California

We've spent an awesome week in Southern California - sunshine every day, hardly any fog and it was warm enough to wear a t-shirt most of the days. We stayed with Katja's godmother and her family for a week and explored the area...







Citrus trees and a fluffy cat in the garden and a 5 minute walk to the beach is like the best vacation possible :)

We went to the Santa Barbara Zoo and found lots of living wool (kidding), some of our favorite animals and cute animals whose names are impossible to remember. Although I'm not a big fan of zoos I gotta admit that it was an awesome day. We also got a private tour of the campus of the University of California in Santa Barbara (UCSB) - which was huuuge and so green! - and we were surprised to find huge differences between UBC and UCSB. Although our campus is much smaller and has about 1/5th of the amount of plants and bike routes as the UCSB campus, I'm so thankful for having a large single room (compared to tiny, old dorm where three guys are stuck in a room and it's almost impossible to move)! Though I wouldn't mind trading the grey, rainy winter weather in Vancouver for a couple of weeks of sunshine :)



Of course there was also some knitting, lots of time to read and enjoy lunch outside :)

After some successful shopping trips (California = paradise for bargain hunters! Two pairs of Timberland boots for $40? An Abercrombie moose wool sweater for $25 instead of $200? Yesss!) we took some outfit pictures. Isn't Katja's new modcloth dress stunning? I'm jealous!

I admit that I was too lazy to drag my big camera with me most of the time so there were quite some phone pictures. We made use of having access to a kitchen by making vanilla raspberry muffins, apple pie, ratatouille and couscous, pizza, pasta and fresh salads. There's nothing better than a kitchen and affordable grocery stores with huge fruit aisles :) 

Unfortunately, we couldn't avoid all the readings and homework for school so we decided to make the best of it and went to the beach to study while wiggling our toes in the warm sand and trying to tan a little bit, without success.

All in all we've had a great time and I feel re-energized for the second half of the term - only two more months until summer break! I'm already looking forward to warm weather, ice cream for lunch and bike tours :)