locals here (which is only done at night) and they pulled in over 1 ton of squid on their panga (fishing boat) that night.
While in Mexico we spoke with our travel recruiters (travel nursing) to see if there were any positions available for two surgical techs. And to our surprise, there were two full time positions at Kaiser San Diego. We put our applications in and shortly after (while still in limbo) we realized that if we were to get the jobs, we would have to leave the tacoria where we were having dinner within the following ten minutes, drive 20 min back to the house, pack ALL of our things (and we do not travel light) then chase after a bus to the next town an hour south. We needed to catch that bus and travel 14 hours south to Cabo San Lucas to hopefully catch a flight that we hadn't booked yet to fly home and take care of business. We would have just taken a bus north to the boarder where my car was, but the roads were all closed due to severe flooding of the Northern Baja.
Well long story made short. We did all of that, caught the bus made it to Cabo, picked up wireless in the airport there to talk to our recruiters to find out that we did get the jobs. HOORAY!! SO we purchased some tickets on a freak deal of like, $200 from Cabo, to REDDING California. Which is totally absurd and fortunate for us. We made to flight, then on our LA to Redding connection we ran in to two of our best friends at the airport who were in the same flight as us. We visited the whole way to Redding and the rest is history, literally.

Jess and I spent an amazing six months back in San Diego. We moved into the same trailer park that we were in before, and my best friend moved back to SD within a week of us being there. Jess and I shared the same schedule, in the same OR, we would surf in the mornings together then go to work from 11-7. It was absolutely divine and fortunate and amazing and such an exquisite blessing all around. Completely fantabulous!
This time around in SD, we were able to explore so much more of the area including the surrounding mountains. We visited Joshua tree and hiked Torrey Pines Reserve. What made being there so amazing was that we were rich in friendships and adopted family. Jesse and I also were able to have so much fun together sharing the experience of surfing such fun waves, and beautiful waters where dolphins would be swimming directly beneath me and would surf the waves with us. We had a blessed and amazing six months.