Halfway Home

Let me start off by saying, what an amazing summer this has been.
I found out about the Barth Scholarship near the end of April, found housing two weeks before I flew out, and hit the ground running, as I said in my beginning posts.
I have been running and doing yoga, both (at least) once a week, meeting some amazing people, and discovering a new perspective on life: Everything is going to work out. When I was worried about not getting a place for the last 10 days I'm here (my current sublease ends at the end of July), my sister told me that one of her friends was planning on moving with her boyfriend so I am able to inhabit a one-bedroom apartment right near Balboa Park for my remaining days in San Diego.
The main event of this past weekend was the start of Justice in Motion Season 4. I woke up on another Super Early Saturday to get a ride to La Jolla Cove, where we would be running on the coast and the surrounding neighborhood for 40 minutes.
A little bit of context: I don't run. I've never done team sports at a school or collegiate level, so this summer was about leading a more active lifestyle.

The team, pre-Mission Moment.

On Saturday after everyone was registered, we started with a warm-up lap around the small park we were in, and then one of the coaches led us in a session of dynamic stretching, where we did things like high-knees, lunges, and other stretches that athletes do before playing (you can see I'm not up to date on sport terminology). After that, the team gathered in a circle for a Mission Moment, which you can read more about here, where I have been blogging daily for J4J. The first half of the run actually wasn't too bad, considering I had run for almost 30 minutes the weekend before. When we turned around is when I started to really feel it. One of the more experienced runners was generous and stayed with me for the last 5 minute leg. I had felt around two waves of the "runner's high," but at this point my only motivation was seeing the tent back at the park. My sister led the team in a brief post-run yoga, and the event was done. Even thought I was dead tired for the remainder of the day (and most of Sunday), I felt accomplished - only two more to go! In the meantime, my responsibility is to train, train, and...train!
I haven't been to anymore Kirtans or events of that sort, but I believe I'm going to another drum circle (which I loved back at the Eat 4 Justice event) later this week. Also, "The Dark Knight Rises" comes out this Friday so I hope I can get to see it!

Meanwhile, back at Jeans 4 Justice, I am getting much more experienced in the world of Google Docs and general operations work. Bring on the skill-set!
Unfortunately, HootSuite didn't work out in terms of posting the daily blog, but posting the blog manually to Facebook and Twitter helps with structure, which isn't so bad. On Thursday, I will be participating in a focus group. This past Spring, the organization launched a transformational campaign where they posed a challenge to the community to take on one (or more) of these challenges: Yoga, Dance, Spoken Word, Rock Climbing, and Sky-Diving. They called this the LIVE IT Campaign. It was a hugely successful program, having raised several thousands of dollars to support J4J's educational material/curriculum in local high schools and colleges. The aim of this group is to...wait for it...focus on how J4J can bring the Live It Campaign to colleges for students to use as a kind of applied-learning program in tandem with their academic courses, so I'm excited to have a voice in brainstorming ideas for the future of what I call Live It U!

I'll be back later this week with more, and some more pictures of my summer home!