Here, there, and everywhere!

I am sleepy and have packing left to do, so this will be short and sweet.

This week has been very long and bittersweet, as I've felt my grad school career finally coming to an end.  (It is MOSTLY done now, by the way - I got a reprieve on the thesis paper until Jan 4th, so I will go off and enjoy my Christmas, and then bring that to a close when I get back from vacation.)  I get very sad around endings, even when they are good endings that are leading to better things.

But on the bright side, I had two fabulous visitors yesterday afternoon - Michelle and Mei came to stay with me!!  It was so fantastic to see them.  Right now Michelle's journeyed on to see another friend, but Mei is sitting next to me re-packing her suitcase for our weekend travels and trying to get Spice Girls songs stuck in my head.  (Now we're listening to the Beatles.)

We had a great time.  I put up the Christmas lights in my house 5 minutes before they pulled into the driveway.  We had lunch, walked around the neighborhood (though no beach since it was RAINING, which is bizarre for this location), practiced yoga class all together at my studio, made soup and pasta for dinner, read Mei's teacher training yearbook, told jokes and a little gossip, talked a little about yoga...  We all slept late this morning and then took Mei's class at noon.  Let me tell you - don't listen to anything Mei says - she is a freaking AWESOME teacher, and I don't say that lightly!  She had TONS of energy, tons of great dialogue, no bad habits, great presence and HUMOR, and she was watching her room the whole time, knew all the new and new-ish people by name and took care of them.  She pushed hard when it was time to push hard, but was gentle and soothing when it was time for that.  I was sooooo impressed with her class. And practicing with Michelle was great, too.  She is exactly how you would expect in class, just strong and humble and focused.  It was so strange that I was meeting these two girls for the first time, because right away I felt like we'd been friends for years - we already knew each other's faces, each other's voices, each other's stories.  Very cool and lovely.

So as I mentioned in the blog title, we (Mei and I) will be here, there, and everywhere for the next week or so!  We're driving up to Santa Cruz in the morning, meeting up with our friend M of ilovesweat, and practicing at his studio in the evening.  Then we're spending the next few nights in San Francisco, accepting the hospitality of the fabulous Lucille, and hopefully studio hopping a bit.  Then back down through Big Sur on Tuesday (hoping that the sun comes out!), back to my place on Tuesday night, and then on the road again to L.A. first thing on Wednesday morning, to take (and in Mei's case, teach!) at Headquarters.  Will hang around L.A., hopefully hit the SPA, and then we're both flying out of LAX on Thursday morning - me back east to Boston, and her back home to Malaysia!  And of course, in Boston I will get to practice at my old studio downtown, have lunch with my first studio owner Jill, take class and have dinner with Diane D., hang out and plot with hannahjustbreathe (who is lending me her couch for a couple nights), hopefully see Danielle in advanced class at Diane's, and then head over to western Mass with Charlie and take class back in my hometown on Christmas Day.  And then back to Cali the next night.  Phew!!  Blog posts may be few and far between for a bit, but I will be storing up plenty of pictures and stories for those of you who I WON'T get to see this month, don't worry...

For the moment, happy holidays to all, and I hope that you are surrounded by friends and family at some point during the month!!  I feel so lucky.  I have a wonderful family at home, with parents who've learned to take my strange life in stride and have been nothing but supportive lately.  And I have this incredible yoga family stretching from coast to coast, and it's so precious to be able to spend time with so much of that family.  As they say in my favorite post-Thanksgiving, pre-Christmas feel-good movie - "... love actually is all around."