The Appels

telling our families

2012-02-12T13:46:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Jeffrey (Eric's best friend) for hosting his wedding in early November, we had an awesome reason to be going home. Had we not had this opportunity to tell our families our new baby news in person, I am sure we would have spilled the baby-beans to them much sooner. But fortunately we got to fly home to CA and make this a special occasion. Eric spent some time creating these awesome t-Shirts which we snuck on right before we were going to see our families for the first time. We got great reactions from all of them which Eric and I will cherish on video for years to come.

Here is the initial design.

See how quickly you would have figured out "our riddle". The back was specially done to commemorate our conception story (read previous post). Congratulations to my mom for having responded the quickest once we flashed our "news T-shirts".

And here is the final product in use. We have just included the video of our parents though telling all of our family was special and fun.

Beard to Moustache

2012-01-29T12:55:00.001-08:00

I decided to have some fun with cutting down my beard after my ski trip this year with my research group.

It's time to post the news!!

2012-01-26T08:35:00.001-08:00

For 21 weeks now we have had a great secret, that most of you know, but we have yet to post our excitement about.

Somewhere in the middle of September God gave us an incredibly awesome gift! And the conditions under which our little gift was conceived couldn't have been more funny.

If you read our blog posts, then you will know that we got to travel with Erics parents and sister to Spain in September. Cyndi always plans superb trips and Eric and I are always so spoiled with the travel style. Well, if you read around the time when we hit up Santiago then this is where the beginning our next nine months got its start.

For those of you who are in the camp of "oops and surprise, we are pregnant" then our story is quite the opposite. For those of you who have been trying for some time, then you will know (at least the women) that you get to know your body "really" well. Eric and I had made a plan to cover all bases of the month and make sure our vacation time was "well spent". The Appel Sr's are always so generous with Eric and I when we travel with them and spoil us with our own beautiful hotel room. This certainly helped with "our plan". Being the woman, I knew that about one week into our journey would be our "prime time". Thats when we decided we'd "miss no opportunity". (Is this too much information??)

ALSO about one week into our journey, we left Barcelona and landed in Santiago. There we started our road trip journey as a family and headed to our first accommodation- an incredibly awesome old spanish stable converted into a Bed and breakfast. We got our bags out of the car and all headed for our space...a large family style room with a bed for Me, Jenny, and Eric to share and then The Appel sr's to be in their double just behind us. Don't get me wrong, it was a fantastic room...but my mind went else where.

As we put our bags down and headed the 15 yards across the courtyard for dinner, I managed to whisper to Eric that we might have to unleash our "plan" to the Appels. We tried to be tactful and let them know "this was prime time" and were wondering if we could have some time alone=) They were all great and said they'd just plan for an extra long meal and send us on our way half way through. So, 15 yards away we all went to dinner, enjoyed a large bottle of wine...and then the Appels, tactfully themselves, said "Well, you two better get off". Eric and I blushed and smiled and said "alright, we'll be back in an hour"!

It was a great moment, but I do admit coming BACK to dinner was just slightly awkward. But the Appels were great and we all just laughed.

The next day as Eric and I came back from a run, we found the Appels outside chilling. They very casually mentioned to us that they would probably be hanging out in the garden for "about an hour" if we wanted to go "get cleaned up". By then, we certainly did have an understanding. So thanks to the Appels as this success certainly became a family effort!

Now fast forward, two weeks later... I just came home from a night shift. I did my normal routine of the last few months where I pee on a stick, get in the shower, ignore the stick (months of practice taught me to ignore it), eat my breakfast, then head to bed for the day. As I stepped out of the shower, i was shocked to see the stick was missing the word "NOT" like I had become so familiar in seeing for many months. It only said "pregnant"! I cautiously said Erics name as he was getting out of bed...though he said my voice sounded dreadful rather than surprised...Not my intention, I just was not expecting this surprise. It was awesome.

Needless to say, I took three tests a day for the next three days to make sure my eyes weren't fooling me. But in fact it was true. And the Lord has blessed us with a growing baby now 21 weeks in my belly!

This is our little one at 8 weeks gestation and the day we decided to go out for a proper celebration, celebrating with a fancy dinner at our favorite nice restaurant. It happened to coincide with the first night that I felt sick. Poor timing but a great evening nonetheless.

Walk around the town

2011-12-22T13:14:00.000-08:00

We had a great walk around town on Sunday this week. It was chilly, but not freezing and the sun was out. You may notice that we have an umbrella. During this time of year you must always have a 'brolly' with you, just in case.

Cambridge is a really pretty place. Nicki is a really pretty lady. That is King's College Chapel in the background. One of the highlights in the Cambridge skyline and architecture in general. It always makes a good background for photos.

Visiting the Fitzwilliam Museum

2011-12-10T07:41:00.000-08:00

Nicki and I had a nice day out and about today around Cambridge. On our travels we decided to stop into the Fitzwilliam Museum because I hadn't been there before (Nicki had been through it once when her friend Emily visited from the US). We were both taken aback by a beautiful yet haunting piece of art from Italy.

Salvator Rosa's L'Umana Fragilita (Human Frailty)

It is always interesting how much more powerful a piece of art is when you see it in person. This one blew me away. Even the title of 'human frailty' is haunting with the image of the dark angel giving the infant the paper to sign their life away.

Vreeland Wedding and trip home

2011-12-08T15:15:00.001-08:00

I late October we made a trip home because Eric's best friend, Jeff, was getting married. We took the opportunity to stop by Boston/Cambridge MA (the other Cambridge) on the way home. We were very lucky that some old friends, the Schellingers, from our time in Palo Alto are living in Boston and gave us a place to stay and the opportunity to catch up. They have a very cute little girl who dressed up as a little lady bug for Halloween while we were there. We also got to meet up with the Fogals, who made the trip up from NYC for a day so that we could see them, catch up, and meet their new little boy. It was wonderful to see the two couples and their little ones. We also got to give them our big news and celebrate with them.

The main reason to go there on the way home was so that Eric could have a couple of interviews for potential post-doc research positions while we were there. We were hoping to use the trip to find our next place of residence after we are finished up here in England.

After a long weekend there we headed home and spent a couple of hours with the Appels before heading down to the Couch's place. Eric spent a day with all the family hanging out before heading off to meet up with all the boys in the wedding for the Stag do (bachelor party) trip. Nicki spent the couple of days with the family, loving the opportunity to meet Levi, the newest addition to the Acosta fam.

The boys spent a couple of nights at Oak Flat Lookout, which is a great US Forestry Service cabin in the mountains just outside of Bakersfield. Nicki made me shave before heading home because my beard was getting a bit out of control, but I ended up having the weakest beard of all the men in the wedding. It was funny because Nate (the best man) had a beard so great that you couldn't actually see his bow-tie. They did a pretty good job with the outfits as we all looked pretty good. The wedding was at the Virginia Country Club and being a nice place, there were all kinds of goodies in the men's locker room, including pomade (old school hair jelly). So we all have super slicked hair and moustaches. It was really great. The wedding was great.

The Appels and the Vreelands (freshly married).

At the end of the trip, Nicki made a girlie trip with some of her friends from Cal Poly. She loves the girlie time to chat and catch up.

Hipstamatic Christmas 2011

2011-12-08T14:52:00.000-08:00

Right after Thanksgiving Nicki and I set up our special little Christmas tree. We had a great night of dressing the tree and listening to the Sufjan Stevens Christmas albums, which are great.

Last night we had the annual grads Christmas dinner at the hall at Jesus College. A full five course meal with fun Christmas crackers (not food crackers, but a fun English tradition from the Victorian age), funky Christmas hats, Christmas pudding (which is gross, by the way), port and singing carols alongside a brass band. It really is a fun tradition. I get to wear my tuxedo with all my Jesus gear: Jesus bow tie, Jesus cumber-bun, and Jesus cuff-links.

Nicki is one hot mama.

Here is us with our fun hats. Nicki wore hers kind of like a fascinator. Mine was like a Nutcracker soldier.

Here is a video of some of the carols we sang in the hall with all the grads in their formal wear and enjoying their port and Christmas pudding.

To Grenoble for Neutrons

2011-11-27T01:31:00.000-08:00

I had the opportunity this summer to go to Grenoble to do some small-angle neutron scattering (SANS) experiments. Nicki couldn't come on the trip and it was my supervisor Oren, a postdoc from Singapore named Loh, and myself on the trip. We travelled first class on the Eurostar to Paris and spent the night hanging out with some friends from ESPCI, which is a prestigious University in Paris. We were there on the night before Bastille day, July 13, when many 'Fireman parties' are going on. Apparently all of the firemen sponsor these enormous parties that night, some of them actually at the firehouses. The one we went to was in a roman amphitheatre.

The next morning we took the train the Grenoble, which is nestled in a very green valley right at the foothills of the French alps with some big mountains overlooking the city. We didn't spend much time in the city as we had to go to the facility for the experiments.

We were at the ILL (french words that are meaningless to me so I just stick with the acronym), which is a facility for all types of measurements, but is best known for their powerful nuclear reactor.

So I had to take some radiation training and learn how to deal with the high levels of radiation. What I was amazed by was the fact that the neutron beam is actually exposed right on the other side of that thick wall next to me. I had always thought that the beam would be locked into an enclosed tube or something.

That is me and my supervisor putting our samples into the sample tray. The beam comes from the right and goes through our samples, making them highly contaminated, and then enters the detector (the big blue thing) on the left.

Its a good thing that I didn't get any irradiation because I would be forced to stay there for a while on lockdown while I decontaminated.

It was a fun and successful trip.

Espana

2011-10-16T14:10:00.001-07:00

The Appel Family Road Trip made it to Spain this year. Two weeks with everyone smashed in a wagon and me fighting with my Dad over directions while he fights with the manuel transmission on impossibly narrow european roadways. It is always super fun time with the family. My dad always says that it is great that Nicki is such a trooper because it could really turn out horrible if she wasn't.

We started the trip in Barcelona and spent a few days there. It is a beautiful city and super cool architecture is all over the city. Every other building has something really interesting about its exterior.

It was also really funny how much my Dad hates the idea of Donor Kebap. One of the great things about Spain is the Donor Kebap because generally the Kebap is really good, cheap and abundant. My sister, Nicki and I were totally into it and unfortunately my mom and dad would have to go have something a bit more 'low key' for my dad.

One of the things we did while in Barcelona was to head to a very old monastery that is built up in the mountains inland from the city about 45 min. We took the train and could see from the valley floor the main monastery building built on the mountainside.

The main event at the monastery is this 'black virgin' statue which was allegedly carved in Palestine by the apostle Luke and brought to Barcelona in around 4oo a.d. We waited in line for 2 h (much of it before we knew what the line was for) to see it. You only get about 1 min near the statue, which is behind bulletproof glass.

We also went to the Picasso museum which doesn't hold any of his famous paintings but tells a very good story of the man. One work they did have was this one, which was all of our favourite. It is a very impressive painting in person and is extremely beautiful.

We hit all of the hotspots in Barcelona.

When my dad and I went to Barcelona in 2004 the Sagrada Familia, Gaudi's famous chapel, didn't have a proper floor or a proper ceiling. It was really a construction site. But this time it is a fully functional church building and is amazing. There is still a lot of work to do and I can't wait to go back once it is fully finished because it will be an incredible site.

There was this one really nice ice-cream place that made not only good ice-cream, but pretty ice-cream. You could get pretty much as many flavours as you like and they would just make each pedal of the 'flower' a different flavour. Nicki absolutely loved this place and it was sad that it was right at the beginning of the trip and we never found a place that was that good again.

The beaches right in Barcelona are pretty much like huntington beach or seal beach. You have to get a little ways out of the city to get to the really beautiful beaches.

We then flew to the other side of the country to Santiago de Compostela to start the road trip portion that would end in Madrid. We went through the following cities:

Leon

Tordesillas, Valladolid

Avila, Segovia and La Granja de San Ildefonso

El Escorial

Toledo

Madrid

One of the highlights of our trip is always the book my mom reads to us in the car. Most of our nights end with us all cuddled up together listening to my mom until she realizes that Nicki, Jenny and my Dad are asleep. This year she brought 'Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption' which is written by Laura Hilllenbrand, the author of 'Seabiscuit'. It is a true story about a man called Louis Zamperini, a distance runner in the 1936 olympic games in Berlin, Germany, who later fought in pacific theatre during WWII. The story was brilliant and we were all enthralled the entire trip. We couldn't wait to get back to the hotel many nights to get on with Louis. We would definitely recommend.

Barcelona was very hot and sunny. Santiago was cold and rainy, which is apparently typical.

The highlight was definitely the cathedral of Santiago (St. James), who is the patron saint of Spain.

The bones of the saint are under the alter and so if you want to wait in line for 4 hours you can go up and hug the statue of St. James up on the alter and then go down to below the alter to see his gravesite. We decided that we had waited in that sort of line our one time for the trip so gave it a pass and went to get chocolate con churros, a specialty of the Santiago region.

