L-I-V-I-N

Whew! I have been in San Diego just about a month now and so much has transpired. I'll start with the administrative stuff. I finally moved into my apartment on February 2. Up til then I was staying at a friend's place and couch surfing. A lot of people unfamiliar with the couch surfing network find the idea of showing up at a stranger's door step and requesting a free place to sleep a little sketchy, but I've had nothing but enriching and pleasant experiences. I met several people who will continue to be good friends throughout my stay in San Diego.

I live in technically international student housing through a program called KAMO Housing (http://kamohousing.com/pacific_beach.html). It's in an area of SD called Pacific Beach, a very young and party-friendly scene. So far I love it. My roommates are Natalie, the friend I moved here with, and two Norwegian girls. I have had the privilege of living with international people before and I am ecstatic to do so again. The amount you learn about someone else's culture is entirely beyond what you could read in a book. And it's uncanny how people who grew up on opposite sides of the world could be so similar. Kinda gives me a cozy feeling.

Mandi Schmitt

3950 Ingraham Street

Apartment 13-107

San Diego, CA 92109

I also found a job! This was the most worrisome aspect of moving here. I needed to be able to support myself and I knew I didn't have enough money to last me past the first month's rent. I am a server at a restaurant called World Famous (http://worldfamouspb.com/) which is located literally next to the beach. Whenever I look at the wall of windows I see waves crashing and people enjoying the sunshine and sand. I don't have a car so I use a bike, which I bought when I got here, to get around everywhere. It's quite the work out but I really love it.

My morning commute via bike

traveling from couch surfer to couch surfer,
looking strikingly similar to the numerous
homeless people in Pacific Beach

My Philosophy

California Dreamin'

Here I go again... I have just arrived in sunny San Diego. It's the first time I have moved somewhere without a specific purpose, which is both frightening and exhilarating. I have no car, no job, and cannot move in to my apartment until Feb 2. But with my will of steel, and with the help of some incredibly generous friends, I have no doubt that this season of my life will be fruitful. Sometimes I worry my absence of fear under most circumstances will be detrimental, in the same sense that a person numb to pain indicators can injure themselves without realizing it. But I've made it this far, and my youth and curiosity will allow me to move only in one direction.

“So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.”

Chris McCandless

Home Again Home Again

One of the magical characteristics of traveling is that no matter how many times you visit a certain location, you can never see the same place twice. Your stage in life, your belief system, your previous experiences, even something as mundane as the mood you are in, all have a profound effect on how you view a destination. All of these things play a vital role in how you perceive and remember where you were. Since all of these things are by their nature changeable things, how you view the same location five years later could be entirely different. In this sense, one city can have endless faces. No matter how hard I try to see everything, this vast world of ours will always reveal something new.

"We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time."

T.S. Eliot

A Grand Tour

"For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. 

I travel for travel's sake. 

The great affair is to move."

- Robert Louis Stevenson -

The Grandest

"In the Grand Canyon, Arizona has a natural wonder which is in kind absolutely unparalleled throughout the rest of the world. I want to ask you to keep this great wonder of nature as it now is. I hope you will not have a building of any kind, not a summer cottage, a hotel or anything else, to mar the wonderful grandeur, the sublimity, the great loneliness and beauty of the canyon. 

Leave it as it is. You cannot improve on it. 

The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it."

- Theodore Roosevelt

The Rest of California

We spent in total about a week and half in California, the most time we spent in any state. Unfortunately, it being such a gigantic state, we still didn't do or see nearly as much as we would have liked. We drove mostly down Highway 101 before switching over to Highway 1, hitting up Carmel, Santa Cruz, Monterey, and other towns along the scenic Big Sur. This road literally hugged the coast, edged by drop off cliffs into the turquoise water.

Pigeon Point Lighthouse

Lobos State Park

Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park 

Elephant seals on the Big Sur

Hollywood - I'm a big star