Photos posted

http://picasaweb.google.com/jules32

Full Krakow Post

Scheherazade, my soon-to-be sister-in-law, is teaching neurology at the Jagiellonian Medical University in Krakow for the month of May. Taking the opportunity to visit her was the impetus for my whole European trip!

I flew from Oslo to Krakow (via Munich) and took the city bus to the tram that stops near the university housing where she is living. In order to break my 100 zloty bill to pay the 3 zlotys for the bus, I went into the airport and pointed at a yummy-looking pastry. There were several to choose from; all of them were beautifully molded with intricate designs, and it looked like they had been covered with egg in order to have a nice golden glisten on the outside of the pastry. I went outside with my prize and sat to wait for the bus and took a nice bite of this dense pastry. It turns out that when she had said “cheese”, she meant that this was a block of cheese, and not a pastry filled with cheese. It was a very salty, squeaky smoked cheese, hence the outer coating that looked so pretty. It was pretty tasty—I sat and waited for the bus, gnawing on my huge block of cheese.

The first night, after uniting with Scheherazade, we went to the old town, which beautiful. The Cloth Hall is under renovation right now unfortunately, so the façade is covered with scaffolding, and the museum inside is closed. But St. Mary’s Church, with the bugler, is in full force, and it is really lovely. The bugler bugles every hour on the hour, and he only plays part of a song—back in the day when the bugler was bugling that the enemy was coming, he was hit in the larynx with an arrow and the song abruptly ended. As a tribute to his bugling, they continue this tradition every hour. Krakow made it through the war without being destroyed, and the old feel of the town is really nice. There used to be a moat around the whole city center, which has been replaced with a nice grassy and treey park that circles the city.

The food in Poland is outstanding. There will be a lot of food discussion here: we spent most of the time walking around the town, stopping in cafes to have coffee and cakes in between huge Polish meals. So. The first night, we went to a milk bar, which is a “self service” place that is incredibly cheap. The two of us had more food than we could finish and it cost $11 for the two of us. I had bigos, a sauerkraut-sausage-mushroom stew that is quite a hearty meal. I also had beet borsht, and Scheherazade had pierogi, little ravioli-like dumplings stuffed with spinach, sauerkraut, shrooms, meat or potatoes and cheese. Really nice stuff.

I went to the University with Scheherazade on Wednesday to hear her lecture on intracerebral hemorrhaging (bleeding in the brain). She got a really nice introduction from Dr. J, a professor at University of Rochester who organizes the exchange to Krakow each spring. After her lecture, I went off to explore the city and ended up at this little local market where they were selling everything from purses and underwear to pots, cheese and beautiful fresh vegetables and fruits. In the evening we walked around even more, and went to the Jewish District, the Kazimierz. This area is really great. It’s now pretty artsy and has a lot of interesting places to explore. Like everything in Krakow, there are really modern, hip places inside of very old, almost run-down-looking buildings. Each place is really unique and it’s so fun to look into each shop and café to see what could possibly be inside. And, almost every place has a cellar. So restaurants have more seating downstairs, bars and clubs have other rooms with more themes, it’s really great. Since it started to rain, we had delicious chocolate-pear-marzipan-cinnamon-cream cake and coffee and watched people passing by with umbrellas. Then we went off to have some beers with the Polish med students. Then, we went back to the square and went to a fancy restaurant (that is still so reasonable compared to US restaurants) and had delicious soups. Zurek, another traditional Polish soup, is made of sour rye and is served with a boiled egg and sausage. It can be a pretty clear broth, or more creamy. In the next days we had it many times and it was delicious in any form. I had a mushroom soup that was served in a tall bread bowl, also super delicious.

It was raining very hard but Heidrun finally made it! Heidrun is my Austrian cousin who was driving from Graz. The rain plus tiny Polish roads made her trip almost 10 hours, much longer than it should have been. To celebrate her arrival, we went to the little blue truck to have kielbasa! This is a few guys who park their little blue truck on the street between 8pm and dawn and grill sausages. Although the truck is small, the operation is very substantial. There are 2 guys, one who handles the money and the sausage-bread-mustard-potential-drink distribution, and the other guy has his hands full over 2 big fires, wielding 3 6-pronged sausage-flippers, each of which has a sausage on it. Grilled to perfection, they were awesome. We were not only the only non-Polish people partaking in this delicious late-night feast, but we were the only women. There were a lot of night-laborer types having their dinner. It rocked.

