Thanksgiving, Christmas, and a New Baby

We had a great trip home for Thanksgiving. We got to Chicago late Saturday afternoon and spent some time catching up with family and trying to stay awake for as long as we could to facilitate changing 6 hours. Sunday we went to church and then got to spend the afternoon out at Ryan's grandpa's house. Sunday was Ryan's birthday too, so we had a cake that afternoon. We had dinner with friends and had another cake to celebrate then. It was a lot of fun catching up with friends Sunday night, so our plan to drive up to MI that night kept getting pushed back. We decided at 10:30pm or so Chicago time to still do the drive up to MI that night, just to make sure we messed up our circadian rhythms as much as possible. We got up to my parents' house in Spring Lake around 2:30am and finally got some much needed sleep. When we woke up there were about 4 fresh inches of snow on the ground. It was beautiful! And it made us very glad that we had driven up the night before.

White morning in Spring Lake

We had Thanksgiving dinner Monday night at my grandma's house and got to see my uncle and aunt and cousins too. It was so nice to see everyone. Far too short of a time to spend with everyone! We got to see our puppy at my parents' house too, so that was a lot of fun. We miss having a dog around.

Random picture from Thanksgiving with grandma, dad, uncle doug, aunt cindy, and rachel

Scout living it up at my parents' house

We stayed in Spring Lake until Wednesday and then drove back to Chicago. Ryan's brother and his family drove down from MI on Wednesday too, so the whole family was together. And we got to meet our 6 month old niece Sadie that we hadn't met yet. Thanksgiving started with church, followed by another Thanksgiving dinner with the whole family plus Ryan's grandpa and his aunt.
Thursday night we switched from Thanksgiving to Christmas and did Christmas gifts with Ryan's family. Christmas celebrations continued Friday with Ryan's parents' gift to all of us--a trip to the circus. Mom babysat Sadie, but the rest of us went downtown and saw the Barnum and Bailey circus at the United Center. It was fun and it was especially fun to watch our 6ish year old niece Natalie enjoying it.
Friday night Ryan's brother Mark and his family left and we started the big pack up getting ready to leave on Saturday. It was fun to go through a lot of our stuff that we hadn't seen in a year. We came to Chicago with very light suitcases and left with them at the weight limit.
Our other news is that we're pregnant! We had our first ultrasound yesterday and everything seems to be fine. The baby has limbs and a head and a beating heart, so we can't ask for much more than that at this point. I'll try to answer the most popular questions: I'm due June 22. Our baby unfortunately will not be a British citizen since they have the rule that the baby has to be born in the UK and one parent must have the right to live in the UK without restrictions. We'll have to apply for US citizenship for the baby once it's born. We are planning a trip to the states for a few weeks at least in August to spend some time with family with the new baby. I have maternity leave of 18 weeks with full pay and can take an additional 8 weeks half pay if I want, so that seems quite good.
That's all the news from here!

Baby DuBois

Off we go...

We're off to Chicago and MI this weekend! We're really looking forward to seeing some friends and family. It's been 11 months since we left!
We're very glad that my family is coming out to England for Christmas, because otherwise a week with family would seem far too short. It probably will anyway. We are planning a longer trip out in the summer this year though, so we won't have to make it another year before visiting the states again.
We'll post pictures when we get back!

Working 5 days a week...

Life has been more or less mundane since our Italy trip. Just working full time and trying to stay warm as the temperatures outside are dropping. It's been below freezing overnight lately and most of the leaves have fallen from the trees. Since we changed the time last week it gets dark at 5 pm too, so that makes it feel even more like winter.
We have been enjoying some of the fall festivities around here. A couple weekends ago we met my ex-coworker Simon and his girlfriend up in Ely for the Ely apple festival. We ate a lot of apples and Ryan won the longest apple peel contest. Very exciting.
This coming week on November 5 the UK celebrates bonfire night. I'm told that this is in remembrance of Guy Fawkes’ attempt at one of the greatest and earliest acts of political terrorism. He would try to assassinate the king along with the whole Parliament in one mighty blast of gunpowder as they gathered for the ceremonial State Opening of Parliament of 1605. His plot failed but every year they burn him in effigy in bonfires and blow off fireworks anyway. So we may not have gotten fireworks on July 4, but we do get it for November 5.
Not much celebration of Halloween here, but some people dress up. It's just not really widely celebrated.
We're much looking forward to visiting home in November! Only three weeks away now.

