Happy New Year!!!

Happy 2012 everyone!!! I have some very exciting news, which you may already know by now. Just before Christmas, I packed up a moving van and moved the few boxes that I have from DC to Des Moines, IA. I’m an official resident of Iowa again! It was great. I was able to spend the night in Ohio with my cousin, Brandy, her husband and their two boys. We had a great time, except that time was too short! Then I settled in for another day of fun-filled driving and made it to Des Moines just before Christmas. I was able to buy a cute little car from my uncle and see a lot of my family over Christmas. Got my new driver's license, got my car registered and got myself registered to vote. Woo hoo!

For New Year’s, I headed over to the west coast to visit my friend, Michele, from grad school in between her assignments in Afghanistan and Haiti. It was great! I got to see Michele and her family and another friend of ours from grad school, Nancy. We ate delicious food and watched movies on New Year’s, and then we got up and had more delicious food for breakfast. I got a driving tour of the city on New Year’s day, which was awesome! Lots of pictures below. We even went up to Sonoma County, went to the visitor’s center and did some wine tasting as well. I didn’t get to taste too many though, as it was mostly reds. So…Michele took me to a local brewery and between the three of us, we finished a flight of all 18 beers they keep on tap. They had some “sour” beers which I’d never tasted before and didn't really care for, but most of the beers were really, really good. It was awesome!

Come back soon because I have at least two blogs coming up from South Sudan (the world's newest country)!