My mom really stepped it up this trip with our accommodation. When we got to Leon we really saw how much she had when we pulled up to this old monastery that has been converted into a hotel. The Spanish government has done this with many castles, monasteries, palaces, etc. which they have taken over and converted into high class hotels. The one in Leon is known as the most beautiful of them all because of the facade and the inner courts.

After Leon we went down and stayed in a very small place called Tordesillas, but spent an afternoon walking around the city that I studied abroad in, called Valladolid. I remember being impressed by the fact that the school that I was at, the University of Valladolid, was the 2nd oldest in Spain. Now I am at the 2nd oldest in England.

We were really lucky because we got to be in Tordesillas right during their fiestas so we got to see a major party involving the whole city, a bullfight, and a very crazy bull running. The bullfight was standard: artful, gruesome and hot. In the photo below it looks as if it is empty, but all of the seats to the left, in the shade are absolutely packed, while the seats to the right, in the sun, are pretty much empty.

So their running of the bulls is really just a running of one bull, called 'El Toro de la Vega'. At midnight they run the bull from the fields outside the city, through the city and into the bullring, which is normal. But the main bit is in the morning they run him back through the city and out into the fields. Everyone chases him through the city, stabbing him with knives, and in the field there are literally hundres of people on horseback carrying these enormous spears. There was also many people on foot with the spears. Everyone chases him around until they kill him and then everyone tries to stab the bull with their spear or knife to get some of the blood on their blade. It is incredible how everyone in the whole community is involved with this. We saw some very old couples walking through the field to watch everyone.

My sister missed the running of the bull because she had to head home to start up a new job. She also missed out on the rest of the trip. Salamanca was the next stop and again Mom's work paid off and we essentially drove up into the cathedral to get to our hotel. We were right underneath it.

Salamanca is a really pretty city, which was also in the middle of their fiestas so there were a couple of very loud and busy nights as the whole of the city centre was jam packed with people until all hours of the night. We left the party early, of course, to head back to keep reading Louis. Here is a good one of Nicki and I:

Segovia was also a highlight of the trip. A very pretty city. Dad really liked the Alcazar, which was the fortress because they had all kinds of cool things to see about cannons and stuff like that. They actually had a large chemistry lab dedicated to developing new explosives in a building right next door.

I would say that the highlight of the whole trip was Toledo, so it was really sad that Jenny wasn't there for that part. We stayed in another Parador, which is outside the city and gave this incredible view.

They even had a pool so we went swimming and laid out a bit while my mom read to us.

Toledo has some very cool buildings and just a fun, quaint feel. I am sure that in high season it can be incredibly busy with day trippers from Madrid. So it was nice to be there a bit outside of the season and to stay the night in such a great location.

The last part of the trip was in Madrid. We wanted to go to a soccer match, but we couldn't get tickets to see the more famous team in Madrid, Real Madrid. So we went to see Atletico Madrid. It was really fun to be apart of the crowd that is so passionate for their team. Even though they were playing a team way down in the league, the stadium was packed and the singing never stopped.

We aso went to a few museums including the Reina Sofia (modern art) to see the Guernica by Picasso, definitely one of his most famous pieces, and the Prado (Spain's Louvre). The Guernica:

El Greco, the highlight of the Prado. I think El Greco ended up being everyone's favourite artist in the museum.

All in all we had another excellent trip and enjoyed our family time together while taking in another different culture.

Clowns

2011-10-10T09:23:00.000-07:00

We wanted to do a quick post about our favorite coffee shop in Cambridge. It's a place that really feels like home and is right across the street from our house. It's called Clowns Cafe and is owned and run by a very large and fun italian family.

I think Nicki comes here every single day. We definitely come together every day that we have off together.

Special deal for a biscotto and a cappuccino. Every time we walk in they ask, "cafe latte cappuccino?!" And every time we say, "Yes please, and a biscotto." To which they reply, every time, "You get the deal with the biscotto and the cappuccino."

We like that they represent with the Italian colors on the building.

Croatia...the land of Rock Beaches

2011-09-26T11:10:00.000-07:00

So this past July we enjoyed a fantastic trip with my sister Michelle and her newby husband Brant! There was quite a lot of effort that went into deciding on where to go. I knew this may be my only oppurtunity to "do" Europe with my sister, but how do you do that in 10 days. Like myself, my sister has a certain threshold for site seeing. So i was worried about trying to cram

Europe into 10 days. So I opted for something that satisfied the following criteria:

1) Somewhere in Europe, 2) where we could get the "travel through Europe" feel, 3) but allowed for relaxation and was not too busy 3) a beautiful place with some culture to experience. i have to say we chose well. And while you could always do a trip better the second time around, I must say that our first go with Croatia satisfied all of those criteria and turned our fabulous.

I prepped Michelles for months ahead of time that we were going all traditional and mostly staying in places that were rooms rented in other peoples homes. The places we stayed were a far cry from a nice, cozy hotel (minus one upgrade that we scored)...but Michelle and Brant adjusted nicely.

Our general itinerary was this: We visited the beautiful city of Dubrovnik to start for three nights. Then it was ferry journeys from there. We went from Dubrovnik to the islands of Miljet, Korcula, Hvar and then back to the mainland to Split. So whilst there was pretty constant packing of bags and going, it was reasonable and the ferries worked like a gem. So there michelle and Brant got a small taste of how traveling Europe can be busy and exhausting. Again, I warned Michelle well ahead of time this would be the planar opposite of thier honeymoon in Mexico which was in an awesome 5 star resort with an infinity pool and chocolates brought to their bedside. Again, they both adjusted nicely.

Dubrovnik:

Swimming in the Agean Sea

Kayaking in the Agean Sea

Water Polo in the Agean Sea

Usually from the months of May to August it does not rain in Croatia (or so they say to convince toursists to come). Some places go so far as to even offer your money back if it happened to rain during your visit. Unfortunatley we did not stay in those places. And like tradition...it just wouldn't be a proper trip for Eric and I if the rain didn't follow for at least some of it. We got a good downpour for about 3 of the 10 days. One was particularly fun though as there was literally a water fall streaming off the staircase in Dubrovnik which led up to our apartment. We were therefore forced to take our packed picnic lunch of baguettes, salami, and cheese to our room where we challenged eachother to a good old family card game called "Oh hell"

Croatia really is beautiful. But it also takes some preparation and getting used to the different style of "beaching it" then we californians are used to. We turned up slightly unprepared in that everyone else around us seems to have understood the culture of blowup water rafts, bring your own towels and the necessity of packing your water shoes. Though all the beaches we went to were very different from eachother, the one thing they had in common is you had to find a nice place to plant on a bed of rocks or a slab of cement or pay for a beach chair. Since all four of us were on a budget we opted to NOT pay for the beach chairs initially. When we got to our first beach, we were unsatisfied with our itt-bitty "hotel" towels that barely covered brants torso (he's pretty tall). They also had these pesky little sea urchins that if you stepped on one would sting and scrape your feet...hence the first need for your water shoes. Eric and I were prepared with our chacos but Michelle and Brant had to makeshift a bit. The 2nd need was in order to get across the rock beach to get in the water at all which was quite a feet barefoot. Once we got to the water, it was delightful except that we were all freaked out about touching the bottom and getting attacked by the sea urchins. In the end, we smartened up and bought one big towel and two water rafts for the 4 of us. The Sandersons shared the extra large towel , I layed on the blowup raft, and Eric just endured the rocks. Then we took turns as couples floating on the rafts in the water. Once we got the cement and rock beaches worked out, it was awesome. Its a great thing to not be constantly wiping sand off and out of every orifice. It was also fantastic to relax and float in the sea that was really calm with no waves and the perfect temperature to cool you off in hot weather but not be too cold because you are laying on top of your raft. And as we explored the beaches we were pleasantly surprised with many different kinds of experiences.

There was one sand beach that we went to though

This spot was pretty awesome. It was a lake with this really cool isthmus that had a really stron current that felt near impossible to swim against. I was very unsuccessful but Eric has better muscles!

We ate lots of Italian food, ice cream, and occasionally braved the sea food (which was great and they are known for it). At one of the beaches we went to the restaurant there for lunch. Our waiter came to our table and asked if we were interested in having the freshly caught fish that had just minutes before been gutted right down at the waters edge. That was really tasty.

Here is our great fish lunch

and the sea below which it was caught

My most favorite Island was Hvar. There were loads of different beaches that you could explore everyday by taking a water taxi over. Little mini water taxis don't really agree with Michelle, but she hung in there. The one we got on I happened to notice the guy starting the engine by rubbing to exposed wires together coming out of the dashboard. We made it though.

This is Hvar at night and where we spent my birthday.

We happened to be there on my 29th birthday so that was a great celebration. We went to a nice dinner where I ate the most rare steak I have ever eaten in my life. I think the only reason I was ok with it was because we were sitting outside so it was dark and the glow of christmas lights made it look not as scary. I must admit, it was delicious...bleeding, but delicious. Then Brant went and told the guy it was my birthday. At the end of dinner he shut the lights out...on the entire restaurant (so literally every customer was in darkness) and brought me out a piece of traditional Croatian fig cake with- not a little candle...but a huge sparkler in it! The rest of the night was great fun with the 4 of us. A memorable brithday for sure.

We spent countless moments admiring the massive super yachts. Some were truly unbelievable. So much so that we had to google it when we got back to our hotel just to find that it was 240 feet long, and the master bedroom was much larger than our entire apartment. Its called "Kogo super Yacht" if you're curious.

On the last leg of our journey we went to Split. From Split we rented a car and drove to Krka national park. This is a highlight. It was such a beautiful waterfall and lagoon. But not just that, one that you can actually swim in and there are loads and loads of people. It almost felt like we were at a water park with how the people were hanging out. Eric and I put on our awesome chaco sandles and proceeded to climb our way over rocks and crevices and then swim towards the edge of the falls. It was absolutely serene.

This was another spectacular trip but more so because our time with Michelle and Brant was so special. I am so glad we seized the oppurtunity to travel with them before life got busier.

Greece: Santorini and Athens

2011-08-10T08:56:00.001-07:00

For my birthday this year we made a trip to Greece to have a bit of a mix of history and nice weather relaxation to help out of the winter. We were only there long enough to make two stops so we went to Santorini and Athens. Santorini is a small volcanic island in the aegean sea south of athens on the way towards Crete.

We had a little apartment thing with a kitchenette and some deck chairs that overlooked the 'Caldera'. We had a great view of the water and the steep cliffs down into the water caused by the huge volcanic eruption.

One day we took a little boat out to the center portion of the island where the live volcano is. We also got to go into some hot-springs, which were not all that hot, and kind of disappointing. But the hike up to the volcano was cool.

My birthday dinner was one of the best meals we have had since we have been married. It is wonderful how a really good meal can be so enjoyable. Nicki had a great steak that was a filet wrapped in bacon and cooked to perfection. I had the roast lamb, which was also cooked perfectly.

There are very few beaches on Santorini. It is not really a beach place and is more interesting and beautiful for the landscape. But they do have some beaches so one day we hired a small car (a very rickety old car) and drove to the other side of the island to hit up a black beach, a red beach and a white beach. While heading to the black beach it looked just like the beach in mexico. Beautiful water and nice little cabanas out front of restaurant/bars; but one street away from the coast and it is totally run down. One great thing about the beach: the sand didn't stick to you at all. You just had to wipe it off and it was gone. It was great.

Here is our cute little crappy car.

And the edge of the red beach. The white beach is around the bend to the left a little bit and you could walk there from the red portion. So you could have your pick, depending on where you layed out your towel.

Athens was really incredible. It is a very large city and is similar to Rome in a lot of ways. So much history lying around and being trampled and it is a bit dirty. It was really surprising how many Americans were there also. We normally hear Americans while traveling, but no where near the same number as in Athens.

Here we are up on the Acropolis, the City of the Gods up on a hill overlooking Athens. This is were the Parthenon is. I think it is perpetually covered in scaffolding. Not that it needs the support, but I guess the restoration process is extremely slow.

Across a bit of the city from the Acropolis is the Areopagus, or Mars Hill, which is where Paul preached the sermon recorded in Acts.

There was also one of the coolest, scratch that, definitely the coolest market I have ever been to. It was really huge, but each little cove had their own specialties. This is one little cove which had all kinds of really cool old stuff. You could find anything there.

Gotta love good gyros. My absolute favourite.

One of my favourite things about living in Europe is being around the history. I think that I can only appreciate it because I grew up somewhere else because none (or few) of my friends here seem to stop and take it in as often as I do. One of the things that always gets me is seeing the history books come alive. You read books and hear stories and memorize dates/people/capitals etc. while you are going through school, but so ofter I found myself doubting or at least not really believing that the events happened. One such case is the story in the Iliad and continued in the Odyssey. I had a summer project on them before my sophomore year of high school. This was before the movie 'Troy' came out, which is based on the Iliad. If anyone remembers the story, the Greek forces unite and go out to war against Troy in modern-day Turkey to recover 'Helen' (aka Helen of Troy). This is where the 'Trojan Horse' comes from because the Greeks left a giant horse full of Greek soldiers and the night after the Trojans brought it into the city, the soldiers broke out and burned the city. That is a lot to say, but the intro was necessary because the story included some real characters. The leader of the Greeks was Agamemnon. In the national archeological museum in Athens we got to see his 'burial mask'. It was just incredible to be able to see that mask and realize that a bit of the story really was true.

