After waking up on my first morning, I was stood looking out of the window (which overlooks most of silicon valley), the first thing that caught my eye, aside from the amazing view, was humming birds bathing in the small waterfall that runs into the Koi pond (I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen humming birds before!). In fact, all the wildlife is amazing here! From eagles soaring high over our house to the families of deer and coyotes that stroll down our driveway.

So far my favorite location is Half Moon Bay, a gorgeous stretch of coastline just south of Mavericks (yeah, until I came to California Mavericks and Yosemite were just versions of OS X), with golden sand, blue sea, huge rolling waves and horses galloping down the coastline… (this actually happened as I was on FaceTime with my family- they were suitably impressed). I’m also torn over what my favorite view has been since I arrived, it’s close between the sunset over the horizon as we were driving down ‘Pacific Highway 1′ and the sunset from Hunters Point (which is the top of a hill in the (apparently mountain lion infested) country park behind our house).

Living in Silicon valley is full of techey surprises; a group of us from the mansion were planning on heading out for some drinks at a rock & roll bar, but because this is America and everything is really far apart, someone has to drive. When determining who was to be designated driver, rather than resorting to rock paper scissors, someone grabs their phone and quickly codes a random number generator in python to select the driver!

It’s also great going running here, apart from the heat- the streets at the bottom of the hill are all really nice to run along and the gardens all seem to have plants that I’m not used to seeing. I also found an eccentric fountain that’s about half way through my run, which always seems to be beckoning me to jump in and cool down. Of course the first thing you have to do after running is swing by chipotle (this completely lived up to my expectations having never tried it before). The post-run food here always feels extremely well-earned; we basically live up a mountain so the last 300 meters are pretty intense, so I feel I definitely deserve something deliciously unhealthy!