I've felt content lately. The kind of contentedness that comes from eating ribs with my family and drinking a Corona with lime and knowing I'll be going back to Memphis in a couple of days. Sometimes I'll be sitting there, and this feeling of "wow, I think I'm happy" will sort of occur to me and I'll feel appreciative for that.

I should tell you about my Oakland/Berkeley visit! I want to start a new blog when I join Lasallian Volunteers and write about my experiences with that, narrow my focus.

Anyway. I'll be living in Berkeley. The city is as pretty as the people. Everyone's always biking around, running. All these steep, rolling hills and tons of green. It's like whoever designed the city put a lot of thought into it, which is a breath of fresh air coming from Memphis. You can taste the liberalism in the air. The house is right near Berkeley campus, so I get to see college students all the time and be jealous, wonder what classes they're going to that I'm missing out on. It's comforting being close to a college. It's a lot like a big Midtown.

And the volunteers and the brothers are great. Really genuine and everyone seems to get along. Comfortable, lots of laughing and joking.

Took a tour of San Francisco, and it's a really colorful, vibrant city. Big Victorian houses all squashed together, parks, the ocean. I want to explore every street. I'm impatient to get to know the place. I want to be a local there immediately, and know where to go. But I'm sure there will be excitement in exploration.

I got lucky.