Portugallllllllllllllllllll

2011-07-01T06:52:00.000-07:00

February 2011: This visit and travel was such a treat. I absolutley love traveling with Eric, but nothing can replace a girls trip. Three wonderful ladies from the ol' college years at Cal Poly came from all different places to join me in Cambridge. Our ulitmate destination was Faro, Portugal. Kit flew from Austria where she has been studying at the Orff Academy of Music for the last year. Katie traveled all the way from Africa where she has been working with an organization but had to leave during election time in Februaru. Susan came from our sweet home state of CA to take a retreat from her job (which she rocks at but just needed a vacation).

They first joined me in Cambridge, where we did all the sorts of Cambridg-y stuff...the market, college dinner, tea-house, etc.

And then we were off to enjoy our lady trip together in Faro, Portugal. There was no particular reason for this choice, except that is a cheap flight and a cheap time of year to stay. We knew weren't going for the weather since it was February, but hoping to have a nice getaway somewhere new. We were greeted with a huge downpour of rain which pretty much lasted the entire trip. But that didn't stop us. We made meals together, worked out in our living room, had a couple nights out and sat on the couch for many many hours. It was a time of great laughs, inside jokes and wonderful conversation.

Its not often that I get to celebrate Valentines day with my girlfriends. We made the most of it.

The weather forecast showed one day of sunshine, so we seized our oppurtunity and made a day trip to Sevilla, Spain. It's a beautiful town with a lovely feel.

Girls don't need much....just 4 people who are all a little qwerky, good food, music and a comfy bed. I think all 4 of us were surprised how much fun the week was together. Unforgettable. Thanks girls.

A little behind...this might be a trend

2011-07-01T06:09:00.000-07:00

I love those of you who are good and up to date on blogging. Eric and I have just come to accept that we are not great bloggers. That does NOT mean we will stop. It simply means if you are still interested in keeping up with what is going on in our lives...you will have to read each post and think to yourself: "huh, that must have been several months back".

So, my goal this week (and this post is my accountability) to update you all on the following:

February: My trip to Portugal with girlfriends

May: Our trip to Greece

June: My sweet treat trip home and general updates!

I just like this photo

An Austrian Ball

2011-03-19T05:22:00.001-07:00

One of Eric's labmates, Monika, is a post-doc from Vienna, Austria. She is also a ballroom dancer. Apparently many elementary/middle schools require all of their students to study ballroom dancing and most kids, instead of doing jazz/ballet etc, do ballroom dancing. So ballroom dancing (not to mention the classical music that pretty much goes with the older styles) is a major part of Austrian culture. Jan-March is "Ball Season" in Vienna where every major company, university, society, etc. hosts a ball. Monika was trying to round up a crew of people to go with her to Vienna for a ball and we jumped at the opportunity. We ended up going to the Technical University of Vienna annual ball, which was held in the old Imperial Palace of the old empire (the Kaiser's house). It was the type of place we would normally have to pay 10-12 euros each just to tour around, but with friends of friends buying us the tickets, we got our ball tickets for 35 euro each.

We started our trip with a good austrian beer and a sausage from a street cart...at midnight.

We had a bit of our first day to tour around Vienna, which was very pretty. This is the garden of the newer palace. There was not much but snow, but it was really beautiful.

Then came the night of the ball. They are incredibly long affairs, going from 8:30 pm to around 5 am. But they are proper balls, with real tuxedos and proper ball gowns. Here is Monika, showing off her gown. She was super into the swirly feeling.

Here was our crew. Nicki and I, Monika and Chris, Zarah and Marcus. The only real dancers were Monika and Chris, who are both excellent ballroom dancers. The rest of us just came along for the fun of it. Marcus is also Austrian and was actually forced to take ballroom through elementary school (it was mandatory at his school and many others), but didn't really remember all that much.

As the ball was held in the old emperial palace, every room was extravagant.

This was the main floor with an orchestra playing all the traditional ballroom music for dances like waltz, viennese waltz, fox trot, quick step and even a couple of jives. The opening dance was a really special thing. All of these couples filed in after a procession of everyone important to the University hosting the ball. There was a small speech before the opening two dances with these special dancers.

This was the most beautiful room in the place.

Nicki and I trying it out. I can't really tell what we are trying, but it looks like a cha cha.

This is us with a statue of the Kaiser. This is the Kaiser afterwhom Kaisershmarrn was named. If you don't know what that is, then you should learn. It is a great dessert (but people eat it as a main all the time also) of sweet pancakes with raisens in them, all torn to shreds and covered in powdered sugar. You then dip the pieces in applesauce.

We spent a lot of time watching Monika and Chris as they were pros.

After the whole thing was said and done, we headed home and slept in the next day. We had gotten home around 5:00 and were totally pooped. But the next afternoon we got up and made some more touring around the city.

Manner is an Austrian chocolate company that sells these great little waffer cookies and they sell them in sizes from a normal sort of 4 cookie packet, up to these enormous boxes.

Hungarian Goulash soup. One of the best things for the cold.

One of the other highlights was heading out on the train early for a day of snowboarding. The mountains were only about 1 hour away on the train so we just grabbed our snow stuff and went out and rented some stuff for the day. It was really icy, so not the best conditions, but it was fun anyways. Nicki had a wake-up call because it was quite a bit harder than she expected.

Winter in Cambridge

2011-02-06T13:45:00.000-08:00

I realize we are not the most current on blogging. So now since Spring is here...we thought we'd share the events of our winter. Here's to start:

Winter in Cambridge...Snow makes everything beautiful. This winter was particularly beautiful (over christmas time). These photos of Cambridge in the winter are courtesy of our good friend Collin Bullard. They are really stunning. Take a look.

Christmas time

2011-01-25T10:21:00.001-08:00

It was our first christmas without our families and that part was sad. But it was a beautiful and really special christmas nonetheless.

We attended the Kings College Christmas Eve service. This service was introduced in 1918 and has been broadcast since 1928. Millions of people around the world listen to the live broadcasting on christmas eve. The kicker to this awesome service is that you have to be of the first 150 people to line up outside the college. Meaning you have to line up starting at 7am and stay in line until 2pm when they take you inside to the chapel. We and friends, the Bullards, lined up ready for the day. Candace was probably the most prepared with her down sleeping bag. Note the snow on the ground. It was cold, to say the least. Not to mention you line up in a nice corridor where the wind wips through, making it feel even colder.

But it turned out to be a beautiful day.

The Bullards and The Appels.

The service was incredible. The singing and the whole composition of the service. It is called the "Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols" and there is typically a reading and then a corresponding song that takes you from Genesis to Revelation. Since they are recording everything, you sometimes feel a little bit of pressure to sing well because you wouldn't want to be the one horrible off tune that everyone around the world cringes at. All in all the service was really beautiful and something we will probably never attend again. It was certainly special.

This is the Clarke Fmaily: Bruce & Sarah, and twins Lydia and Rosemary. They have become great friends of ours during our time in England. They are friends that we learn so much from and not to mention eat so well with since Sarah is one of the most awesome cooks...ever! (it's seriously like "going to moms" for dinner)

Christmas day we spent with the Bullards and the Keims. But to make it more like home, the Bullards lovingly agreed to let us spend the night so we could wake up like we would with our families all cozy in our pj's and drinking hot coffee. They really made it a special morning as they gave us all stalkings with fun little trinkets.

We also had a gift exchange/secret santa thing. We did it guys/girls and since there were only three in each category it didn't really work like a typically secret santa. Here are the boys showing off their goods. It doesn't like Eric has anything, but he got the beanie hat.

Here are some of the stalking goodies: oranges, beer for eric, kitchen knife for nicki (and eric)

During the christmas season there are many parties and special dinners. Before this christmas we went to the annual melville dinner with Eric's work friends and their dates, which is always fun. It is nice to meet everyone's partners and get dressed up in black tie and eat some good food and wine at Jesus College.

These are Eric's lab/gym/football buddies Sam and Jesus showing off their tuxedo squats.

Christmas this year turned out to be pretty nice and Eric and I had quite a lot of free time (over 9 days) with nothing to do, so we kept it really low key. But, like always, we were back to work at the start of the New Year.

Granada & Malaga, Spain- December 2010

2011-01-25T10:20:00.000-08:00

I have been looking forward to a Snowboard trip with Eric for a while now. Eric goes every year with his research group, but this was a trip intended for me to see how well i can take on the slopes. Through lots of research we decided on the Sierra Nevada mountains in Spain. Apparantly, it is some of the best skiing in all of Europe. What we found is that just depends on your weather and your luck. With my expectations high (never a good idea for a vacation anyway) I was really looking forward to having a week holiday in the snow with my hubby...tuckering out on the slopes during the day and then nestling up in a cozy hotel at night. To our surprise, there was a mild heat wave and a storm that rolled in the week we went. So all the beautiful white snow at the base of the mountain was wet sludgyness and the slopes were closed becasue of extremely high winds and no visibility. We didn't get to know this till we got there though. So, we readjusted our plans...which Eric is far better at doing than I am. But once again a learning experience. So instead we explore the Spanish towns of Granada and Malaga.

Here is the start of our ski trip. ..rain, not snow!

Granada was a pretty awesome city though and we were lucky that at least we had that because most other places we would have had absolutely nothing to do:
Granada has a bunch of really pretty graffiti in different places around the city.

A spanish treat is churros con chocolate. Churros which you dip in thick hot chocolate.

kebap is the best in andalucia.

this is me up in the little window where the readings before meals would be read to the monks at this monestary. This is a little off of the beaten path in Granada and we would highly recommend it. The monastery church is incredible.

This is the main beach in malaga. Nicki did a special night shot with a timer and had to run 50m to get to the sign in time.

A friend of Nicki's from the hospital in cambridge is from Malaga and so we got to spend some time with her. She showed us some of the good spots. This place is famous for their sweet wine.

On the entire trip we spent a lot of time in Cafes and read through the Dave Ramsey's "Financial Peace". It was a really good book to read together to get us thinking about our finances and talking through them so that we were on the same page about everything.

This is also one of Eric's favourite treats, espresso layered on top of sweetened condensed milk. I love spain and it was really good to more time there with Eric. Even though it took a couple of days to fix my attitude after the disappointment of not snowboarding.

2011-01-14T13:21:00.000-08:00

Boompa aka: Harold "My Grandpa" Couch

This past thursday, my Boompa died. He was pretty amazing. He lived to a great age of 90. He was one of the wittiest old men I ever knew. He could tell you stories with details from his past where I can't barely remember details from yesterday. He served in WWII. He rodeo'd and roped steers until he was 75...he passed some of his old rodeo belt buckles on to me. I am sad that he has died. I feel so grateful that I got to spend a day with him when we were home last. He was a fantastic grandpa. My Boompa, I will miss him.

Italia with the Appels

2011-01-06T08:43:00.000-08:00

Out to dinner in Milan at a restaurant that came recommended to us from a guy at the Hotel we stayed at. We knew there were three places that were good (one was a fish place, one was a meat place and one was a pasta place) and we know were the three places were, but we didn't know which was which. We randomly picked one and ended up at the fish place. Dad went for the shellfish pasta and got to wear this awesome getup.

Milan was really nice and we missed not having Jenny there for the whole time. We got to see a lot of cool things though, like the cathedral.

Mom had everything really well planned out and had gotten us on a tour to see the Last Supper by Leonardo Da Vinci. It is painted on a wall of an extremely unassuming (read: rather ugly) church off the beaten track. It is a miracle that it still exists as the church was bombed and the roof and two of the other walls in the building that it is in were torn down during WWII. It was outside in the elements for 4 years. It really is a work of art and is absolutely beautiful.

Gelato is awesome. We got it almost every day. I am pretty sure it was everyday.

After Jenny got there we headed down to La Spetzia and La Cinque Terre. Rick Steves was right to start that train. It was really beautiful.

After that we headed to Tuscany and stayed in Lucca, spent a day in Pisa on our way to Florence for a couple of days. Dad had a clever idea to be a bit different than the other 500 tourists taking pictures holding up the leaning tower.

We don't have many pictures of Florence, but we really liked that city. At least I really like it. I went there with dad on our trip around Europe the month before I studied abroad in Spain and loved it. Especially a fairly touristy, but really awesome restaurant called "Il Latini". We had a great time there when we were there and so one night we spent a while just walking around trying to find it. We ended up finding it and had a really great many-course "traditional" italian meal. The next day we headed over to see the David. It was really fun because Nicki loved it and really appreciated the beauty of the statue. It is one of the few things that really arrest you when you see it and it makes every other statue in the world look bland and rough.

San Gimignano is a really beautiful, small, middle-age city atop a hill in tuscany. Well worth a stop and a walk around.

