Christmas

2002  

Greetings Loved Ones!
We hope you all are enjoying the wonderful Christmas season! Please note the lack of the phrase 'holiday season' back there. We are making a special point to counter the subtle or not so subtle secularization of our society evident in the trend to drop the Christian holiday labels. We have Winter break instead of Christmas vacation, spring break instead of Easter vacation, for example. Even Christmas on the Prado has accomidated to political correctness by changing it's name to 'December Nights'. On the 25th of this month Kim and I are celebrating the actual physical incarnation of Christ our Lord and we will continue to refer to it as Christmas.
This year has been filled with many firsts for Kim and I. Briefly, we would like to share some of them with you.
1st 1st
As many of you may know, this is the first year that Kim and I have been married! On the 27th of July we plighted our troths to one another. The event was spectacular due, in part, to the presence of slurpees (first ever to our knowledge). Soon after, we hopped a plane to Fiji and made our first trip to the South Pacific. Hopefully not the last! We both obtained our scuba certifications earlier in the year, and so we were able to experience the wonderful underwater world of Fiji. In the same vein, this is also the first year in many that either Kim or I have shared a room. We are settling in nicely, and are both loving our new roommates!
2nd 1st
In October of this year I passed my first oral examination, and my teeth look great! Actually, it was a qualifying exam for my program. It consisted of writing a research proposal (much like a government grant proposal) and then defending the topic and procedures I proposed in front of a board of faculty. It was a tough ordeal, but with the Lord's grace and the encouragement of my wife I made it through. This is now my second year in the Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology PhD program at UCSB. I have completed all my coursework and now I'm busy in the lab developing a thesis project. I looking forward to being a teaching assistant next quarter for a developmental biology class. I love learning and I love lab work, but I think I love teaching the most.
3rd 1st
Quickly after making the move to Goleta, Kim landed a job with the University of California Education Abroad Program. An alumnus of the program herself (England '96), she is now working on the Strategic Marketing and Research team and actually getting paid to tell people that studying, traveling and living abroad is the best education ever. The offices are right off the UCSB campus about 5 minutes from our place and only a hop, skip, and a jump from the on-campus housing where we hope to live next year. She is involved with a number of projects including student evaluations (over 3,000 students on 250 different programs), designing future on-line surveys, and learning statistical computer programs for research analysis. Thus, after many years of writing checks to the UC Regents, for the first time Kim is now happily receiving checks from the University. Most recently she has started volunteering in the exhibits department at the Santa Barbara Natural History Museum. This is proving to be a great experience and creative outlet as she is still interested in developing and designing science exhibits.
4th 1st
December 4th, 2002 Kim and I attended the first reunion concert of one of our favorite bands Toad the Wet Sprocket at the fabulous Arlington Theatre in Santa Barbara. If we could have put together a dream concert, this would have been it. Our seats were second row, right smack in the middle, and Nickel Creek was the opener. It was spectacular. We made our television debut the next morning when we appeared on the news in a clip about the concert. We seem to have already attained mild celebrity status.
Santa Barbara is beautiful! We love living here, despite the fact that we miss you all and would love to be near you. We have found a wonderful community church here in Goleta and have become invovled in a weekly home group. We have made some wonderful friends both at church and from my school. The Lord has blessed us richly!
We hope you are all well, and that you have a very merry Christmas. You should all come visit! Not all at the same time, though.
Much love,
Jason and Kim