Italy (Rome, Florence, and Venice)

I have a feeling this is going to be a long one... More pictures on the right side bar!
First of all, I would recommend to anyone to visit Italy in early October. The weather was perfect (mid 70s and sunny every day) and the crowds, though present, were nothing like the horror stories the we heard about summer in the cities we visited.
We flew out on Thursday morning and got to Rome about noon. Since we fly the budget airlines they go to airports outside of the cities, so we took a bus to the metro and the metro in to Rome. Our guesthouse was quite near the Colosseum, so after getting settled we headed out to visit it.

Kelly in front of the Colosseum

We did an audiotour of the Colosseum and then walked around the ruins of ancient Rome including the Palatine and Roman Forum. It's incredible how many buildings and structures are left! You can really picture what it would have been like back in the day.

Ryan in front of Emperor Domitian's palace ruins

We kept walking and saw several other landmarks like Trajan's forum and Trajan's column, the Piazza del Campidoglio, the Vittoriano, etc. We grabbed a slice of pizza (the first of many on this trip) and made our way to the Trevi fountain. I read that on an average day more than 1500 Euro are thrown into the fountain because they say if you chuck a coin with your right hand over your left shoulder into the fountain it guaratees a return visit to Rome. I personally think someone just made that up to see how many people would do it, but it sure caught on.

Trevi fountain

We had dinner at a little restaurant we found in a narrow street and sat at an outside table to watch people pass by.

Our dinner at a sidewalk restaurant

We swung by the Spanish Steps before heading back to get some sleep.
The next day we went straight to the Vatican because we heard that the lines to get in the Vatican museums can be up to 4 hours long. Thankfully we only had to wait about a half hour. The museums are vast and full of interesting things. We spent about three hours in them. They culminate in the Sistine Chapel which was amazing to see though crowded. We had a quick lunch and headed over to St. Peter's Basilica, another place that can have a long line to enter. Again we went right in. We walked around the Basilica and walked through the Vatican Grottoes (the crypt) where a lot of people were paying respects to John Paul II. We sat for a while in Piazza San Pietro, where the pope addresses the crowds.

Kelly in Piazza San Pietro in front of St. Peter's Basilica

We walked back through Rome, trying to catch as many landmarks as possible on the way. We saw the outside of Castel Sant'Angelo, a mausoleum built by Hadrian turned pope fortress, turned torture house. We walked from there to the Campo de'Fiori, a popular market square. We got gelato (the first of many) and walked to the Piazza Navona to eat it. This Piazza is another large market square with Bernini's Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi in the center of it.

Ryan eating gelato in the Piazza Navona

Next we walked to the Pantheon, ancient Rome's best preserved building. It dates to AD 120 and has been a Christian church since 608. It was much more well preserved than most buildings but it still doesn't make you feel completely at ease standing inside of it when there are large pieces of the marble columns that have fallen off and just been set aside next to the building.

Kelly in front of the Pantheon

We continued weaving our way through back streets and alleyways and eventually made it back near our guesthouse.
Saturday we had just a little bit of time before we had to catch our train to Florence, so we walked to see the Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano. This was the first Christian basilica built in Rome and technically property of the Vatican. It has been destroyed by fire twice though, so the structure that we saw doesn't date that far back. Next we stopped back and checked out of our guesthouse and walked to the train station, via the Porta Maggiore, a well-preserved gate into the ancient city. It's amazing how much of the ancient wall remains around the city! I'm sure it's annoying for city planners who have to build all of the roads around all the ancient ruins. We caught our train just as it started to rain so we missed the bad weather in Rome and it was beautiful weather again when we got to Florence.
We again checked into our guesthouse and then headed out walking. We wanted to get to the Galleria dell'Accademia (where the David is) but got lost on the way and happened upon a little potters' market going on in a piazza. There was all kinds of beautiful pottery and there was a lot of food there too so it was fun to walk around for a while.

