Another hectic week gone by as Brent and I tackle our various workloads at IRC. Mine is particularly hectic at the moment as I'm down to my last week at the organisation and only finished my last focus group today! I'm 70% done my data analysis for the interviews I conducted, I haven't even started the data analysis of the focus groups and haven't written so much as an outline for the final report I'd like to write (did I mention I only have 7 days left?)! Nevertheless, my efforts seem to be getting noticed as my supervisor talks with increasing frequency of getting me back at IRC when I'm done at IPJ. The most promising of these plans is to have me head up a domestic violence prevention program at IRC, which would be fantastic (provided of course, that we could get funding... I sense more volunteer grant writing as a precursor!). And since there are no guarantees about my dream job at IPJ materialising soon after I finish my Peace Writer position, IRC could be a good place to work in the interim.
Brent on the other hand is well into the refugee assistance agencies' busiest time of year! To top off a ridiculous work load his case managers have been falling sick, requesting time off (especially our Muslim coworkers who would all like to be off for some or most of Ramadan next month), volunteers are leaving to go back to school, and there's some staff shifting, which has had him interviewing internal candidates- always a hard job. He also has a speech to prepare for a statewide resettlement conference in LA on the relatively obscure Bhutanese refugees, a group that his IRC office doesn't even serve! A task that he is understandably nervous about undertaking.
So, this past weekend we decided to give ourselves a mini-break before we can escape this mayhem for the tranquility of Vermont next week. We decided on a 5 mile hike in Torrey Pines state park. What we hadn't factored in was the bane of San Diego's scenic outings- people. And where there are people in SoCal, there are cars. Lots and lots of cars! The parking lots were full. The overflow parking lots were full. The sides of the road were blocked off as no-parking. After circling full lots, getting stuck in the gridlock of everyone else looking for parking spots, and turning back and forth looking for parking lots/roads/or a free ditch on divided highways, we said to heck with it and started heading back. Then we saw a little turnoff that said "glider port" and a huge, almost empty PARKING LOT! We made the turn and found ourselves on a 300ft cliff over the Pacific ocean. At first we were distracted by the paragliders suspended a few meters from us, but at the bottom of the cliffs lay the real treasure - a beautifully secluded, relatively unpopulated, pristine, sandy beach! 
The next obstacle was how to scale the cliffs down to the grail below. After nearly venturing down the horizontal cliff, we asked some paragliders and were directed to the slightly less treacherous (but nevertheless cordoned off) eroding, switchback path. We made our way down the 300 ft decent, thinking this must be the key to keeping a beach semi-private in San Diego. As we finally reached the sand, however, we realised there was another factor drawing people away from or to, Black's beach: a relatively prevalent disregard for clothing. From 2yrs to 82yrs, frolickers sunbathed, swam, surfed or strolled; a few in suits but most in their birthday suits (nothing in between it seemed). Unfortunately, while the beach had a few hundred beach bums (excuse the pun - it was Brent's), we only saw 4 women. There might have been more down the more populated "gay" end of the beach, but where we plunked our towel it was mainly us and a lot of 40-80yr old men. I have to say though, spending an afternoon around nudity makes you remember that the human body is a very natural thing, and it was nice to see so many people comfortable in their skin.
I tried to snap some photos, but it took 4 hours for me to get a shot that didn't catch any bare bottoms (or any other bits), so as to not give the subjects of my photo the wrong idea.
Hope you're all well. Brent and I are really looking forward to seeing many of you in Vermont next week, though I'm still sad that I'm not able to see all my friends who are home in Victoria at the moment. At least Lindsay (and maybe mom?) will be coming to see us when we get back! In the meantime, we've got a Dave Matthews concert on Friday night, and our 4 year anniversary together tomorrow to celebrate.
Thinking of you all,
Jen and Brent
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