Rambling and Sleep-Deprived

I don’t know if it’s the weather, the current economic state, or just me, but there seem to be a number of things that are dragging me down lately.  Namely:

• My job is slow slow slow.  And I can’t help but feel that it’s a sinking ship.
• I have a lot of free time during the week now thanks to half-time employment, which is great in some senses, but sometimes I get stuck in a rut of, “none of my friends have this time off, and I can’t spend any money anyway.”  I’m trying to remedy this by a) taking dance classes, b) running and c) walking the mile and half to the library on Thursdays and picking up new books and DVDs with which to amuse myself.
• Being married is not easy (nor is being in any committed relationship, come to think of it).  There are some issues that need working on that I have been avoiding out of laziness.

But a few things are buoying me up too.  Let’s focus on those:

• I registered for classes for my grad program, and realized the whole thing only costs about $12,000.  I mean, that’s no small chunk of change by any means, but I feel like it’s a steal compared to what some of my friends are paying for grad school, and won’t leave me with a crippling amount of debt.
• I watched an introductory slideshow for the grad program where the associate director warned incoming students that we should enjoy the next few months of freedom, for we are about to become “frenzied individuals.”  :) Hopefully I’ll be more busy than frenzied, because for me, busy = happy.
• Thanksgiving is going to be a gigantic hootenany which will include my parents, my brother and his girlfriend, my aunt, uncle and their three young kids, various friends of my mom, and my friend who recently moved to the Bay Area.
• My husband and I might photograph another wedding early next year.  I had a blast at the one we did this summer and cannot wait for this one.
• The canceling of our belated honeymoon to South Africa (which we would’ve left for TODAY) not only means we’ll be with my family for Thanksgiving (see above) but that we get to plan a different adventure some time in the future. I’m thinking… Ireland?  Vietnam?  Mexico?  

Travel Dreams Dashed

So even before the salary cut was official, we decided to cancel our trip to South Africa. Again, not a life-altering event (like losing your job and savings in stock market crash), but a bummer. I guess we will have to have a belated-belated-honeymoon.

Let’s Get Out of This Country

Speaking of my recent wedding, my husband and I have yet to go on a real out-of-the-country honeymoon. Ages ago we’d conceived of a month-long trip to Vietnam (one of the few regions of the world that neither of us has been to and both of us are interested in visiting). However that plan quickly got derailed for numerous reasons (e.g. photographing a friend’s wedding exactly a month after ours, not being able to picture what we would do with our dogs for an entire month, etc.). When we discovered an excuse to go to South Africa this fall, we jumped on it. We’ll be meeting up with friends who live in London but have family/roots in South Africa, as well as a Swiss friend with whom my husband traveled across Africa ten years ago. It will be a reunion of sorts for them, but also hopefully a fun first trip abroad as newlyweds.

My husband has been here before, and tells me it’s paradise:

In planning this trip, I realize it’s been more than two years since my last international adventure. I *finally* uploaded the photos from that trip (a week in Beijing and three weeks in the Mongolian countryside) to the internet, so even though it’s not ‘news,’ I thought I’d post a few of my favorite photos from that trip:

Hopefully there are many more adventures to come!