Shopping in the Potters' market

We did find the Galleria then and saw the David. The rest of the museum is less than impressive, mostly gothic art from basilicas and plaster models for statues that are elsewhere in Italy. We walked from there to the Piazza Del Duomo and saw the Duomo. It's amazingly big and the whole structure is made of white, green, and pink marble. There are carvings and statues everywhere. Our guidebook called it a "visually tumultuous facade" and that is a pretty accurate description. However it is really impressive! We walked for a while just seeing what we could, got some dinner, and called it a day.
Sunday we walked to the Basilica di Santa Croce with the thought of going to Italian mass. But there was no mass near the time we got there, so we went to the Uffizi gallery (the Medici family's private collection of art). We waited for over 2 hours to get in to the museum but finally got in to see it. It's a strange set-up because the building was originally built to house city administrators, judges, and guilds. So there are all kinds of small rooms that are full of paintings and sculptures now. Not the best set-up for crowd control. We eventually saw all of it and it was a really good art gallery.

Ryan eating lunch while waiting in the long line for the Uffizi gallery

Next we walked over Ponte Vecchio, the only bridge over the Arno that survived WWII bombings. We grabbed some lunch (yep, more pizza) and sat in front of the Palazzo Pitti (the Medici summer palace) to eat it. Then we walked along the river and up a big hill to the Piazzale Michelangelo to get a great view over the city.

Kelly on Piazzale Michelangelo with Florence in the background

By this time it was almost sunset so we headed back into the city and spent the rest of the day walking around and getting ourselved lost in the narrow streets.
We again had a little bit of time on Monday before our train to Venice left, so we spent Monday morning at the San Lorenzo market, a huge indoor/outdoor market. Outside is mostly leather, scarves, ties, jewelry, etc. and inside is food. We did some balsamic vinegar tasting and found out just how good (and how expensive!) balsamic vinegar can be. We got some bread, cheese and meat for our lunch on the train and said goodbye to Florence.

Kelly shopping in the Lorenzo market

We expected Venice to be chilly, but it was hot and sunny when we arrived. We stayed on the mainland, in Mestre, so we settled into our place and then took a bus in to Venice. Venice seemed more crowded than Rome and Florence but it was probably just because the crowds were condensed into the few narrow main streets in Venice. It seemed like the main streets were the only ones that really allowed you to get anywhere.

Made it into Venice! Here's the Grand Canal

We tried our best to get off the beaten path, but usually ended up at a dead end into either a brick wall or a waterway. It was late afternoon by the time we got into the city, but we did manage to get around a bit. We saw the Jewish Ghetto and the Rialto Bridge, and many many churches.

Ryan in front of the Rialto Bridge

Tuesday we took a vaporetto (water bus) from the bus terminal where we arrived, all the way down the grand canal to the Piazza San Marco. Our guidebook had a whole guided tour written of the trip, so we saw a lot of the landmarks from the boat.

Us on the Vaporetto

We saw the Piazza and the Basilica and walked around that area of the city.

Kelly entering Piazza San Marco with the Basilica in the background

Then we walked toward the Rialto bridge again and stopped at the huge fruit/fish market there for lunch. We pretty much spent the rest of the day just walking around the city and enjoying the sights.

Us on one of the many bridges in Venice

Then it was time to take the bus back to the mainland and head to the airport (again, 45 minutes out of town) to leave Venice. Our plane was delayed and then there was a huge line at customs, so we got in bed around 2 am and went right back to work on Wednesday.
That's all of our European travel that we have planned for a while. Our next trip is to Chicago and Michigan November 22-29 so at least we have that to look forward to!