After a while of meandering through tuscany and the chianti subregion, we ended up in our place for two days in chianti, La Badia Coltibuono. The place was a monastery from the middle ages and the monks, like good italians, made wine. Now it is a winery which has recently refurbished the old monk rooms into very simple, but nice hotel rooms. This is the old refectory and it is now their sitting room and casual wine drinking room. The frescoes on the walls were painted by one of the Florentine greats during the renaissance.

Tuscan cheese shop.

We also went by Orvieto, which is a small city built on top of an extremely steep volcanic tuff and is one of the more amazing skylines there is. It also has a really awesome cathedral.

The facade has a whole bunch of really intricate and beautiful carving depicting the whole of the biblical narrative.

Later that day we were checking into our hotel for the next couple of days, which was another refurbished old place. It was an old fort, which you can see up on the hill in the next photo. The whole car ride to the place was through very dark and spooky woods and we kept making jokes that they wouldn't have triple rooms and Jenny would have to stay in a little scary room all by herself. The best part is that when we got there they guy, in very broken english, told us that the rollaway bed they have was broken and so they had a special double room all made up to accommodate the third person and we all started laughing super hard. The room they had picked out for her was on the other side of the fortress up this really skinny, dark stairwell, which was just awesome and couldn't have been better suited for the setup in the car ride. Jenny ended up staying with my parents because she was too afraid. That night I decided to do a Crossfit workout in the room while the family was hanging out. It ended up being extremely hard, not just because it was actually hard (which is was, really hard), but because Jenny kept making fun of me and making me laugh. Its really hard to do burpees and squats while laughing.

We also got to see some Etruscan ruins and burial grounds and also some subterranean roads leading from city-to-city for protection.

After that we went back through Milan to drop Jenny off and then went up to Lago Maggiore. The italian lake district is beautiful and you can see the alps in the background. We could see why George Clooney has (maybe had) a mansion there on Lake Como. The are a couple of little islands in the lake. One of them (Isola Bella) has a mansion on it that is really old and incredibly beautiful that is owned by the Borromeo family.

The island also has a bunch of very rare white peacocks walking all over the place.

It was a really wonderful trip with the family. Mom did another great job with planning as everything went down super smoothly.

Home Sweet Home

2010-12-01T07:01:00.000-08:00

The entire summer I was so looking forward to my trip home in September. Now I can't believe that the entire 7 weeks, wedding and festivities have come and gone so quickly. There is nothing like being home. The main festivity we went home for was my sister Michelles wedding. I went by myself for the first 3 weeks, then Eric met me for 10 days. It was fabulous. I know it was not a normal environment for us all, everyone being in the same town let alone the same house for a month and most of us not having work to wake up for. Nonetheless it was great while it lasted. I totally loved simply waking up everyday in my old room (kind of), drinking coffee instead of tea and putzing around doing crafty wedding stuff with my sisters. Great add ons to our time there were getting to see some special friends. Ironically, my 10 year high school reunion was the weekend I came back...so I even got to catch up with old high school relationships. It was all fantastic!

High School Reunion: Two closest friends from Highschool- Lindsey Towers and Meghan Martin. It's hard to believe 10 years has gone.

I was really happy to have gotten to spend time with some really special friends from college. (From left to right) Vali, Amy, Annah, Allison (with baby Malia), me, Kristen. We met up at a family beach house. We literally sat in the living room to chat and moved from there to the kitchen and back for an entire two days, in our pj's for most of the time, just chatting away. It was such a refreshing two days. I learn and am challenged so much by this group of friends. The dynamics are great and I look forward to the next get together.

Eric and I got to spend time with my grandparents up in Lompoc and then on our way down meet our old Cambridge friends who now live in Santa Barbara. Pam and Kyle are a great couple who we miss having around Cambridge dearly. They have both settled on the west coast and Kyle is a Pastor at Presbyterian church in SB.

Now for the wedding: So this was my first maid of honor role. Maid of honor is a lot of work...I could not do it for just anyone...but Michelle was worth it. In the end, everything worked out wonderful and I hope Michelle felt special through it all.

We had 50's pin-up housewife themed evening shower. Everyone who came were troopers and did some part in dressing up. We had good old fashioned lasagna, fresh baked chocolate chip cookies straight out of the oven with cold glass of milk, and some saucy and funny games.

Bcahelorette day was a family day just with us sisters and mom. We started off the day right with a Starbucks and then an excersize class...pole dancing. It is much harder than one would expect! The shoes were provided by the studio. Great fun.

Then we headed to our magnificent bread and breakfast by the beach in Del Mar where we spent the next couple of hours dressing up in our old wedding dresses and using the self timer on my moms camera to get a photo of the 5 of us to give to my dad. That was even greater fun. The rest of the evening consisted of Champaigne, questions, and a sleep over. Here is the final product given to dad at the rehearsal dinner. I think he liked it=)

Wedding week- was crazy like expected. With the kids outnumbering the adults it is always a mad house. But exactly why our family is so much fun. Eric definitly got thrown into kid duty more often than not and I have to say he did a stellar job.

Eric with nieces and nephews (left to right): Torrie, Kendall, Sydney, Elijah, Micah, McKenzie

Eric and Elijah basking in the sun pool side

But the Adults had their fun also.

The wedding was fabulous. Mom and Michelle put so much hard work into the event and it was all stunning. It was a very romantic vibe. Michelle was a stunning bride and very low key I must say. This was my first time getting to spend time with Brant her new husband. He is spectacular. They are a truly compatible couple.

The Girls...

The whole family...

Grandma (age 87) and Grandpa (age 95) still grooving!

Corey, my brother....his grand entrance was a back flip. None of ours compared.
Mom with her grand-kiddos

There is nothing like home. Eric and I are so fortunate to have really wonderful families. We wouldn't trade them for the world!

Camping in Wales

2010-12-01T06:25:00.000-08:00

So we are just a smidge behind on updating you all on our life...with photos at least. We ventured to do our frist camping trip here in England and claimed it my 28th birthday adventure. It is quite the gamble since you NEVER know till the day of what weather you are going to get. Our good friends, The Bullards (Candice and Collin), had recently purchased thier Happy Honda for a grand £125 and were willing to embark on this journey with us. So destination ... the coast of Wales!

The 4 hour drive was beautiful. We couldn't help ourselves to stop at McDonalds and Starbucks to load up on lattes and milkshakes. Needless to say the combo didn't feel so great later. Not to mention England just does not know how to "shake". Anyway, we made it to our spot and it was amazing. I'd say in the end we had 'workable' weather. It wasn't great, but it wasn't a downpour either. So you make the best of it.

We had a beautitful spot overlooking a small cliff that led down to the beach with a massive expanse of ocean in front of us. It so reminded us of Californias coast if you minus the drizzle and our scottish tent neighbors.

The Bullards made a fabulous chocolate birthday cake which was all I wanted for my birthday. We ended up eating in thier stand-up tent that evening due to the drizzle. But to really celebrate and make life exciting, they busted out the sparklers as they sang " happy birthday"...yes, still inside the tent.

We camped luxury style with a borrowed LL Bean tent and our blow up mattress that deflated both nights we were there, walked along "the beach" to collect wood for our fire that evening, and had gin-n tonics with our lunch of hot grilled cheese sandwhiches and tomoto soup. We had some trouble that night with the fire due to the consistent drizzle...luckily our neighboring Scottsman came to the rescue and lent us lighter fluid. Yeah, for lighter fluid because it meant we got to eat dinner.

Candice didn't have a hat and made do with my fleece neckwarmer. Her resemblance to a smurf was uncanny.

Collin found me this AWESOME rock on the beach....what does it remind you of??? Yes, it's a heart!!! He so graciously gave it to me knowing that I probably had the most interest in this little piece of natures art. It was a keeper and is now housed in our living room.

We ended the venture with a wonderful hike. Amongst plenty of time deliberating whether or not to do the "shorter but steeper" vs the "longer but less intense"...we decided on the longer but less intense. To our delight we started on our hike, which seemed a bit too intense to be what we thought. Needless to say we accomplished the short and steep. It was all super picturesque with roaming sheep and stone walls. Eric snuck in a crossfit workout on our way down using natures resources.

We had a fabulous trip. Thankyou Collin and Candice for being wonderful friends who are always up for an adventure and love dessert!!! We are lucky to have you guys around.

Italy with the Foxs

2010-08-02T02:16:00.001-07:00

So Tim and Marijke Fox came to visit us for a while, which was wonderful. They came to us here in Cambridge for a couple of days while Eric tried to convince Tim that it is an exceedingly great idea that he do a PhD here. Then we all went together to Italy for a week. We spent four days with them in Rome and then Nicki and I went up to Siena for Il Palio while the Foxs went up to Florence. Here are some photos from around Rome.

A huge memorial for the establishment of the collective state of Italy:
From the Forum:
The Colosseum:

Trevy Fountain:

If you are there at the right time with the right lighting you can see a solid pillar of light down to the floor of the Pantheon. We weren't there at the right time.

We watched the dutch play soccer in the world cup. Marijke (maiden name 'van Pelt' is proud to be dutch) and was excited to watch the game.

When we went to see the Vatican we went early and got into St. Peters before finding out that it was a religious holiday and all the rest, including the museums, was shut down. But we did see the pope lead mass.

They had the pope on some big screens outside for the huge numbers to see. Nicki's photo makes him look black, but he is German.

It was actually really funny that this was on a tuesday because we got up early to make it all the way across town to get there early, and missed getting into the museum vaticani and being able to see the rest of the basilica. On wednesdays there is the papal appearance that also makes it impossible to see the basilica. Tim and I didn't know this and got up early again to find out that we couldn't get in. So essentially we got jacked up by the Pope two days in a row. The appearance was really funny though because the pope is driven around standing in the back of a white hummer while waving at everyone. He then gave a very long sermon in latin.

Nicki liked this scene outside the Castle St. Angelo.

Michelangelo's Pieta

This is a typical scene that many places in the states try to emulate by distressing the paint on the walls when all they really need to do is not ever take care of anything and after a couple of years it will look all rundown and get that real lived in 'rustic' feel.

This is the Siena cathedral. It looks like Beetle Juice's house.

The Palio is a three day festival centered around a bareback horse race between different regions in the ancient city. They have been doing the race for 800 years or so in the main campo.

This is one of the teams scarves that every supporter wears. They all have unique songs that people are singing all day long, over and over again.

The horses race three times around the track. It is the horse that wins and not the rider, so if the rider gets knocked off and the horse passes the line first, that team still wins. Directly after the race the winner was attacked by about a thousand people and dragged off of the horse and then a huge celebration ensued for the rest of the night.

We had some really good food in Siena. Italy is pretty awesome.

Having the Foxs around was awesome and going traveling with them was really fun. It was fun to experience a new place with some good friends. If anyone wants to make a trip to europe and wouldn't mind us joining for a portion just let us know.

Edinburgh "eh-din-bra"

2010-07-15T10:13:00.001-07:00

Up to Edinburgh...I spelled it phonetically in the title becasue for some reason Americans are unable to pronounce it correctly. We found the easiest way to have it roll off the tongue was to pretend you are saying the last bit as "bro" with a super intense surfers accent- Now practice... Edin-braaaah!

Eric and I met one of his good friends from university, Sara, and her fiance, Hugh. Hugh is a photographer and was asked to shoot a wedding in Scotland. Eric and I had heard amazing things about scotland and took the oppurtunity to meet them for a few days in the Scottish Low-lands!

Edinburgh is very beautiful in a weird sort of way. When you come in on the train you are taken aback by the scene of the Castle and the rest of the old city perched high on an extinct volcano. Every building is built with the dark grey-black stone that gives an ominous feeling. At the foot of the castle mount there is a nice park now but which used to be a small lake where they tested (i.e. drowned) witches. If they sank they were innocent, but died anyways. If they floated they were witches and were dragged out of the lake, tortured and burnt at the stake.

This is the coffee shop where J.K Rowling frequented and started jotting down her ideas for "Harry Potter" on napkins.
There was peak we climbed that was remarkably similar those we used to hike in SLO. Short, steep extinct volcanoes. Though Edinburgh was a really enchanting town with an amazing old castle, this was still my favorite part.
And of course, no one does whiskey like the Scottish.
Sara, Hugh, and Eric on the trail up the salisbury crag.
There is a big mountain just behind the crag called Arthur's seat, which doesn't have a direct view of the city but is beautiful and green. Here is the seat overlooking the crag overlooking the city.

all in all it was a fun short trip to a very enchanting old city. We also got to watch the USA-England game with a bunch of people who really wanted USA to beat England. At least everyone got a big laugh when the England keeper dropped the ball.

Turkey Lurkey

2010-05-12T16:00:00.001-07:00

For Eric's 25th birthday this year we took a trip to Istanbul, Turkey for a long weekend in late April. It was highly recommended to us by some of our friends here as well as one of Nicki's good friends Emily. We stayed in a nice hotel right in the center of the old center of the city, called Sultanahmet, which is probably where most of the hotels are located. The hotel had a very nice rooftop with a view over the sea of Marmara, the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque.

