California and Staging

California was amazing! Lots of driving, but no accidents or car trouble. I got to eat a lot of interesting food (Ethopian, Korean BBQ, Mexican food on Cinco de Mayo, and In and Out burgers with animal style fries...yum!). Here's our group (minus Kelty and Nathan)

We went to the Getty, did some hiking in San Diego, and the guys tried surfing! One of my favorite moments of the trip was having coffee with Kayla one morning in LA. We sat with a 72 year old Hungarian man who had been in the film industry for a long time. He shared stories about celebrities and talked with us about art, literature, and music. He described a local library as a "20 course meal for the soul." Beautiful.

I'm in St. Louis tonight and I leave tomorrow for staging in Philadelphia. This part of the trip doesn't worry me because I will just be part of a flock of people, going through the training and absorbing as much as I can. I will be meeting a lot of new people all at once (80 new volunteers all going to Bulgaria!), but I imagine they all have interesting stories so I look forward to getting to know them.