2013 in Review

It's been awhile.

I did not intend to entirely disappear from the blogosphere after the End It Movement post, but alas, I did. It turns out that while I love to write, grad school somewhat sucked up all my writing bandwidth. Furthermore, I have come to realize that writing is a helpful way for me to process the world around me, and it just so happens that there is much more to process when you're in a new place. Hence the large number of entries when I was first in NYC in 2006, when I moved to Yakima, WA for 3 months in 2008, and when I was first in Romania in 2009. And of course throughout my six months in Nigeria in 2012. Because let's be honest, as it was my first time in Africa, and I was the only white gal everywhere I went and was living fully immersed amongst Nigerians at all times, I had a lot of "world" to process. When I got back from Nigerian in January and dove into my final semester of my Masters, I still had ideas for blogs, but just couldn't come up with the time or energy to get them out there. So here we are, January 2014.

I'm not going to go on a lengthy recap of 2013 except to say that it was a beautiful and wonderful whirlwind in which God did far more than I could have asked or imagined. Here are some highlights:

1) The year found me on 3 continents through time in Romania and Nigeria, and in 13 States in all corners of the country, 8 of which I was in for a week or more (New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Florida, Maine, Washington, California, and Hawaii).
2) I dated, got engaged to, and married the wonderful Spencer Jones. The story behind all of that is one that only God could have orchestrated, and we marvel at the wonderfulness of it all. Perhaps I shall share that in another blog post.
3) In May I graduated from Columbia University with a Masters of Public Health in Global Health Management.
4) In September Spencer and I moved to Washington state for him to start his Masters. In October I started working for a small health nonprofit that works to improve access to healthcare services and improve the efficiency of the health system.

Now you understand why I called 2013 a wonderful whirlwind- new marriage, new home state, new job, new apartment, new church, new friends. Lots and lots and lots of transition. Which of course has meant plenty of ups and downs, and rather steep learning curves. Never a dull moment, for sure. 
I wouldn't change anything about how 2013 unfolded, but we are praying that 2014 would be a year of Rest and Slowness and doing our best to foster that in our life choices. I think living in Bellingham, the city of "subdued excitement" will aid in this. I am also itching to get back at writing, now that I have no papers or deadlines or Big Life Events to plan. Stay tuned, and add me back into your blog-reading rotations, because Spangles is back.