Here we are between the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque.

You can see the 6 minarets of the Blue Mosque, equalled only by the mosque at Mecca (see the video below for a little glimpse of the call to prayer that happens 5 times a day). The place was incredibly beautiful and loaded with history. Turkey is a secular state but the strong presence of Muslim culture is made the place totally different from any place I have ever been before.

Here is the inside of the Hagia Sophia. It was more like a construction site that a museum because nothing seemed really restored like any other old building like this in Europe. It was built in 537 as a Christian church and was the largest Cathedral in the world for over 100o years. It is particularly known for its massive dome. It was Christian for 1000 years until the Ottoman empire when they converted it into a mosque and stuccoed over all of the mosaics to cover the human and animal forms depicted. So restoration is a messy business because you can see below how the mosaic of the virgin and child is sticking through where the stucco has fallen off and you can see the huge boards with Koranic text that were added by the Ottomans. Tons of history and which part do you restore?

Here is the inside of the Blue Mosque, so called because of the tiles adorning the interior.

Nicki had to cover her legs as her dress was a little too short.

There were little stands with corn (either boiled or burnt) or roasted nuts. There was also this super weird elastic ice-cream that was really hard to eat. It was really stretchy so you couldn't really lick it easily at all. Really weird stuff and Nicki couldn't handle it so I had to eat a whole cone of it.

We went out for Turkish coffee pretty much everyday. I liked it but Nicki didn't really. All of the fine coffee grounds are in the bottom of the cup so towards the bottom you have to filter them out a bit with your teeth.

The guy (Fehme) who did breakfast for us everyday suggested we take the ferry out to the Princess Islands in the sea of Marmara for a day. Nicki caught me yawning.

The islands looked really pretty from the boat and since we didn't really know anything about any of them we just got off on a random on. There are four that the ferry calls at and we just got off when it seemed like most people were getting off.

Even though they looked really pretty, they were nothing like what we were expecting and didn't have any nice beaches or anything. Most of the houses were not very nice at all and there were quite a bit of places like this, which had obviously not been taken care of.

Ever since I was little my family has always called Oreos "black cookies" and it was kind of funny to see some oreo-like cookies that are actually called "negro".

Islam says that no human or animal figures can be used for adornment so everything is typically covered in geometrical shapes like this door panel or Arabic calligraphy from the Koran. It is super cool to see how different their traditions are.

Nicki really wanted to get a couple of these cool purses and was really excited to get a good deal when buying a couple and we totally got ripped off. Really they weren't that expensive at all but the realization that the salesman is really excited to take a bunch of your money always makes you upset.

We went to the Topkapi Palace, which is the old palace and it was a very tripy place. It was super cool but also hugely different than any other palace I have been to. The audioguide was not really helpful at all as everything that was being said on the guide was written on all of the signs around the place. If anyone is going there either pay for a guide or just read the signs.

The weird thing about the place was that they didn't really share any information about the history of the palace or the sultan. Visiting the Harem was really telling in that the language they used to describe the history was always really positive and not a single negative thing was ever mentioned. An example was in the chief eunuch's quarters where they said that they eunuchs were typically "recruited" from Africa, typically Ethiopia. They said the concubines (there were around 300 or so in the Harem) were only the brightest and most beautiful girls and brought there when they were 12 to 15 and if the Sultan really liked them they may be lucky enough to be one of his "favorites" and be allowed to have one of the Sultan's children. It was just so crazy that no negative thing was ever mentioned. Any place like this in the west would at least acknowledge the dark parts of their past. One really cool thing though was the hall of holy relics which included King David's sword (Bible David, father of solomon), Moses' rod (the one he used to strike the rock and red sea, etc.), and part of John the Baptist's arm and hand. You see these things and automatically think that it has to be bogus, but when you see so many other things around you that are so old you have to think that maybe they aren't fakes. History is interesting like that because how can anything old be trustworthy when you look at it through a lens of "contemporary arrogance" as C.S. Lewis calls it?

The concubines were taught all matter of things in the special school in the Harem. Their courses focused a lot on music and this is where the girls could show off their skills to the crown prince and the Sultan.

Just a cool picture.

This was dessert pretty much every night. The best baklava I have ever had and some tea. Nicki was really excited to get the rice pudding and was really sad that it was super gross.

There were so many cats all of the city. This one came into the restaurant we were at and took up the seat next to Nicki. He was chased out maybe 6 times and kept coming back. My allergies were killing me all night after that.

This is an egyptian obelisk that was brought from Luxor in Egypt by Constantine when he moved the capital of the Roman Empire to his new city Constantinople. It was already 1800 years old when he moved it over in 350 or so.

This was super cool to me because it is a real statue dedicated to Apollo by the group of greeks, including the Spartans, after defeating the Persians. One of those things you read about in school but don't really understand that it was a real thing until you see it right in front of you and realize they weren't just stories but were absolutely real. Another thing that you see and realize that history really happened right here and that the native Californian in you just has no concept of history.

The book bazaar. Only a small part of the bazaar as a whole which is something like 38 square blocks. The oldest and largest covered market in the world.

Nicki and I went to a Turkish bath, which was super fun. It was another weird cultural thing because there is total separation of the sexes and so when you get your scrub-down and your oil massage it is always by the same sex and it was only until recently (last 50 years or so) that it was a capital offense to mix in the baths. So I got rubbed down by a fat, hairy turkish man and Nicki got to hang with some fat turkish ladies wearing just some little black chones. But it was really fun.

Here is Nicki, super hungry and loving the bread we got before the meal.

Here is her now super sad when the meal actually came out because it was super gross and the meat smelled really funny. So she just ate bread that night.

It is always fun to be outside the developed world where health and safety laws are non-existent. A couple of construction workings hanging off the side of the building trying to put up some big lights.

All in all it was a very cool trip and very eye opening. We learned a ton of history, ate some really great kebap, ate some really gross kebap, ate some super awesome baklava, and got rubbed down by some old fat turkish people. Here is a little video that I took at around 5 am of the call to prayer. The call is from the one little mosque seen between the Blue Mosque and the Haghia Sophia. That mosque only had one little minaret with one balcony (covered in loud-speakers). The major call from the Blue Mosque had finished right when I got to the roof, but you can imagine that 6 minarets for a total of 10 balconies is much much louder. I am sad that I missed getting it on video.

Appels in the Big Apple!

2010-04-28T09:10:00.000-07:00

Next stop: New York. This entire vacation as a whole was intended to be one where we could visit close friends of ours off in far away places whilst utilizing the fact that Eric would already be in the states for a conference. It all worked out beautifully. I will have Eric share separately about his very first ACS (American Chemist Society) national conference in SF and the lucky timing of his close friend, Ben Potter's, wedding in SLO the weekend following (although he didn't take any pictures).

After my trip to Costa Rica, I headed to NY to visit one of my most favorite persons, Chelsea. Chelsea and Daniel are currently living in Brooklyn, NY where he is finishing his 2nd year of a PhD in philosophy at NYU and she is a social worker in the city. I spent the first few days there on my own until Eric met up with me a few days later. There is just nothing like getting to see your closest girlfriends. We chatted, shopped, ate and laughed! It was a particular fun visit because Chelsea and Daniel got to tell us in person that they are PREGNANT with thier first little guy...and yes, they are having a boy!!!!!

Chelsea gave me a good tour around much of the city but decided we would save the big things for my time with Eric. This building below is really interesting. It is an old church situated between other apartment complexes and then converted into apartments as well whilst still retaining the original exterior of a church.
New York has the most spectacular foods! I'd say i got my fair share of cupcakes, red-velvet cake, and sweet potatoe fries.

And not too mention great (but expensive) coffee. Daniel and Chels... I put this photo in for you guys=)
Once Eric came into town, we ventured up to New Haven where his good buddy Ian is in his 2nd year PhD in biology at Yale. We couldn't believe our luck when his other close friends, Jeremy and Lauren Vreeland from Seattle had coincidentally planned a trip to NY the same time we did and had made plans to visit Ian as well. So we all visited together. The weather was crummy but the friend time was perfect. Eric found Yale really interesting in that the school itself is like a little Cambridge carbon copy (Cambridge was first by 500 years). The campus was beautiful but the place as a whole was bizarre in that the city not more than a mile away from one of the premier institutions of higher learning in the world is the rest of New Haven with one of the highest crime rates of any city in the nation.

From left to right: Eric, Ian, Lauren, Jeremy
This is the old library that had a copy of the Gutenberg Bible, the first book printed with a movable type printing press in the 1450's. The outer walls are really thin pieces of marble that let some, but little, light in to protect the books.

It just so happened that my good old college friend, Sarah (Brum) Nelson was living 5 minutes walking distance away from Ian's place.
Then it was back to NY for Eric and I to explore it together. (All the next few photos are of some of the buildings we thought were really interesting). We tried to hit all the major hot spots. Here is a memorial in the church across from the 9-11 zone that miraculously was not affected by the tragedy.
And the view from the front of that church looking out to where the twin towers were.
It was really interesting to see all these older historic churches sitting right in the middle of larger New York.

NYC is pretty much full of some of the most remarkable buildings.

Rockafellar center

Grand central station.

The Gugenheim

Empire state building

Notice the second building in from the left: the little structure on top looks exactly like several of the more famous college buildings in Cambridge (see trinity and st. john's)

Science news (which is what eric was engrossed in here while I quietly drank my latte): the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva, Switzerland (a 27 mile perfect circle passing through part of France) is a huge particle accelerator and had their first successful run after 17 years or so of building the instrument. A huge step forward for particle physics as over the next two years they will slowly ramp up the power to actually run some full power experiments which will hopefully answer some fundamental questions in physics.

We weren't the only tourists with the bright idea to take this photo I'm sure.

This seems so typical New York having all the yellow taxis with smoke pluming up out of the sewers... So Ghost busters huh!

Times Square.

This is a Gutenberg bible as well in the NYC public library.

Unfortunately we didn't make it to see the statue of liberty up close. Don't be fooled, this is a cheap replica.

Ultimately we just spend hours walking around during the day when Chels and Daniel were working, then we'd meet up with them, hit up a great restaurant and chit chat away. New York has all these great little dining spots that are well known for something. These are shakes from a little stand in the midst of a park called The Shake Shack.

I was pretty excited when Daniel showed me the ultimate place for any kind of rice pudding you can imagine.
Vanessa is a friend who I had met in Cambridge and has recently moved back to the NYC. It was great meeting up with her. We hit up a restaurant on the corner famously known in the nation for their blueberry pancakes. Unfortunately we didn't know that and had gotten an egg scramble instead.

A view from Central park
Eric is all about the universities. Here we are at Columbia. It is situated right outside Harlem on the top of a hill. Quite a stark difference between these two areas sitting right next to each other. You leave the subway, walk through the ghetto, walk through a very small park and then straight into any movie you have ever seen on an ivy league campus fully equipped with east coast prepsters.
Bagels are something that the British don't really do but they should. It was great fun just delighting ourselves with foods so simple but so wonderful.

We spent the day in central park with the Fogals. The day was beautiful with lots of people, dogs, packs of school kids, and performers.

We took row boats out on the lake in Central park similar to how in Cambridge it is a must to go punting on the river Cam.

look closely at this photo between Eric and my face and you'll see a little surprise.
It was pretty incredible for chelsea and I that Eric and Daniel got along so well. As Eric and I look into future post-doc places it is a high hope to end up living near friends or family we already love. So being out here with the 4 of us, made NY that much more appealing. We'll see.

There is a famous pizza place that people will wait in line for hours and days to eat at. We got smart, thanks to tip-off by Daniels buddy, to call in a to-go order and take your pizza to the park that looks over the Brooklyn bridge. It was fun as we walked up to the front precisely at 6:30 when they told us to and received our pizza by 6:35 and walked it past the line that appeared to be at least 150 people long awaiting a golden seat in this restaurant that appeared to only hold 30 at a time.

The pizza is all it was cracked up to be. It was really awesome. From this new park (it opened just a few days earlier) you get sepcatcular views of New York, the Brooklyn Bridge, and even the Statue of Liberty far off in the distance.

Daniel and Chelsea live in Brooklyn in a great location near Prospect park. One of the coolest things in their area was the flea market housed in an old HSBC bank building with amazing vintage clothes, eclectic foods, and local artwork. In Brooklyn, there seemed to be a fantastic restaurant around every corner, literally. The great part about traveling where you have great friends is having great fun just bunking up inside and simply hanging out. So NYC being a pretty amazing place, we had the best of both worlds.

Thank you Chels and Daniel for housing us and taking us to some fabulous NY spots. I can't wait for the day when there is not so much distance between us. We love you guys and can't wait to see the little Fogal addition in September!