In the next days, Heidrun and I explored while Scheherazade worked and then we all met up and went back out to the town. The first day we headed up to the Wawel castle, which reminds me so much of a fairy tale castle, probably from Sleeping Beauty. It has a nice view of the whole town as well, and the architecture is so lovely. We went to see the treasury, which was mostly the armory, since so much has been pillaged over the years. And the tour of the royal apartments was similar—the architecture is legit but all the pieces have been reconstructed or are from the same period but from elsewhere since everything was destroyed when various armies occupied the castle. We also got Swedish massages, which turned out to be Polish massages, go figure.

We spent a lot of time in the Jewish Quarter, it was so lovely to walk around and there were much fewer tourists. And so much history everywhere. We had traditional Jewish dinner at a restaurant called Ariel (where we ended up on 2 more nights). I had a soup that was beef, veggies, cinnamon and honey. It was really tasty! And Scheherazade and I had the roast duck with cherries and latkes. The following night we went back to hear traditional Jewish music at the same place, it was really lovely. Violin, cello and accordion, and they also played some Hungarian and Slovakian pieces. It was nice to sit with a bottle of wine and hear them play (we had previously eaten at a Jewish milk bar where we had the usual delicious soups and also a bean-barley-beef stew).

On Saturday Tomek, one of Nishad’s friends from high school in India, and Ola, one of Heidrun’s friends, met us in Krakow, which was awesome. The five of us walked around town and to the Jewish District and hung out and caught up. Ola took us to this sweet café where the whole place is decorated with old instruments—trumpets hung from the walls and were used as hooks for coats and newspapers, an old accordion was a bookshelf, drums served as tables, and there were cellos hanging from the ceiling, pianos built into the floor. Also, the lampshades were all old music pasted around, and the door to the kitchen was a zither.

That night we went to hear live jazz in a cellar bar on the main square. It started raining while we were there and we ran to a restaurant that was still open and had a delicious midnight meal—definitely the best borscht I had in Poland. They served it with a stuffed and fried cabbage that absorbed all the beet juice and made it into delicious little pockets of borscht—yum! Heidrun’s zurek was also one of the best we had and Scheherazade’s kielbasa rivaled the blue van. And, downstairs in this seemingly normal restaurant, was a full-scale Tunisian restaurant, with little rooms with Persian rugs, hookas, and belly dancers. Little microcosms, so cool!

Heidrun left on Sunday, it was so sad to see her go. I headed out to Auschwitz and Birkenau, which are such haunting places. It was pouring rain the whole time, which seemed appropriate somehow.

I ended my European adventure with Scheherazade in the Jewish District, where we had a nice walk as the rain let up for a few hours and then a lovely dinner. We also went back to Ariel to buy some of these sweet Jewish lamps. They are a lovely amber color, which is fitting since there is so much amber in Poland. I’ll have to come back certainly—it would be so nice to spend more time in the city and also in the countryside. We were hoping to go to Zankopane, a nice village at the foothills of some nice hiking. Next time for sure, maybe on a sunny day.

Lysekil, May 9-10

To get to Lysekil from Göteborg, your bus will turn left off the main road at Uddevalle and cut over to the coast. If you fall asleep on this bus ride but are woken up when the bus cuts its engine, you will be delighted to find out that the bus, and therefore you, is are on a car ferry!! We ran off the bus and around the ferry to see all the sights. It’s a very short ferry to the end of a long finger inlet. From there, it wasn’t long until we got off the bus all together and walked along the harbor to get to the Fiskeriverket Havsfiskelaboratoria—the Swedish Board of Fisheries (and the equivalent to our NOAA fisheries in the US). Valerio was expecting Jordan, but not Jordan and Julie, so our surprise plot worked perfectly. We had a coffee and a little tour of the lab before heading back to Valerio’s apartment. He lives 3 blocks from the lab, and has this beautiful view over his balcony to the water. His deck is bounded by his apartment, the fence between he and his neighbor’s apartment, the balcony with the view, and a huge granite rock that is climbable to have a cool view of his neighborhood.