Amsterdam

We had a wonderful time in Amsterdam! We both really liked the city, the area, the people, etc. We flew there Sunday morning and got a train from the airport down to Leiden to visit my ex-coworker Saj who is living and working there now.

Us in front of a windmill and canal in Leiden

We walked around Leiden for a while and then took a bus out to a beach resort town called Katwijk. It was somewhat surprising to find beautiful sandy beaches in the Netherlands. With so much of the country below sea level I think we both expected the dikes to be holding the sea back. It was a lovely sunny day and we met up with Saj's brother and his wife and son for lunch.

The group out to lunch

Testing the water on the beach

Later that evening we caught a train from Leiden up to Amsterdam and walked to our apartment. We shared an apartment with our friends Jeremy and Liz who we met there Sunday night and we were all very big fans of the apartment that we rented. It had a double bedroom on either end and a big living space in the middle. And it was right along Prinsengracht, one of the main canals surrounding the city.
Monday we first went and saw Anne Frank's house which was just a block and a half from where we were staying. It was very sobering to see where the family hid for over two years only to be sent to concentration camps right at the end of the war. Her father is the only one who lived through the concentration camp and he published her diary. It seems even more real when all of the pictures of the area from that time look essentially the same as present day. The city does not seem to have changed a great deal.

Anne Frank's house

In the afternoon we rented bikes and rode around a couple of walking tours from one of our guidebooks. We saw Vondelpark and the Museumplein and then went downtown and rode through the red light district and a little bit of east Amsterdam. Everyone cycles in the city so the cycle paths are very nice and of course there are no hills. The only difficulty in biking is the amount of bike traffic! It was a good way to see the city though.

Taking a biking break in Vondelpark

We went out for Indonesian food for dinner since apparently that is considered almost as Dutch as Dutch food--and we didn't really want to eat traditional Dutch food.
Tuesday we took the train out of the city to a small town called Zaanse Schans. It has been set up to be like an old fashioned town, with a clog factory and a cheese factory and several small museums. They also had working windmills that milled things like mustard, dyes for paint, etc. It was interesting because though the town was folky and touristy people did actually live in all of the houses and had cows and sheep and goats grazing in their fields. Very much a mix of a fake town and a real town. It was a great chance for some Christmas shopping though--no shortage of souvenier shops.

Countryside by Zaanse Schans

Being dutch in a big wooden shoe

We rested for a bit late afternoon and then Saj came up from Leiden and met us in Amsterdam for dinner. We had pancakes for dinner-that was as traditional as we were willing to get- and then hung out at a bar for the rest of the evening.

Pancakes for dinner

Wednesday was our last day in the city but we unfortunately forgot to take our camera with us. We packed up our apartment and then went and took in the Rijksmuseum. Though it's closed for renovation they have 400 of their best works on display in an annex. It was really well done for a temporary display and they have a large collection of Rembrandt's works which were amazing. We moved Liz and Jeremy to their new guesthouse (they have a couple more days in the city) and then walked around the canals for the afternoon. Late afternoon we went on a boat tour of the canals. We went with this small non-profit company called St. Nicolaas boat tours. They are a boat club that fix up old boats and give boat tours on a donation basis so they can be non-profit. Boating is a good way to get around with all of the canals through the city. After the boat tour we had a little to eat and had to say goodbye to Amsterdam and head back to the airport. A short 35 minute flight and back to real life.
More pictures to the right on the side bar.
Italy in only 2 weeks though...:-)

The Beach

That's right--we had one day of glorious sunshine a couple weekends ago. It started out gray and drizzly but we went anyway and were glad we did. It cleared up just as we got to the coast. We ended up driving north with a couple friends (near the town of Hunstanton for those who are curious) and going to the beach. The first beach we went to we had read about the "boardwalk" but when we got there it was this strange permanent pseudo-carnival all along the beach swarming with carnies. It was interesting, but not exactly picturesque. Further down the beach than most people cared to walk though, it was really nice. The change in the water level between high and low tides was really incredible. We were there at low tide, standing on wet sand from the high tide, and could barely see the edge of the water.
Then we went to another nearby beach and it was very much more what you think of as a beach. There was soft sand and people playing in the water and laying out. Kite surfing seems like a popular sport here right now, at least at the beach where we were. We expected the water to be freezing cold but were pleasantly surprised at how warm it was. It felt so nice to get our toes in sand again!