Costa Rica

2010-04-27T08:57:00.001-07:00

At the end of march, Eric went to one of his first big chemistry conferences that happened to be in SF, CA. I tried to capitalize on the oppurtunity to travel alone to go see one of my most special girl friends, Krysta. Krysta moved to San Jose, Costa Rica a little over a year ago to do ministry work with an organization called student International (SI). Krystas gift is teaching and has started up her part of the ministry out there with a tutoring center in a smaller community called Los Giudos. I had a phnemonal trip just getting to be part of Krysta's every day world and have such a better understanding of what her life and SI ministry looks like there.

It was double the fun out there since another special friend, Leah, was out there as well. She joined Krysta in Costa Rica about 8 months back for the main purpose to learn Spanish. She has been taking language school since she arrived and helps krysta out volunteering at the tutoring center. I had the pleasure of having leah out here in England for a time when she was at L'Brie in the South of England. And now I am seeing her in sunny Costa Rica...oh, what small world.
So, to satisfy my need for beach...the girls, including Krysta, Leah, and Cailah (also part of SI) and myself ventured the 2 hr drive to the beach. We made a quick stop along the way to look at the CROCODILES that just hang out below one of the bridge overpasses. It was crazy and they were so creepy, but fantastic!!! ...only in Costa Rica.
We had an overnight trip at the beach where we just layed in the shade/sun, took long walks in the sand, read our books, ate PB&J and had girl time. It was wonderful. Note: I am the whitest of the 4. I had to protect my precious England skin.

This is Krystas home. The funny part about our trip was that Costa Rica had a bizarre storm that rolled in. So though the weather was still perfect for the kind of trip I was on, I still brought the clouds with me. Go figure.
Most houses (at least that I saw) have gates in front of their garages. Maybe for the purpose to keep their Crazy dogs inside?? Krysta and I went for a walk and had cacauphony of barking dogs down one of the streets we were on. Then we were grateful for the gates. For those of you who remember Wesley will understand why this lovely picture down below is one of my favorites.
It is important to consult with people who know the area before you go on any random walks around, so that they can warn you if you need to be aware of any crazy dogs. So to be safe on our walk through the coffee plants, Krysta and I brought large sticks with us for protection.

One of the churches in Los Guidos offers Krysta to use two of their small rooms for her tutoring center. Here she has anywhere between 1 and 20 students come 3 days a week during either a morning or afternoon session to get whatever kind of help they need with their school work. I went to 2 of the tutoring days to help out and learned just how pathetic my spanish really is. I pretty much resigned myself to helping out some of the younger ones learn the months and days in spanish and english! If anyone is interested in seeing more on the progress of the tutoring center and what Krysta's is doing with SI, check out her blog: http://www.krystaleanne.blogspot.com/

And just to triple the fun another old friend from Cal Poly, Josh Hardester, just so happens to live in town only 15 minutes away. He is in Costa Rica working with the Peace Corpse. Hanging out with him was just like old times. I love that I went to go see one friend, but got to see three instead! All of them are doing some really incredible things in Costa Rica.

Our last night of fun we headed into the city to enjoy one of the outdoor festivals where they had a concert on the lake with lots of people salsa dancing out in front. Here we are thoroughly enjoying our Churros.

I don't feel like this blog posting does justice to how wonderful the trip was. I have wonderful friends and so cherish the times I get to be a part of the worlds they are in. Thank you

krysta for being a phenomenal friend and host!

ants are definitely small superheroes

2010-03-13T09:16:00.000-08:00

So the zoology department at Cambridge has just published this photograph of an ant carrying 100 times its own body weight in its pincers while walking upside on glass. They were investigating the "stickiness" of their feet. That's the equivalent of me carrying a small big-rig with my teeth while walking barefoot (maybe on all fours) upside down on a glass ceiling. I guess I need some stronger teeth.

The Holidays

2010-01-21T16:04:00.001-08:00

Eric and I had a really special Christmas and New Year this year. Our first away from home (well Christmas at least). Somehow we were able to rope the Appels into coming to us in England. Actually, it didn't really take any roping at all. The surprised us with about 3 weeks notice. It was fantastic and a real blessing to be with family when we weren't expecting to be able to. I am so reminded how special the holidays are with family around. Though I know Eric and I would have made the best of it just being the two of us in Cambridge, neither one of us were gonna put up a fight when the Appels asked if they could crash our Christmas. Stan, Cyndi & Jenny (Eric's sister) came out for a short but very sweet trip. Jenny's best friend, Karli, joined for the last few days of the trip, which was great. We were packed into our little apartment with two air mattresses blown up, filling the living room and part of the kitchen. It's a wonderful thing to wake up and have everyone all groggy and in their PJ's gathered on the couch with tea and chatting. Christmas morning was just like being a kid. We woke up to stockings overflowing and stuck under our little tree.

Eric and I cooked our first Christmas dinner and indoctrinated the Appels into a very British tradition of "christmas crackers". They are these paper toys where everyone pulls on an end, it eventually breaks and out flies some sort of nik-nack (like a deck of cards or a whistle). How expensive they are determines how nice the surprises are on the inside. Then everyone gets a colorful paper crown in it and proceeds to wear it throughout the rest of the dinner. Surely we explained this on our blog last year. We cooked up a fillet (beef tenderloin in the US). Our first really successful non-poultry roast.
It was a special christmas gift season. I got this keyboard as a combined birthday/christmas X 2 gift. It has been so much fun. I am taking lessons now and making myself sit down to practice for 30 minutes 3-4 X/week. I have recognized how hard it is to be an adult learner in an instrument and constantly have my moms voice from when I was kid ringing in my ears..."slow down". It really takes discipline but I am loving it. Poor Eric has some of the songs I practice stuck in his head. It does make for a great England hobby when the weather is crummy outside though.

Eric's special gift was a new bike this year. His old bike sounded like a bunch of tin cans dragging through the street. Once the mud flaps started popping off and his breaks stopped working in the ice, we knew it was time to invest in something a bit better.

Eric's most favorite gift that he gave to his dad were these two little figurines of a cowboy and a buffalo. Stan is originally from Kansas and the old show Jeremiah Johnson is close to his heart. These guys are awesome.

Like always, both the Appels and my parents are too generous. My mom had a mexican theme to our gifts and we got these rockin' aprons and everything but the bellpeppers to host a fantastic margarita party. Thanks mom. And PS: the authentic fresh tortillas are fabulous and we've been eating them for two months. There is just no substitute here in England. And how you got your gifts through customs baffles me!

We got to hang out in Cambridge for a couple of days. This is us at Jesus College.

For three days we took a small road trip around England. Our first stop was an old medieval castle in Warwick. There were some really cool falconers trying to keep up the trade. But it was a bit sad because you see a handful of gigantic, beautiful birds stuck sitting on a piece of wood with a 1 foot leash tied to his leg.
We took a drive through an old historic area known as the Cotswolds. The buildings are amazing. You can just see how old they must be by how they lean. Notice the thatched roofs on many of them. I don't think the Germans approve of some of the architecture in England.

We stayed in Bath which is known for the old Roman baths built over the top of the only natural hot springs in England. The site was rediscovered only 300 years ago but dates back to 60AD. People had been using the baths for over 2000 years before the romans built up the spa (complete with massage rooms, etc.) and a temple.
On our way home we stopped to see Avebury which is a town famous, like Stonehenge, for its large rock formations placed strategically all around one area. Avebury is about 4500 years old and is made of a large circle with two smaller circles inside of it. Like Stonehenge, the huge monoliths were dug out of a mountain about 100 miles away and transported some way. Experts speculate that they did it using rafts on the river.

Once we made it back to Cambridge it was New Years time. Unfortunately in my line of work, you are usually committed to one of the holidays during this time. So I was working night shifts over New Years. But Eric, like a champ, took Jenny & Karli out on the town.

We spent a beautiful day walking through the "winter gardens" at an old estate home named Angsley Abbey in Cambridge. The snow had just started to fall and we were all wearing our wellies (rain boots) exploring the beautiful grounds and part of the home. Some of my most favorite things are all the funny statues that people chose to be a part of their landscapes.

We spent our last day exploring London and its awesome markets. I don't know how I hadn't discovered them before. Now that I have, hopefully my christmas gifts will start getting much cooler in the future. Eric and Stan ate at a pub watching a "football" (soccer) match (something which Stan had longed for the entire trip). There were some really loud and roudy supporters that made the experience complete. All in all, our holiday was really special! I missed my family most definitley!!! But I must say- I am a lucky girl to have the Appels.

Christmas Party and Snow

2009-12-19T15:32:00.000-08:00

Now its time for Christmas dinners and things. We went to the Graduate Christmas dinner in Hall at Jesus last week. It is always so fun to do things like this in college. Not only good food but about 170 graduate students wearing silly little paper crowns (they come from Christmas crackers, a fun remnant of victorian christmas celebration) while wearing tuxedos and ball gowns. The night finished with everyone standing up and belting out the 12 days of christmas led by the college brass band playing from the back of hall.

Tonight though was the annual Melville christmas dinner with everyone from the lab I work in. The Melville is a subdivision of the Chemistry Department and is special for polymer research. It was in hall as well with all of the fun christmas things, just without the brass band.

It started snowing a lot, right as we were getting ready for the dinner. The umbrella made it about 10 seconds as it was super windy.

Me, Andreas, Monika and Rosie. Monika is a postdoc who sits next to me and Rosie is a masters level student working in our lab.

When we came out of the dinner there were several inches of fluffy snow covering everything and much more was coming down.

We had a quick little snowball fight on the way home.

The next day all of Cambridge was absolutely beautiful. This is a local green space called Christ's pieces.

Nicki knew it was my job to do the blog post for this while she was working nights this weekend and so she snuck in a fun little surprise.

Germany with the Wells and Bullards: Christmas Markets Hooray!!

2009-12-19T14:33:00.000-08:00

So we made another trip to Germany for one last big party with our friends Kyle and Pam before the depart back stateside. Kyle has just finished (this week) his PhD and so they are moving to Santa Barbara to start real life with a real job. Some new friends, Collin and Candice, also joined us. They are from the states also and Collin has just started a PhD here and so they will be around for a couple of more years too.

We got really lucky in booking a car and a wonderful house for a long weekend to hit up the Christmas markets in several places around western Germany. Before we got there, the car we had booked was supposed to be for 5-7 so we were really hoping for the 7 seater. When we arrived they were out of the car we booked and so they gave us a 7-seater VW van. Totally awesome and something almost american in style and would never happen in England. Here is Pam and Candice trying to figure out the map for the first leg to the house.

Candice looking skeptical and Pam looking very unsure. After this Nicki kept saying that I was a really really great map reader and navigator. Lucky for me it was only about 15 min before Collin figured out the SatNav unit in the van so that I was off the hook.

Here is the van and the very happy crew.

Our place was in a very nice little village. A very nice little village called Enkirch about 90 west of Frankfurt towards Trier.

Later on the first day the boys went on a beer run, singing the song (which got stuck in nicki's head straight away so that she was singing it to herself the rest of the trip). We came up to the little shop and bought some local beers and some not-so-local beers for about 0.50 euros. The same beers are about 2.5 pounds each in England. Crazy. A half block down the next street we found this place that looked like a feed store, except that there was this guy loading crate after crate of beer onto the back of his tractor. We went to check it out and it was a beer distributor. Fun fact: Germans are ranked 3rd world-wide for beer consumption per capita.

We had a wonderfully comfortable place that was so green with a low carbon furnace and solar powering everything that we had hot water for only about 2.5 showers and could only use two burners on the stove at one time, without lights.

Our first real German Christmas market.

Real German mustards.

Huge advent calendar!!
Pam enjoying a wonderful glass of warm Gluwein. The German version of mulled wine that is actually much better than mulled wine.

Here we all are in the kitchen cooking up our first dinner at the house. German engineering is absolutely incredible. This place was actually really efficient and the lazy Susan was the first one I have ever seen that closed on its own, fully closed, without over spinning.

Us and Kyle and Pam

I love a good sausage with mustard. So incredibly awesome.

After visiting Trier we made an afternoon/evening trip to Luxembourg.

Despite her happy face in the next picture, Nicki was really upset about the coffee cup that we bought in Luxembourg to continue our tradition of cup gathering from the places we travel to. I really liked the cup, but nicki wanted a different one that was more expensive. So we spent almost 10 euros on the cheaper one (Luxembourg is the richest country in the world per capita). Then we found out that the Gluwein tents had awesome cups that were very much to her liking and were only 2.50 if you bought a glass of Gluwein and didn't return the cup. But its OK, I still like the one we got.

It was really cold when we went to Heildelberg so everyone else stayed down in a coffee shop while Kyle and I headed up to the castle. The city is absolutely beautiful. The red color of the stone making up all of the old buildings is really unique and really pretty.

Here is a huge wine vat that they had in the castle. The people give you just a bit of a glance at how huge this thing is. I don't know how many trees must have gone into making this thing. It is about 30 meters long too.

At dinner that night we went to a dark and interesting place for dinner that turned out to be really good. Here we are giving each other "The Lazy Eye". Thats not what it is really called, it is just that Germans and Austrians find it very offensive to cheers with someone without looking them directly in the eyes.