We cooked a superb Italian pasta for dinner—and it should be known that Valerio made the pasta and we were not allowed to have anything to do with it. We would surely muck it up if we tried. :) So Jordan was in charge of barbequing the steaks and I helped along the edges. I sat back and helped with the important things: the wine tasting and the olive oil tasting. Valerio’s family makes their own olive oil on land just outside of Roma. It is the best olive oil ever. We ate it with nice bread and also on our spinach—no need for vinegar when the oil is that yummy! Then we put bananas (in the peel) stuffed with chocolate on the hot bbq and sprinkled them with coarse sea salt...and by then the sun was down, it was nearly 23:00.

After dinner we took a nice long walk around Lysekil. It is a lovely little town with a long history of skippers and seafaring peoples. We walked along the harbor, which has a nice new wooden promenade, and then back through the outskirts of the city center and through little neighborhoods. Valerio pointed out that Swedes like to display light and little treasures in the window—it’s so cool! The front windows were all lit up, some simply with flowers, some with large wooden ships and nautical clocks, etc. There were a few that I didn’t realize were private homes—I went up and was looking in the window at the pretty display before I focused in the background and saw there was a stove and kitchen, with afghans on the couch. It had a really nice, welcoming feel to the whole area, and I learned to enjoy from afar. We cut back to Valerio’s up past the big church, which is disproportionately enormous compared to the population of the town. That’s so you can see it from the water as a landmark. It’s really an impressive piece of architecture, and it’s also nicely visible from nearly anywhere in town.

The next morning I met the guys at the Fiskeriverket Havsfiskelaboratoria for the morning fika, which on Mondays is a meeting too where everyone catches everyone else up on new events. Valerio spoke about his time at a conference in Japan, and about our course in Tjärnö. He also introduced me as visiting scientist—and after the fika I gave a little 15 minute seminar about my work in California with squid. It was fun to talk with the researchers there, and there were a lot of questions and interest, which was nice. I want to try to set up a post-doc there, it would be so amazing to have any reason to live in Lysekil, and if it’s to do something that I’d love and am trained to do, that would be amazing!

After lunch at the aquarium with a bunch of Valerio and Jordan’s friends, we went wandering around to the city center and then I headed out on my own to go to the nature reserve that is on the northern part of the peninsula. The whole reserve is granite—granite boulders and cliffs that then sweep or slope down to the sea. It was so fun to run all over the rocks, and the wind was pretty strong and it was nice to watch the white caps and the fishing boats going by. I spent probably way too long jumping on the rocks with the self-timer trying to get a shot of me playing, but I finally triumphed!!

Göteborg/Gothenburg, May 8-9

After our course was over, we decided to take Jordan up on a suggestion of coming to Göteborg (Gothenburg) along with him. I ended up spending some nice quality time in Strömstad before taking the train down, and I documented this time with a series of lovely photos. In that time, Cascade, Althea and Kylla had gotten a ride down with Jordan and Valerio, dropped Valerio off to look at an apartment, sold Jordan’s car, and Althea and Kylla had headed off to Copenhagen. Jordan, Linus and Cascade picked me up and we headed back to Linus’ apartment overlooking the city.

Linus is a fisheries biologist (and fly fisherman) in Göteborg, and a great friend of Jordan. He was awesome—invited us to stay with him in his 1-bedroom apartment, along with his mom and Jordan, who were already planning to stay. And, it was his birthday! Jordan cooked a delicious dinner and we hung out watching YouTube videos (best Ikea commercial ever: search for Ikea Midsummer) and had some beers and Irish coffee that Linus made to perfection. We were also introduced to the Finnish mint liquor, which was so sweet and smooth. We headed out to a club to dance, which was so fun! Four hours on the dance floor passed like nothing and it was cool to come out of the club to see the sunrise (which happens before 5am).