Kelly, Ryan, and Tom at low tide

Kelly and Christina by ruins of a shipwreck along the beach

Happy Late August Bank Holiday!

Yeah...not much of a ring to it.
We had a great three day weekend though. On Saturday one of Ryan's co-workers and his wife came up to Cambridge so we went downtown. We had relatively sunny weather which was a real treat. We finally got to try our hand at punting on the river. It's tough work! It was a lot of fun though. And none of us ended up in the river so it was a success. We had dinner at a pub and then they came to our place for coffee for a while.
On Sunday it was rainy again. We helped lead a children's group in the morning and missed the service, so we went to church again at night. In the afternoon we went and picked some blackberries and apples around Cambridge.
Monday I had to work for half the day, but then we went out to a small town near here called Duxford and went to this huge airplane museum called the Imperial War Museum. It was incredible. It's one of the largest (if not the largest) collection of old planes in the world. They had British, Czech, US, German planes and a few others. We spent over 4 hours there and ended up pretty much missing an entire extra building full of tanks. It was really cool.
Every summer Cambridge has a Shakespeare festival that lasts throughout the summer with performances of Shakespeare plays in the gardens of colleges around Cambridge. Someone at my work had tickets to a performance last night and couldn't make it, so gave me the tickets. We saw the Taming of the Shrew in the Trinity College gardens. It was a really good production. And it felt very English sitting in a beautiful garden watching Shakespeare and drinking mulled wine.
Now it's back to work full time until Amsterdam.

Rain Rain Rain

I think it has rained every day here for the last 2 weeks at least at some point in the day. Summer, shmummer. Now I know next year to plan a trip somewhere warm if I want to experience summer!
Not much new here. We have a bank holiday this Monday, so we get a 3 day weekend, which is always nice.
Yesterday we got to eat in the Kings College dining hall. The two american college kids that we met had us over for dinner before they head home tomorrow. It's always fun to get to go in Kings since it's kept under lock and key.
That's all!

Paris

We're back from a three day weekend in Paris. We left our house midday on Saturday and took a bus to London and then transfered on the underground to the Eurostar station for the high speed train to Paris. Our trip started with a bit of excitement, since after bad traffic and a very late arrival at the bus station we found out that the line that runs right from the bus station to the train station was totally closed down and we had to take several different lines to get to the station. We were supposed to arrive 45 minutes early for our train and got to it 11 minutes early and ran through passport control onto the train.
We got to our hotel in Paris around 5pm and pretty much threw our stuff down in the room and took off on the metro for downtown. First we stopped at the Arc d'Triomphe and found our last name on it. From the Arc we had a good view of the Champs d'Elysee, a main shopping street in Paris. We walked from the Arc to the Eiffel Tower and got there just as they turned the lights on. It's usually lit with white lights, but for some reason it is currently lit with blue lights so the whole tower is blue. At 10pm and each hour until midnight they turn on sparkling white lights on the whole tower for 10 minutes. The effect is really neat to see.

Kelly in front of the Arc d'Triomphe

Kelly in front of the Eiffel Tower

We sat and watched the light show and then climbed the 1000+ steps up to the second level and got a good view of Paris at night. By the time we left the tower it was after midnight, so we went back to the hotel.
The next morning we started out at the Sacre Coeur, a white cathedral up on a hill overlooking the city. It rained a bit in the morning, but not near as much as was predicted and the rest of the time the weather was nice. We wandered through shops in the Montemartre district and made our way to Moulin Rouge. Since we didn't want to spring the 145 euros each for dinner and a show, we moved on to Notre Dame.

