Highlights from the end of the year (November 2016 - January 1, 2017)

Pictures!

First, camping in Cottonwood Spring, in Joshua Tree National Park. (November 5-6)

Dad, Ari, Aunt Liz, Me

Watching the sunset from the car while driving back from Jumbo Rocks

Important sharing of Hello Kitty filter on Instagram. My dream come true.

Heard David Sedaris speak for the first time, at the Pasadena Civic Center. (November 15)

Saw an NBA game for the first time on November 23rd. Go Cavs! (In Cleveland with Ari and his brother Ben.) 

With the Kessler family for Thanksgiving, in Mill Creek Park, Youngstown, Ohio.

Half-Marathon Weekend  (December 3-4)

Anja makes delicious crepes the day before our big half marathon, using her parents' awesome crepe-making tool.

Lunch and a tour of the Presidio with Alicia

Sunset over the Sutro Baths. 

The actual run! (This was right near the beginning). 

We all finished it in under 4 hours!! 

Nessa's wedding in Jersey City, December 10

Speeches

View of Manhattan from the Jersy City Hyatt

Christmas/Holiday stuff

Arty blurry photo of our tree (before it inexplicably started smelling bad...) 

Ari's parents visited and we joined them for a rainy but fun trip to Catalina Island on December 20.

Hanging and Bruce and Kathy Carter's house on Christmas Eve. 

Fiddler on the Roof singalong at the Laemmle on Christmas Eve

Mexican Train dominoes after brunch on Christmas 

Hike to Henniger Flats on December 28 with Erik, Cammy, Dad, and Aunt Liz (and her dog Axl) 

New Years with Ari's siblings visiting from Ohio

One warm day of sunshine! (But the water was FREEZING)

Everyone! At the park. We asked a stranger to take a picture of us and he asked us to hold onto his dog while he took it. 

Rainy San Clemente Pier on New Year's Eve

San Juan Capistrano Mission on New Year's Day

"Worth a Visit" -- Indeed, it was! 

My lame-ass attempt at wrapping up 2016

So, as has been widely discussed on the Internet (and among real people), 2016 was not such a great year, speaking generally. I agree with this assessment, the biggest downer of the year being Trump's election. I was so conflicted and upset about it that I couldn't come up with a blog post about it, even though I wanted to write one. I couldn't decide if I wanted the post to have an optimistic, sad, or angry tone. I still don't know which tone to strike when I think about Trump or talk about the future of our country with friends. So...yeah. Time will tell, I guess?

Bowie's death was the celebrity death that meant the most to me this year, although Debbie Reynolds was a close second, due to my longtime love of Singin' in the Rain.

In happier, more personal news, this year Ari and I moved to Los Angeles. This was a change I'd been pushing for since 2013! I really didn't know if I would ever be able to convince Ari to do it, but I did. We gave away 90% of our stuff (we kept no furniture) and drove cross-country from New York to Monrovia, arriving at my parents' house on Ari's birthday, August  31st. As I type this we are still in Monrovia, living with my parents, partly because it's been hard for Ari to find work as a music teacher (he wants a full-time job) and also because my bosses at USC waited till the last week of the semester to tell me whether I was hired back or not (I got hired back! Yeah!).

Four months in to California life, Ari and I are still figuring out how to live in Los Angeles, and hopefully finding our own place to live in the next month or two will help make us feel more settled. It's going to be expensive, buying all that furniture. grumble, grumble. But so far the lack of true winter weather has been wonderful, and I love being near my parents and family. Ari's parents came out for a visit a couple of weeks ago, and his brother and sister joined us at San Clemente for New Year's. A lot of our closer friends are still in NYC or in northern California, but I know Ari and I will grow more comfortable and build our own community here, with time.

Other highlights from 2016:

-Visiting Cuba! Went to Havana for 5 days with my parents and my good friend Alicia as part of a people-to-people guided tour, before Cuba totally opened its borders to U.S. travel.

-Visiting Mexico City! This was an unplanned trip that I adapted to travel by myself after a trip to Acapulco with some work friends that fell through when there were shootings in the tourist area, and I couldn't get a refund on my ticket. Leah ended up joining me for a few days, and it was a great experience overall.

-Completing a half marathon! I ran it with my friend Anja in the Marin Headlands, in northern California. Beautiful weather and REALLY difficult, hilly terrain.


Now, onto my lists of the year!

Favorite books read in 2016 (not necessarily written in 2016):

• Under the Skin, by Michel Faber
• Bring up the Bodies, by Hilary Mantel
• The Color of Water, by James McBride
• Pictures at a Revolution, by Mark Harris
• Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• The Nix, by Nathan Hill
• You'll Grow Out of It, by Jessi Klein 

Favorite new music from 2016 (I made the effort to listen to some new stuff):

• Lemonade, by Beyonce. Duh. 
• Skeleton Tree, by Nick Cave
• My Woman, by Angel Olsen (Favorite musician discovery of 2016: Angel Olsen) 

Favorite 2016 movies* (loosely organized in order): 

1. Manchester by the Sea
2. Everybody Wants Some!! 
3. Moonlight
4. One More Time with Feeling
5. Certain Women
6. La La Land
7. Hell or High Water
8. Arrival

*My FAVORITE movie of the year was definitely The Lobster, which came out in the U.S. in 2016, but is technically a 2015 film, since it took so long to reach us.