On Sunday we had a delicious breakfast (breads, cheese, yogurts and coffee) and headed downtown to walk around. Jordan and Linus gave an amazing tour around the town: we covered so much ground and got the insiders’ view, wonderful. Linus has lived there for 7 years, and Jordan lived there as well for quite some time. We walked along the harbor and through Haga, this wonderful pedestrian cobble-stoned area with little shops and cafes. An incredible detail that I noticed in Haga, and then in many other parts of Sweden: outdoor cafés provide blankets for you so you can sit outside in the fresh air but still be cozy. I’ll do that in my café someday :)

We went up to the Forkets hus, the tower that gives a really lovely view of the whole city, across all the red roofs. We went to Slottsskogsparken, a big beautiful space with hills of granite and grassy areas. There is also a zoo in one area where we saw moose, peacocks and seals (in different sections). We rounded about the Feskekörka, the “fish church” (fish market). Unfortunately it was closed on Sundays but it was neat to peak in and see all the stalls and image what it was like on a busy morning. The building was beautiful: it looked like a little snow-covered church right along the water. We did a little window shopping and a little real shopping at some of the stores that were open in the center before heading to the train station. Very cool design shop too.

Along our walk I decided to take Jordan and Valerio up on the offer to go join them in Lysekil (pronounced Lisa-shiel). Valerio had headed home to Lysekil after leaving Göteborg the day before and Jordan was going there for a day to work with him on some fisheries discard data. So at the bus station we parted ways with Cascade and I went with Jordan to Lysekil. This was one of the coolest split-second decisions ever.

Delicious food at the Lovén Marine Centre: a separate post

Oh my gosh, did we eat delicious food at the marine station. Shrimp curry, pasta with cream sauce and sausage, white fish with green sauce and mussels, potato leek soup, pea soup with (Swedish) pancakes (this is what you traditionally eat every Thursday). Also, (Swedish) meatballs in cream sauce, and wild boar with rice. Lunch is the largest meal, and there is always an accompanying salad bar, the best I’ve ever had. In addition to the fresh lettuce, tomatoes, and usual suspects, there were little pre-made salads too: garbanzo-radish-onion, potato, green bean, pinto bean-onion, sweet black bean with bell peppers, turmeric-curry bananas…yum! Also, honeydew-like yellow melons. Desserts did not happen every night, but when they did, they were lingon berry cobblers.

And breakfast every morning was a feast: in addition to 4 different kefirs and yogurts of three different fat contents for the muesli and cereals, there was rolls (yummy triangle-rolls with pumpkin seeds) and bread with which to get creative. I usually went with butter, cheese (from the huge cheese wheel), and made one with soft-boiled egg, pickle and cod caviar, and the other with jam (yep, delicious with the cheese!). There was also pickled herring: a really rich, oily fish that was sweet and vinegary at the same time.

On Thursday night (after our pea soup and pancake lunch), we had an incredible Swedish feast, that was made especially for us. All other meals we ate were with everyone from the station: everyone comes from their labs or offices and we eat together. On Thursday, we had a later sitting, privately, and when we arrived there were flowers on the table, which was set with nice napkins and wine glasses. And we ate the traditional seafood dinner of Sweden. There were piles of shrimp. These shrimps were whole, and looked perfect and pink. They are boiled on board the ships by the fishermen right after they are caught—this makes them as fresh as possible and keeps them in the best shape. And, since they are at sea, they are boiled in seawater: this gives them an overall saltiness and nothing else is done to them before eating them. So we sat at the table cleaning the shrimps to eat their delicious saltiness. And there was salmon, too. Smoked in three different ways, one with delicious pepper and spices on it. And one with this fabulous green onion sauce as an accompaniment. It was an amazing feast, with fresh baguettes with butter and cheese. And then lingon berry pie! Three of them!

There was so much delicious food at the station, and so much of it was traditional. And every day from 10-10:30 and 15:00-15:30, everyone came out of their offices and labs and got together for the fika, or coffee break. But it’s more than a coffee break—it’s a time to be together and socialize. It was a wonderful thing, and talking to the Swedes they were amazed that Americans don’t do such a thing. You guys work too much! Yes, yes we do. It was really nice to have that break, and it really worked well with breaking up our 2 lectures in the morning and lab time in the afternoon. For the members of the marine station, there are cookies or little cakes available to buy. But for us, everything was free. They would have cookies for us at the morning fika, and bake us chocolate or berry cakes in the afternoon. It is going to be hard to get used to anything else...