Climbing the many stairs to the Sacre Coeur

A quick rainstorm in Montmartre

The Moulin Rouge, birthplace of the Can-Can

Notre Dame Cathedral

Then we skirted by the Latin Quarter, the University of Paris (John Calvin and Thomas Aquinas are among the illustrious alumni), the Pantheon (a church turned public building turned church turned mausoleum that houses remains of accomplished Parisians) on our way to Luxembourg Gardens. We had lunch in the gardens and then called Pastor Liu, our friends father that we knew in San Francisco who is currently preaching at a mandarin church in Paris. We met him at his church that meets in the afternoon and went to the service. Though it was in Mandarin a couple people that spoke decent English were assigned to translate the service for us. Then Pastor Liu took us out to good chinese food in the Paris chinatown.

Us with Pastor Liu in a park before dinner

We went with him to the house of a church family after dinner and they happened to have free tickets to a boat ride on the Seine. So in true Chinese fashion they fed us more and then walked us to the underground station and sent us off to a free boat ride (which was pretty cool!)
The next morning we spent the entire morning and the first part of the afternoon in the Louvre and hardly saw a quarter of it. It was incredible!

In front of the pyramid at the Louvre

Then we went back to Montmartre to get some cheese and bread from the shops we found the day before. Unfortunately we didn't account for the fact that all of the shops would be closed on Monday afternoon for a siesta-style break. So we had to leave without bread and cheese. :-(

No fromage for us...

We caught the metro to the train to the underground to the bus to our bikes back home and are now exhausted!

We're still here!

Wow, no excuse for not blogging for almost a month! Hopefully I can come up with a few interesting things that we've done this month to make up for it. It has been a quiet month for the most part. we actually have gotten summer for the last week and the warm weather is welcome. Before that this month has been cold and rainy. Hardly summery. The last couple Sundays they have had "Jazz and Brass in the Park" right near us in the afternoon. It is nice to sit in the park on a warm afternoon by the river and listen to some jazz and swing music.
This past weekend we had Aaron Wong from our church in SF and three of the people he was traveling with stay with us for a couple nights. It was really nice to see a familiar face and have people visiting. We had a great time with them. They went around Cambridge on Friday while we were at work and then at night we saw the new Batman movie which was awesome! They left on Saturday morning to go on to Dublin. On Sunday we saw the two guys from UCLA that we had met before at church. They are at Kings College (the largest/riches college in Cambridge) and they took us to lunch at the Kings cafeteria. Usually you have to pay to go into Kings so it was a treat to see the inside of it. Very Harry Potter.

Aaron Wong and friends

Our bunnies are doing well. Ryan taught them to use the kitty door on our back door, so when they are out they can come in for food and leave as they please. It's really cute to see them hop in the door. Yeah, Ryan had a bit of free time on his hands...
We also visited the church that our church will be joining with for our "church plant" in November. It is about the same distance from our house as our church is now, just in a different direction. It is a small struggling church that wants to reach out to their community but doesn't have enough people. They don't have many young people and we are hoping to bring quite a few from our church for the plant. It was less small than we pictured and was really welcoming. It will be interesting to try to blend the two groups into a united congregation in November!
We just heard from a couple of our friends in Chicago who are coming to Europe for vacation in the fall. We will probably meet them in the Netherlands for a few days in September so that's exciting. We didn't have any vacations planned for September...:-)

Wicked

Yesterday we went down to London to see the musical Wicked to celebrate my birthday. We took the bus down, which we hadn't done before but will probably do again since it was only 8 pounds each way for the two of us. That's probably less than we'd spend on gas to get down to London with gas prices as they are and we didn't have to navigate London traffic. We got dropped off right next to the Apollo Victoria Theatre where Wicked is playing. We got there a bit early though, so we decided to go on a bit of a walking tour first. We stopped at Westminster cathedral and had a look inside.