I was getting made fun of for wearing my periodic table shirt. Nerdy Chemist.

On our last day we went to a small village just up the river from our village. We missed the last tour of the castle by 15 min and so the only way to see even part of it (only the courtyard) was to pay 5 euros to see a nativity play in German. So we took a walk instead.

It was a pretty awesome trip and a really good time with Kyle and Pam. They are our best friends here and we will really miss them when they leave next week.

would you know it if you were in a bug's stomach?!!

2009-12-04T13:13:00.000-08:00

So last night nicki all of a sudden curled up in a bit of ball and started squirming around and yelled out loud (very loud) "would you know it if you were in a bug's stomach?!!" I woke up rather surprised and said very nicely, "what?" She responded by yelling out the same thing. I asked her again, because clearly, there is no way she had actually said that while curled up and squirming around as if she was actually in a bug's stomach. Yet she yelled out again the same thing. And all of this while she was still sleeping.

Thanksgiving in England

2009-11-30T13:22:00.000-08:00

So we had thanksgiving this year with one American and two Canadians. The american is Jonathan who we know from our time in Palo Alto and has just undertaken an MPhil program at Oxford in Philology and Linguistics. The canadians are Jeff and Andra. Jeff is a post-doc in biochemistry and Andra is a nurse in the ICU at the same hospital as Nicki. Since Andra is one of Nicki's best friends here they were happy to come over to our house for American thanksgiving, especially because the missed Canadian thanksgiving.

For some reason Nicki's biscuits didn't rise at all. They tasted great, but very quite dense.

While Jonathan was here we also went to High Table with the Fellows at Jesus. Our friends Kyle and Pam came also. We hadn't had them over for a single college dinner yet and we had to have them over for a good one before they headed back to the states.

Here we are displaying our Jesus mints. Last year we had a vote at the college to bring back official Jesus mints. A couple of years ago they had gotten rid of them in order to save a lot of money with generic mints. But the undergrads really wanted special Jesus mints.

In the coat room there is a funny closet with a real skeleton hanging in it.

Right after thanksgiving we had our little fake tree up and had a dressing party with Jonathan. We got some weird looks from passers by (mostly old ladies) because we had our tree up on the 30th. They don't do it here until Dec 1st and any day early is just very taboo.

Fall is upon us!!

2009-11-30T12:59:00.000-08:00

Now someone may have noticed that this has come up after the snow post I put up yesterday. So we're a bit behind. What's it to ya! eh!

Cambridge was absolutely beautiful during the whole fall. The weather was really nice. It got a bit cold at times, but we had a ton of sunshine and beautifully clear days.

And lots of autumn leaves were around Jesus Green behind our college.

The swan on the right is one of 5 baby swans that are now not so babyish. For the past couple months we have gotten to watch this family of 2 adults and 5 babies hang out on the same section of the river and on Jesus Green. The babies were super fluffy and grey with black feet and black beaks. They are only just now turning a bit white and more sleek. Their beaks have still not fully turned orange. It has been really fun to watch them grow up. They were about the size of a shoe, now they are the same size as the adults.

The Queen

2009-11-28T06:28:00.000-08:00

I don't think I had ever envisioned this moment, but it is so cool that I had one. I saw the Queen of England herself, in all her glory and peach from head to toe. She was visiting one of the Colleges here for a lunch celebrating Cambridge University's 800th year as an academic institution. I had just happened to be wandering town when I saw this crowd of people. I asked someone what the deal was and they said the Queen was going to be coming out any minute. 60 minutes later but well worth the wait, I saw her. She was super cute and very little. Here are photos from a new friend I met while standing there. It is her procession out from the gates of Kings College into her car (which by the way was driving her MAYBE 150 yards down the road). It was a great moment and one I realize I was really lucky to have.

To Hawaii and beyond

2009-11-15T09:17:00.000-08:00

Before we get started, stare long and hard at this photo because it is totally awesome. Not necessarily Nicki's picture taking ability, just the sweetness of the scene. As often as we could, we'd start our mornings off this way. This is "simply" the backyard they wake up to every morning.

Elijah and Micah were tons of fun to get to know better. We just love these little guys. While sitting out there with them in the early morning it was fun to watch the boys try to share from a single bowl of dry cheerios. I say try because it was not easy, but they got through it. How great is this photo??!!

After the fun-filled week in california, we flew off to Kona, Hawaii for a trip to see the Acostas. This is a part of the trip that Nicki was really looking forward to. A time to just hang out and have some quality time with her sister Kellie. It was really an awesome trip. Kellie and Jesse were pretty important in the beginning of Nicki and my relationship. We had many conversations with them about marriage and dating, etc. I was really excited to see them both again and have some good hang out time as well. There wasn't much on the agenda, just to hang out. Since both Kellie and Jesse are good at asking pointed questions, we had great discussions of all types. Nicki spent lots of time running around with kel and the kiddos doing thier everyday stuff and I ended up spending a lot of time with Jesse (probably more time than I spent with Nicki).

Part of our time together, though, was in "helping" a couple of Jesse's old buddies from SLO (who now live and work in solar installation in Hawaii) putting up solar panels on the little shed they have that houses their current powerhouse, the generator. It was helping like how I used to help my dad in doing anything around the house, handing them tools, holding things steady, etc. The best part is that I got to dig a big hole to cement in the pole for their small windmill. Digging a hole is something that is pretty fulfilling. You have a job and you see the fruits of your labor straight away while getting a good workout and sweating a bit while doing it.

Thier new wind mill!

Coming from England where you get your occassioanl spider intruding on your living room, it was fun to see how well kellie has learned to love and embrace Hawaii's wildlife. The geckos, of which there are tons, were pretty awesome. This little guy was on the kitchen window our first night there.

And then sleeping soundly on the wall above our bed in the living room.

Nicki and I know we will figure out how to wake up early when we have our own kids, but we sure got indoctrinated ahead of time at the Acostas. The kids were up by 6:30am about every morning and super eager to get downstairs to play. One of those mornings I went out on a pig hunt with Jesse and the boys, and let the girls have a sleep in. (Take note: I am wearing a long-sleeve shirt because I am super allergic to long grass, not because it is cold at all. I'll take totally sweaty over being covered in welts). We saw a lot of pig tracks and leavings, but no pigs. Every time, without fail, when we would stop to listen hard and look around, Elijah would squeal or make some funny sound, totally ruining the moment. We picked a bunch of fruit along the way, stopped by Jesse's mom's place and opened a few coconuts for the water. Here we are with all of the loot. Nicki was laughing at how I was holding the little guy, but he was plenty comfortable.

Here I kept on getting nervous that I would give kellie a loving slap on the be-hind rather than Nicki since they both looked like eachother in thier plaid pinky pj's. I think Jesse had similar qualms.
We went to some really beautiful beach spots (of which we took very few photos). Kellie has this great community of friends of which many are moms with young kids. They often will meet up with each other at the beach and then take turns watching each others kids while one of them gets a few ocean laps in for some excersize.
The ocean was incredibly blue with great waves to play in. Mostly we 'd take the snorkles out and explore. This is eric with kel/jesses friend Noah and his little girl digging a big hole with Micah.

Our Hawaii photo of the two of us!
Nicki and her sis!
I like this photo because Micah was taking it. He did a good job getting us all in the photo besides the fact that he didn't give nicki much time to get in position.
Take two was much better!

One really touristy thing that we did while on the trip was to go on an hour long helicopter flight with one of Kellie and Jesse's friends, Noah, who is a pilot, over the oldest volcano on the island, Kohala, and the beautifully green valleys coming off the top. Many of them had almost shear faces with over 2500 feet of drop. All completely covered in thick greenery and with hundreds of waterfalls. It was awesome. We went with Kellie, Jesse, Nicki, me and one of Jessie's colleagues and her fiance. It was really cool having them along because his colleague is a botanist and her fiance is a vulcanologist, so they had lots of good scoop on what we were looking at.

Look, Nicki looks really happy at the prospects of the flight.
She then made it about 20 minutes before ralphing her guts up repeatedly for the remainder of the flight. She went through 6 baggies. You can just barely see how awesome the side of the valley is behind her.

We got a dvd of the flight with views of everything we saw from helicopter (it has 3 cameras mounted on it) and a view of the inside of the aircraft. It also had the audio tracks we were listening to and the conversation we had when talking into the little mics we used. The awesome part is that at one point when vulcanologist was telling us something about volcano growth, you can here Nicki heaving in the background. Awesome.

The picture below is the finished product of the work of Jesse's own hands (with some help from different friends and family). It was a very cozy little place in an incredibly beautiful location.

When we came back to California we got to spend a day with my parents and then some of the Couch gang came up for the evening. Though it was for just a short time, it was really special to get have our families together.

For some reason Nicki didn't get any photos with my family=) I don't think it was on purpose so I didn't take offense. Anyway, this trip was awesome. We couldn't have asked for a better opportunity to see family. It may not be a journey we can make often while we live across the pond and the Acostas live across a different pond, but it was sure worth the traveling to have done this time at the least.

Whirl wind vacation.

2009-10-28T13:57:00.000-07:00

Early october Eric and I headed home for what turned out to be a whirlwind of a trip but absolutely AMAZING. We got to see so many people that we love. Granted most of them we only got a short visit with, but nonetheless it made for an incredibly sweet trip. We started off in LA where we were greeted with Eric's best man and best friend, Jeff. Thanks for picking us up from the airport jeffrey! Alongside him we got to approve of his new lady friend. We had a great treat out for a welcome dinner with Papa Appel at nothing less than authentic mexican food. No where in all of England or Europe is there mexican food like home.

Jeff, Elise, Eric and I

Our first main trip was up to SLO for Tim Fox's wedding. SLO proved to be so magical once again. I have a feeling though it had to do with the fact that there were so many wonderful old friends there that we got to see. I felt particularly special since some special girlfriends of mine made the trip there especially for me. It was really great to be a part of our girls reunion once again, since I have missed out on the last few gatherings and i am sure there will be a few more to miss. It was a phenomenal 36 hours of just girl time with girl talk and good food. They all have super adorable kids but this trip was child-less- which really did make for some good quality, non-distracted chat time (which I think a mom needs every once and a while). Maybe next time I'll get to see the little guys though.

From left to right: me, Amy Moxley, Allison Priola, Annah Chapman, Vali Nemetz, and Kristin Whitmore!

Saturday morning, I got to grab coffee with my two prego girl friends from nursing school. They were pretty awesome in accommodating the one hour I had free that day. We talked a whole bunch of nursing jibber jabber- which is its own special language entirely. Dana's husband jimmy sat pleasantly through it all...champ!

Dana Glynn on the left; sarah Terrel on the right.

Me and Kit

Eric is getting good quality time with his old college buddies and great cousin Cortney! (There are no pictures to document his adventures and reunions because I selfishly hogged the camera all week). I'm pretty sure during his time in SLO he hit up all his favorite restaurants as i did mine. Those to include Jaffa Cafe, Upper Crust, High street Deli, and Firestones. And while i was drinking lattes with the girls, Eric was out with the boys driving up the cuesta grade to do some good ol' American clay shootin' while apparently blaring Bob Seger. I do believe they took the groom on a rough ride the morning of his wedding and then afterwards all the boys sat down for nice pre-wedding lunch at taco bell. Go boys. I 'll have to let Eric share the rest of his adventures personally....

That evening was the wedding which was really beautiful. Eric looked super sleak in his custom made suit and yellow tie. There was a beautiful simplicity to this wedding but a true elegance as well. It was really great to watch Tim cast eyes on his super hot Bride, Mariejka, coming down the aisle...in a dress that she hand sewed herself- Amazing!

Sunday was phenomenal as well. Eric was quite the sport and let me ditch him for most of the time so i could spend good time with old roommates Emily and Caitlin. Let me just preface- I LOVE living with Eric. With that said...nothing, NOTHING, can replace the amazing memories I have had with living with so many wonderful girl friends. Em, Cait and I hit up the nostalgic spots and chatted the day away. A little lineas' garden with coffee, then to the Sea Canyon fruit Ranch to apple taste, and then the Avila Valley barn where we tasted some more- we couldn't seem to wait till we payed to chow down on this delightful butter cream ice cream.

Emily, Me, & Caitlin

After a fun-filled sunday afternoon Eric and I headed down to Santa Barbara where we got to meet up with our new/old friends from Palo Alto who were spending the weekend there. That was pretty awesome. Once again, a short visit but so much better than nothing at all!

Me& Eric, Eliza (soon to be Smith) & Justin Smith, Trent & Natalie Weisen, and Jessica Howard. Cheezey pose...we know!

Thank you friends for being around and letting Eric and I get a little piece of you! I left this part of our trip realizing how truly blessed we are to have really quality friends in our life. So now it is time for us to head to LAX for our journey to Hawaii to spend time with our really quality family as well! Post coming soon...

