It’s Cindy’s last full week of summer break before starting Year 6 of her teaching career! Due to COVID-19, Year 6 will look immensely different from the other years. Even though she has a game plan for how she will approach Distance Teaching this time around, there’s still a lot of anxiety and stress because of how new and different it all is. Instead of worrying about it, we decided to take it easy this last week and soak in the calm and relaxation before the craziness of school starts.

We spent the majority of our week finishing up our books (notice how there are 3 books…that’s because Jake can never just read one book at a time…can you guess which book is Cindy’s?). The two of us would sit for hours, sitting together in silence, consumed in our books. So laid back, so easygoing. If anyone is interested, we highly recommend these books!

A few weeks ago, we noticed a nice little cafe just around the corner from where we live. We finally decided to go on a little afternoon date for some cappuccinos and scones. We had a hint of nostalgia for our Italy vacation days, when we had afternoon cappuccinos almost everyday. After paying, we realized we can have afternoon cappuccino dates at this place only once in a while because it is like 10x more expensive here than in Italy.

Our close friends from Jake’s PhD program invited us over for some celebratory BBQ. The occasion: the three of them finishing up their second year! Even though they finished up their second year of school, as Jake’s friend put it: you’re never really done. All three of them have already started new projects or have school related tasks to work on over the summer. In any case, the BBQ was very delicious and the evening felt light and easy!

Cindy went home one of the days to hang out with her parents. In the morning, she went on a short hike with her dad and they got milkshakes after! She rarely has one-on-one time with her dad, so it was nice being just the two of them. In the evening, Cindy and her parents feasted on some Costco crab! Yum!

And lastly, we started a new hobby together!! Selling Pokemon cards lol. Initially, Cindy didn’t really care about the card selling, but gained a sudden investment and interest when she realized how much money some of the cards were selling for! We spent one afternoon sifting through all our cards to find gems and sleeving them up.  We actually found a card (a reverse holo Jolteon pictured above), that in mint condition, is worth around $150! Too bad it wasn’t in mint condition. We still managed to sell it for $57!