Westminster Cathedral

Then we walked through some of the richer areas of London, past Harrod's, to the Victoria and Albert Museum but unfortunately by the time we made it there we didn't have much time to look around if we wanted to make it to the show on time.

Victoria and Albert museum-this is about all we saw of it too

As it was we barely made it on time (we seem to have a bad habit of doing that) and had to speed walk a good mile to get into the theatre before the show started. Wicked was amazing! The girl who sang the lead has an 8 octave range. Yeah...incredible. I'd highly recommend it.

Waiting for the show to start

Me outside the theatre after the show let out

After the show we had some time before our bus home, so we walked up to Hyde Park Corner and saw the Wellington arch and some war memorials.

The Wellington Arch

Heavy rain was forecast all day for Saturday but it was warm and sunny the whole time so we were happy about that. Today is my birthday. A very kick-back kind of day. We met some guys at church this morning that are studying at Cambridge for a couple months this summer. They go to UCLA but one grew up in San Mateo right next to where we lived. They even knew one of our friends' sisters that went to UCLA. Small world.

School's-Out-For-Summer

The town of Cambridge has emptied out. Graduations were this past weekend so there were a lot of families of graduates around during the weekend. The void will shortly be filled with tourists who have already started descending on Cambridge.
The weather has been very much like the bay area. Not hot but not cold. Sunny or rainy, usually both in the same day.
This past week was quite typical. We had a couple over for dinner last Sunday night that helped us out quite a bit when we moved here. It was fun to hang out and get to know them a little better. This weekend we relaxed quite a bit. Our typical Saturday is I get up and run 12 miles and get home around when Ryan is getting up. Then we spend the next couple hours cleaning. I must admit Ryan does a bit more than me cleaning the house usually, but I do give the rabbit hutch/run a thorough cleaning every Saturday. Then for the afternoon we try to get out and do something fun. We went shopping at charity shops this saturday. And then we went out to dinner at this Portuguese restaurant that was recommended to us. It was very good food and the best part was they actually had spicy food! Not easy to find in this area, believe me. If you buy hot salsa at the grocery store here (and there is only one brand of that) it pretty much tastes like chopped up tomatoes. So the restaurant had their food and then they had a line of sauces to add to make it the spiciness you want. The extra extra hot sauce that gave all sorts of cheesy warnings on the bottle was probably not quite as hot as siracha sauce.
Next Saturday we will be spending the day in London because we are going to see Wicked for my birthday. I'm really excited!!

Normandy Pics now up

I added another album of pictures from Normandy on the side if anyone is interested. This weekend was supposed to be completely rainy here but has been quite nice. Yesterday we took a bike ride out to watch some of the "May bumps" boat races. It's the biggest college v. college boat race of the year. They line up a boat distance apart and each boat is trying to "bump" or overtake the one in front of it. Why it is called May bumps when it happens mid-June is something that nobody seems to have an answer for other than that's how it has always been done.
Then we went to a town and country show downtown and saw sheep and horses and cows. We spent the evening (until the rain did start coming down a bit) at a pub by our house along the river. We booked a trip to Paris in August so we're excited about that and are pushing our Italy trip off to October but we're starting to plan that one.
Not too much else going on here at the moment. The students all leave at the end of this week for the summer. The last time the students left the town got incredibly quiet (and nice!) but we hear that for the summer the students are just replaced by tourists so we're not too hopeful.

More Pictures

I added Picassa web albums to the blog page. At some point I might have time to go back and upload more pics from previous trips, but from Berlin and future trips you can now take a look at all of our pictures if you're interested.
This is what I'm doing as I'm putting off going to work until the deluge of rain stops...