It happened to us

2009-10-28T13:39:00.000-07:00

So Eric and I just got back from an amazing trip back home (posting to come by the way) only to come back to England and find my bank account is frozen. Hmmm?? I wonder... Why is that? So i phone the bank and they say... "we detect that there may have been some fraudulent activity done on your account"! Fraudulent activity? really? i doubt it. Apparantly though, while we were gone, some super duper computer hacker got my security password for my online banking and was drawing out thousands of pounds (1.6 dollars to every pound for our US people)...8,320 pounds to be exact. What's crazier is that the hacker would choose someone's account who has only about that much in it in total all together. You'd think they'd go big! One transaction was 1200 pounds to Mrs. Wilding (i wonder who that is...and can i track her down!!! ). Anyway- we were jaw-struck to hear that. We could have come home completely ripped off and broke! The super sweet thing is- our bank is super duper awesome and way on top of fraud. They had caught the perpetrator by his/her or "its" 3rd withdrawl and without us having phoned or done anything. They had fully reimbursed us every penny without even a whimper from me! Thanks HSBC...you're the greatest! Anyway- my loving note to you all: Bank fraud-it happened to me...it can happen to you! So don't forget to check your accounts on a regular basis. There you go...my advice.

The Alps and the rest!

2009-09-13T14:21:00.000-07:00

Part two of our Germany extravaganza was super cool. We went to the town of Garmisch with the intent of exploring some of the famous Alps. We made plans to hike which Eric and Stan were all too excited about. We had to put limits on how much us girls would hike so as to keep the guys thinking realistically. It was really awesome though. We took a great hike (though a bit steep) and made our destination the beer garden at the top. Where else can you plan a gnarly hike just to end up at a beer garden in the end. Then we journeyed down the mountain to seek out the hike that takes you through a gorge. The travel book we had said there is something new and unepected around each corner. They were so correct. Its hard to describe how fantastic it was. The pictures in this slide show don't do it any justice. So you'll just have to go experience it for yourself. It was this super cool cave that opens into and lines one side of a this gorge that water just plows through.

The next day we took a sky lift up to the Zugspitze which is the highest mountain in Germany at 9,718 feet tall. It was really beautiful. The photo of Cyndi and jenny with the rock cliff in the background is really crazy. Eric and Stan climbed it with lots of other brave people. But apparently there isn't much on the other side- it just a flat face. The pathway over the top is slippery as well because of how the rock has worn out. There is only one rope lining the walkway to hold onto whilst trying to pass by loads of other people holding on for dear life to the same part of the rope that you want to. Clearly this would never be allowed in the States. Crazy=)

We ended our experience in the Alps with a local Oktober fest. It was pretty incredible to see EVERYONE there wearing leiderhosen or a dirndl dress (obviously dependant on gender). We definitely stood out. We were trying to decide what festivals were equivalent in the states that would get so many people to realize it is a cool thing to revel in old school traditional styles.. maybe like colonial people from Jamestown??

Our last few adventures were in Munich, Regensburg, and Bamberg. This a super cool building in Munich.

We thought this was an interesting coffee mug. I don't agree but the "fall in coffee" part sounds fun!

The is the olympic stadium built for the '72 summer olympics. It's a pretty crazy design. Here is what wikipedia has to say: the Olympiastadion was considered revolutionary for its time. This included large sweeping canopies of acrylic glass stabilized by steel cables that were used for the first time in a large scale. The idea was to imitate the Alps and to set a counterpart to the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, held during the Nazi-Regime. The sweeping and transparent canopy was to symbolize the new, democratic and optimistic Germany. This is reflected in the official motto: "The Happy Games" ("die heiteren Spiele").
What was crazy was as we were walking through the stadium, there were tons of people wearing old school Madonna T-shirts and other garb. Madonna was having concert this night in the very place we were hanging out... and we didn't get to go. What is more pathetic was that U2 was playing in England the day we left for our Germany trip...so we missed that too!

And just down the road is the BMW factory as well as museum. Eric got stuck on seeing how all the parts were designed and put together. He loves stuff that is made to function super well and if left alone can be fixated for hours.

This it the river in Regensburg. We needed some chill time be the water and this was perfect.

Eric and I loved this wall. Its a building with David and Goliath painted on the side! Amazing.

We spent one afternoon at a monastery hidden back in the hills in some really beautiful territory. We stopped to see who could skip a rock the farthest...Cyndi lost=)

And lastly, the town of Bamberg. This was one of the only towns that was NOT struck in war time. So much of its original stuff has been preserved.

I should have a picture of the car we road tripped in to give an idea of our trip. But this is also a moment that happened very frequently. Cyndi was pretty awesome at reading to us everything we needed to know in order to appreciate our surroundings. My other favorite part of the road-trip as a whole was Cyndi reading my book out loud to us all in the car as we listened intently. Apparently this has been an Appel tradition ever since they took a road trip eons ago when Eric was in elementary school. He had a book report due but hadn't read the book yet, so mom read it out loud to everyone in the car during their journey. It was such a delight, that ever since then their road trips always include mom reading books for hours on end while Stan drove. I was amazed by her reading stamina. I have a feeling Eric has some expectations for our future with kids and road trips. I better practice not getting car sick while I read.

Typical jenny. She reminded me more and more of my sister Michelle each day we got to hang out. I loved it. I definitely really love the family I married into.

The Appels are really good at "stopping to smell the roses"! Ha!

We have good examples of loving marriages in our life, thats for sheezy!

Oh man! These are my FAVORITE! Probably not because they taste so incredible (though they are good) but because of the memory they hold for each of us Couch kids. When we were kids and lived in Germany, these smurf candies were our favorite treats. We loved them so much though that my mom would have to start hiding them from us so they wouldn't disappear in an hour. Ever since then we all have this special memory of these being our most favorite candies ever. So I went on the hunt for them and they by far were the hardest things to find EVER. But I did find them and got enough to mail back to all the family. Kudos to me! I don't think the Appels were as impressed as I had built them up to be. Its all in the memories.

To end- this was the urinal in our hotel on our last day in Frankfurt. Its sad to me that the female toilets are not as fun.
We had a wonderful trip and can't wait to have another family Vac-a to come. I hope this next time can include some Couch family members...hint, hint! So our next journey is back to the states in October for Tim and Mariejkas wedding in SLO and then off to Hawaii to visit Kellie and Jesse! We are so-so excited. I look forward to seeing those of you that we can!

Germany Mit der Äpfels (Part I)

2009-08-26T09:57:00.001-07:00

Our next adventure takes place with very special people in a very special place. Eric and I just recently returned from a wonderful excursion through southern Germany with the Appels (erics mom, dad, and sister)! This trip is particularly memorable because 1) I had old roots here as a kid when my family was stationed in Munich for 4 years during my Dad's army years; and 2) because Stan (erics dad) got to explore his own heritage. It was great to see his epiphany towards the end of the trip as he understood so much more why his family in Kansas, the Germans, did and do things the way they do.

The Road Trip

We started our excursion in Frankfurt with a rented Mercedes wagon; Goulash soup, and Weiss beers all around. The general layout of the trip was planned by Cyndi (Eric's mom) who did an incredible job with the planning. I have to say an extra thanks to her because this is the first family vacation for them where she has had to sort out 8 different places to stay that would accomodate a new married couple! On vacations before it would have simply been two doubles in a room for the 4 of them! I was sorry to have thrown things off like this but they sure have adjusted well. General Itinerary: We road tripped along the "Romantic Road" in Bavaria which took us through several awesome german towns with beautiful country side along the way. more or less we stayed in an area for one night and then headed to the next town when were ready. We journeyed from Frankfurt, to Wurzburg, Rothenburg, Dachau, Garmisch, Munich, Regensburg, Bamberg and many other little stops along the way.

We toured many estates, palaces, castles and ruins. i wish I could have taken photos of the inside at this palace becuase the decor was incredible. It was the first time I'd ever seen ceilings painted from the baroque period that also included elements of 3-D...swords protruding out and sculptures as part of the crown molding that blended into ceiling paintings. It was really beautiful!

No one enjoyed the food more than the boys. I was afraid Eric may have a heart attack on the trip because of how much fried Schnitzle he was eating. Our favorite foods were: Schnitzle, pretzles w/ mustard, Kaiserschmarrn (an austrian pancake-like meal), potato pizza, and Bratwurst in a bun. Our favorite drinks: Hefeweissen and Pills (surprisingly, I may like beer a little more after this trip...though I'll always be hard pressed to finish a stein on my own)!

There were some great signs everywhere...I only snapped a few. My conclusion is this: no where else in the world besides in America do we put maximum security fences around a kiddy pool. Everywhere else, Germany included, their are signs warning you to not be an idiot and if you are, you are responsible for your own death. This sign is from an old medieval castle located high on a hill. I assume it says "be careful that your friend doesn't push you over the edge"!
I liked this statue because if you look at the 2nd picture, you 'll notice that his sandals are now in style!

The Romantic road was really beautiful with so much character. Rothen burg, Bavarias medieval heartland, was one of our most favorite places. Below you can see how it still has its old medieval wall cirlcing the city center.

These are Schneeballens, native to Rothenburg. They are sort of like a funnel cake all rolled up in a ball with some sugary or chocolate coating covering the outside. We watched a video of a guy making them that took about 10 min. as he slowly rolled out the dough, then cut slits in it (not all the way to the edges), then used a special rod to weave through the slits. All of us were waiting because it was obvious that at some point he was just going to grab the stuff and mash it into a ball. But he was so controlled every step that we were second guessing ourselves. Then he pulled the dough off the special rod and mashed it.

The Dachau Concentration Camp

We spent a day walking through the first concentration camp that was established in Germany. It became the prototype for many of the other concentration camps in germany during the war. We all have seen many memorials and many movies documenting the atrocities of the holocaust but it was something else to actually realize we were standing on the very grounds that all these terrible things happened. The place was an active and grim reminder that civilization will not be saved by being civilized. It was sickening to see the words "There is one path to freedom. Its milestones are orderliness, diligence, honesty, obedience, cleanliness, sobriety, truthfulness, sacrifice and love of the fatherland" still atop the administration offices. This sounds like what every mom would want their children to grow up learning well and clearly contrasts to everything around you screaming of the darkness of man's heart. There was a really incredible and thorough museum to walk through which included the history of the political systems in Germany after WWI and how the national socialists came into power by WWII. Below is a short slide show of some parts of the camp.

Castles and Ruins

All along the way of our travels through bavaria there were many Castles and ruins galore. The white castle sitting up in the hills is the Nuechwanstein castle, built by King Ludwig II of Bavaria as his retreat home. He only lived it in it about 1/2 a year before his mysterious death by drowning. Since his death, the castle has been opened to the public. Why it looks so familiar you ask??? Well, if you have ever been to Disneyland, you'd recognize that Schloss (castle) Neuchswanstein is the original blueprint for Mickeys grand castle.

Stay tuned for Part II to see our journey to the Zugspitze and the rest of our travels!

The Best Morning...

2009-08-05T02:27:00.000-07:00

So I was super tired this morning and went back to bed after only having eaten breakfast....I was wondering what would be so exciting about my day to get me up and going. Then... all of a sudden theres a big BUZZ at my door. Its the MAIL MAN!!! We all get excited when the post man comes around because it usually means good things. I was bright eyed and excited as I saw him standing there with my humongous birthday package from mom and dad! It was a conglomeration of amazing goodies: my favorite skirts from Target, everything I need to make good old homemade Trail Mix from only the best Trader Joes ingredients...a purse that no one will be able to swipe off my back, beloved pancake batter because they seem to only sell enough here in England to make one pancake at a time, and the best yet- homemade chocolate chip cookies made by mom. And at age 27 some of the best gifts ever are always moms cooking. So it was an amazing morning already. So i am up and ready to tackle my day. Thanks Mom and Dad. (Especially considering that mailing the package probably cost the most).

The weather

2009-08-05T02:15:00.000-07:00

Eric and I always thought it was really funny that no where else but in the United Kingdom would the weather on a sunny day say " Intervals of sun". Usually you see intermittent showers or partly cloudy...but no, not here. They are so optimistic about their weather that we must highlight when the sun may actually come out.
BBC Weather today shows:

Sunny Intervals
Max: 23°C 73°F
Sunrise: 05:29

Jesus College Old Libray

2009-07-30T13:24:00.000-07:00

We went on a quick tour of the old library today at Jesus College, which was totally sweet. The actual room and ceiling and some of the glass windows are original from around the 1660s. The current bookshelves date from about 60 or so years later when the new trend became actually putting books on shelves with the bindings out. Before this they would be binding in with chains on them attached to a very short bookshelf to be read standing on the lectern style top. It is pretty sweet to see so many books that were made before people even started to put books on shelves. So very cool works we saw were 1st editions of Newton's principia and opticks as well as some of Descartes most famous works. They also have the first bible ever printed in the United States, which is a translation into Algonquian (language of native americans from Massachusetts), printed by John Eliot in 1661 (english bibles were printed in London and brought over). Only 6 copies of this bible exist and three of them at in cambridge libraries. There was also a very cool atlas from 1507 that included maps of europe, asia and africa. There is also a large volume of medieval manuscripts. All in all it was pretty sweet.