Happy Halloween!

Please admire my self-created Halloween nails (made from $1.99 glitter from Michaels)!

Also, I just noticed this is post #1,001 on this blog. Crazy, right? 

Irrational Fear #436:

That the sun won't come up one morning.

Thanks to reading this book when I was about seven years old.

A little "Awwww" for your Sunday night

“I was born in Venezuela. I moved here two years ago. I want to be President of Venezuela to change things and make better the world. Did you know that sometimes in Venezuela people shoot each other on purpose? I will change that. Also there will be rules against pushing people or thinking bad thoughts about people. I will make a rule so that there will not be too much cutting or killing of trees. And there will be a rule against killing too many animals because animals eat insects, and we can’t have too many insects. I will also make sure that we don’t waste water or food. Or if there is food left over, we have to be sure to put it in the trash. I can’t be president now because I’m only eight. But I did skip first grade.”

Taken from Humans of New York. I just had to copy this exactly because it warmed my heart on a rainy Sunday evening. 

Every teacher's worst nightmare

OK, I phrased that title dramatically, but today I experienced a less intense version of every teacher's nightmare - a health emergency during class.

I've been teaching at the USC International Academy for five weeks now, and it's been going pretty well. I'm teaching the master's prep program, which is pretty intense (the students are all conditionally admitted to master's programs at USC, they just need to get their English skills up to snuff by taking this one semester of classes and passing it with a B average), but the students are so motivated and generally so easy to work with, it makes the job pretty enjoyable.

Today, we had a grammar quiz at the beginning of class, and one of the women (girls, really - I'd guess she's in her early 20s) didn't look so good. She took the quiz really fast and then asked if she could go to the restroom. When she came back about 5 minutes later, she literally walked in the door to the classroom and then fainted onto the floor. It was very dramatic! All the students gasped and I immediately ran outside the room to tell someone at the front desk, who then called the campus equivalent of 911. I wouldn't have been that stressed, to be honest, because it didn't seem that serious overall, except that she was pretty unresponsive to anyone talking to her while she lay on the floor. She was breathing, but not communicating at all.

So a tense 5 - 10 minutes passed (I think? It felt like forever.) while we waited on the paramedics to come. They finally arrived and asked everyone to leave the classroom so she could have some privacy, so we all walked awkwardly into an empty classroom, where I wondered if I should try to have the students do work while we waited. I ended up giving them a handout on APA citations to read and work on if they wanted to. Most of them opted to stare into space or go on their phones.

The girl seemed to be OK after a few minutes with the medics - they were able to get her to sit up and respond to questions, and I honestly suspect she just hadn't eaten in a while. So we all filed back into the room (after she had been wheeled out in a wheelchair) and I tried to continue the lesson as usual. It's such a difficult balance, trying to show concern for the student who just left in a wheelchair, and check that everyone else in the class isn't freaking out, AND try to make sure that we don't "waste" class time!

In the end, I think the whole process went OK. We did manage to continue the lesson, and I got a text from the girl's friend later in the day saying that she was doing well. Phew. Thinking it would probably be a good idea to take a CPR class though, just in case.

Sad but good

I just bought this CD (a real I can play in my car). I love Nick Cave's music no matter what, but this album was created partly as a way of dealing with the unexpected death of his 15-year-old son. When I heard the news about his son, it really hit me in the gut. I almost felt like a friend of mine had lost a child. 

I was afraid of buying his album at first because I thought it would be too heart wrenching, but it's okay. It's dark and angry but also melodic and hopeful. Looking forward to many listens on my future commutes. 

Last Days of Brooklyn

Queens Comfort with Jacky

Intentionally unfinished Gerhard Richter painting at the Met Breuer (took my classes).

Roxanne Gay reading at the Franklin Park Reading Series

Last day at Columbia, with a "surprise" going away party. (I wasn't sure, but suspected something.)

Photo with my last class at Columbia

Ari eating an edible balloon at the Museum of Ice Cream

Speaking of ice cream - crazy sundaes at Black Tap with Natalie. 

Cedar Beach on Long Island with Megan and a few other coworkers/friends. 

Megan's mom bought us pens!!! Only teachers will understand how thrilling this was. 

Favorite spot to wait for the Q train at Union Square with Captain Baby. 

Sneaky pic of Ari and the boys of the subway. 

Ari waves farewell to his favorite sechwan food at Legend Restaurant. 

One of my favorite views-crossing the Manhattan Bridge on the Q train. 

Various items of mine to give away that I hung in front of our apartment. These were all gone in about 10 minutes. 

Most of our worldly possessions. 

Walking through Washington Square Park in the rain in my last day in the city. 

Drinks at Vol de Nuit on our last night in town (with Megan and Carol).

LAST MEAL: General Tso's!!!!