Berlin

We had a really great time in Berlin the last few days! Here's an overview of what we did and saw. We did so much in just a few days. We probably walked over 10 miles a day so when we got home yesterday we collapsed for the rest of the day. We left for Berlin on Saturday evening, so we had Saturday to do some last minute work, last minute packing, and some last minute bunny readying for our trip. We got in a bit late Saturday night and took the S-Bahn (above ground train) and U-Bahn (below ground train) to our hostel. The hostel was incredibly nice. We were in a room with three other people, but as we like to sleep at night and get up in the morning we had pretty much the opposite schedule from them and didn't see them much. Sunday morning we had breakfast at the hostel and took off walking. Our first stop was the Berliner Dom, a presbyterian church that has been on that site since 1895, though that site has had a cathedral on it for considerably longer. It was damaged (as was almost everything) during WWII and has since been refurbished. Then we spent a couple hours at the nearby history museum. Around noon we took a train ride out of town to the small town of Potsdam, the site of the palaces of the German monarchs and chancellors (and later the East Berlin officials).

Die Berliner Dom (with Kelly in front)

Arriving at the Palaces in Potsdam

At Potsdam we met our college friend Amy, her friend Abbey that she is traveling with, and their friends Jon and Kristen that live in Berlin. We spent the afternoon wandering the expansive palace grounds and looking at the different palaces.

Meeting Amy in Potsdam

Another impressive Potsdam Palace

That night Jon and Kristen graciously prepared dinner for us at their place (about a 3 minute walk from our hostel) and we spent the night playing cards. The next morning we again had breakfast at the hostel and again took off walking. Our first stop Monday was the church at which Dietrich Bonhoeffer was ordained and preached.

Ryan in front of Die evangelische Zionskirche

We then walked a long way down the Unter den Linden, the main street through East Berlin to arrive at the Brandenburg Gate at the other end. The gate is a former city gate and has been a symbol of Berlin for centuries. The Nazi party marched through this gate in their power takeover in 1933. The allies also marched through the gate in the overthrow of Berlin 1945. The Berlin wall passed right in front of the gate and it is where President Reagan ordered Gorbachev to tear down the wall.

Ryan in front of the Brandenburg Gate

We continued walking down the same street through the Tiergarten Park. We happened upon a Russian war memorial to the Russian soldiers that died during WWII.

Kelly in front of Russian War Memorial

Next we visited the Reichstag building, the capital building where the Reichstag government meets. We took the lift up to the top of the building and had great views of the whole city. The Reichstag building was set on fire four weeks after Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor, an event the Nazi party used (possibly orchestrated) to get German civil liberties revoked .

The Reichstag Building

We again met up with Amy, Abbey, and Kristen and next walked to the holocaust memorial. It is several hundred large stone blocks set upon a deepening and uneven brick walkway.

Amy, Abbey, and Kristen in the Holocaust Memorial

We were walking toward Checkpoint Charlie, but stopped at a place with a large section of the Berlin wall still standing. It was the site of the previous SS headquarters (the foundation and part of the building was still there) and there was an in-depth exhibit there with many pictures of the workings of the SS during th Holocaust. Hard to stomach, but it was a really interesting exhibit.

Largest section of the Berlin Wall still standing

We made it to Checkpoint Charlie, one of the gates between the American Sector of West Berlin and East Berlin. There was an exhibit of the stories of successful and unsuccessful attempts to flee East Berlin through the checkpoint.

Sign from East Berlin at Checkpoint Charlie

We were struck by how recent this history was compared to most of what we have been seeing. I can't imagine what it is like for those who lived in East Berlin during communist rule and now can freely pass over the place where the wall stood. We next went and had ice cream at Potsdamer Platz, which is an area that was left a wasteland during the cold war. It was directly beyond the "Death Strip" very close to the wall. Since the wall fell the entire area has been built up and now is full of new buildings and skyscrapers. They have a double brick line through Berlin that traces the line of where the wall stood. We went out to eat at night and then left back for home on Tuesday morning. It was about 85 degrees and bright sunshine the whole time we were in Berlin (totally not used to that kind of heat anymore!) and when we got home it was back to the normal drizzly cold we're used to.