week 1 in santa monica

well, we've enjoyed our first week of life here in santa monica. tommy started his internship on monday, just three days after we arrived in the state. in case i didn't explain it on here before (which i didn't), he's working at the rand corporation this summer. his internship is twelve weeks long, and he's working on a project dealing with group therapy data and analyzing how the groups change and how that affects the effectiveness of the therapy (and whatnot). he's enjoying it, and is AWESOME, of course. look at him leaving the apartment for his first day of work:

i surprised him (not really) and picked him up from work the first day to go explore downtown santa monica. tommy's office is about 35 feet from the beach (not kidding) and the famous SM pier (see the ferris wheel and roller coaster in the background?) so we parked the car and explored. we enjoyed some delicious, cheap california strawberries on the beach, a mini-picnic of sorts. then we walked over to the 3rd street promenade, the upscale santa monica outdoor shopping mall, and walked around and had dinner. AND gelato. (the next day, my mom emailed me a news story about a mountain lion that had been captured at the promenade mall that morning. CRAZY and super random.)

most exciting, however, is that our friends the moweses came to visit! nick mowes and tommy were roommates in the legendary centennial year, before i met tommy (i was blissfully living in the dorms, a few blocks away). a few months after they lived together, nick married diana, and then about two years later we all happened to live together in the same byu married ward. and long story short, they came down for vacation this first week and we got to hang out with them! we met up with them in santa monica on thursday and had dinner, and then went to a dodgers game with them on friday. THANK GOODNESS for friends--we were so excited to have visitors in our very first week.

in case you're wondering what i'm doing during the day while tommy's at work, i spent most of the week going on bike rides/walks around our neighborhood to get some exercise, taking care of errands and other sorts of random issues i'd been procrastinating, and coming up with some projects to keep me busy, such as making photobooks with all the pictures we've taken since 2009. there's a library ONE BLOCK away from our apartment, so that's keeping me happy and occupied. in addition to all of this stuff, we were down in irvine with my family this weekend, but i'll post about that in a separate post. 

we are determined to not waste a single night of our time here in california. we want to be sure to be awesome la residents/tourists and to do everything that we can while we're here! i'm going to check out a california guidebook at the library this week, and plan on making a list of all the things we want to see and do while we're here.