Lovén Marine Centre, Tjärnö, Sweden

We made it to Oslo with no trouble. Our flight left from Reykjavik at 8am and we were in Norway by 1300. Flying was amazing. The flight path was modified so that we went east across Iceland instead of heading southwest: this was due to the Volcanoashcloud. But it was awesome: from the right side of the plane, I could see the volcano clearly, from above the clouds that ringed the crater and blocked you from seeing the smoke plume from land. It was so impressive. The pilot described the 2 plumes that we saw: the darker one was the volcanic plume, dark from ash and smoke. The second, pure white one was the steam coming up as the hot lava melted the glacier that covered the volcano. As we passed it, the landscape gave way to more glaciers, rugged coastline and streams—I feel asleep over Iceland and woke up over the snow-covered world of northern Norway.

I was surprised to see all of the snow in Norway. Iceland after all had been surprisingly warm. But it was hard to tell that I was looking at blankets of snow and not clouds. As we traveled further southeast over Norway, more and more green turned up and soon we were over a land of fjords and waterways. It was so magical to see the trees and lakes making a patchwork across the country. Many of the lakes were still frozen, so there were patches of white mixed in with the green and blue.

We passed through Oslo on our way to Strömstad, which is halfway between Oslo and Göteburg (Gothenburg), Sweden’s second largest country. It was a neat city, and the area near the train station reminded me of London a bit. We will come back to spend a few days in Oslo before Cascade heads home and I go to see Scheherazade in Krakow. In my craziness before leaving, I hadn’t printed out our train reservations, and was confused about which bus to take. The bus driver who was driving the express, direct bus to Göteburg offered to stop in Strömstad and let us off. We took him up on this, and without ever having proved that we had bought tickets, he went out of his way and stopped by the fire station in Strömstad to let us out. We arrived 2.5 hours early than we would have due to his kindness and initiative, and I have continued to be impressed with how wonderful Swedes are since (as I knew and expected :)

Lars Gamsfeldt, a postdoc at the University of Göteburg (and organizer of the course) picked us up from the fire station and brought us to Lovén Marine Centre on the island of Tjärnö. This little archipelago is made completely of granite, with pines and trees about to bud. The islands are connected by little one-lane bridges and most of the houses are made with the typical red paint that is typical in Sweden.

We arrived at the marine station, which was an incredible institute. All red buildings along the water, I was impressed how big and equipped it was. It is set up to handle large classes (although thankfully there were only 18 students there including us: the 60 freshmen wouldn’t arrive until after we left) and visiting researchers. They have a nice research vessel with an ROV, a dive locker with 30 wetsuits, booties, etc—all of which any of us were welcome to use. We were given keys to every room at the institute, excluding the woodshop. Otherwise, we could go from our rooms to the aquarium, the kitchen, the labs...everything was set up for us to make the most of our time there. We went for a walk on the adjoining island, still before sunset (which isn’t until 20:00 or so).

The next day we started class. From Monday through Thursday we learned so much: a whole statistical modeling technique: filled with lectures of theory and accompanying hands-on labs using the computer program R. Jarrett Byrnes was a fabulous teacher, helping us to understand complex ideas and statistics and helping us apply these concepts to our own data sets. We had a great time in labs, coming back to work after dinner and usually after a nice walk or swim. On two evenings we all met over beers to discuss each of our individual projects and help each other with the theories and parameters that would go into our models. On Friday we all presented our systems and model results and got great feedback from each other. My results are really promising and I have a good direction in which to go with the project, and this will become a part of my thesis I hope. My talk was titled “Stora Bläckfiskar i Montereyviken: en oceanografisk SEM model”.

On Monday night we got suited up in the 8mm wetsuits and jumped off the dock. It is a sandy bottom habitat with a lot of fouling on the docks and hydroids in the sand, but not very species rich. It was just great to be in the water and cruising around. I didn’t realize how cold it was until I exchanged my mask for my goggles (thinking I’d take a little swim), and nearly froze my brain in the first minute. That mask really protects your forehead and especially the tender little spot between your eyes! Other nights we had nice walks and would usually end the evening with beers and ping-pong and a sauna.

Our class was great. Not only were Jarrett and Lars so great to us and organized, the class had brought together a really interesting group of positive, diverse people. There were Swedes: Mathilda (an amazing jelly biologist, one of the most positive and fun people ever), Marina, Marie and Peter. An Australian who has been living in Sweden for several years and is now getting his PhD in Denmark: Jordan. An Italian fisheries biologist doing his postdoc in Sweden: Valerio. (I had actually met him and chatted with him randomly in Portland this past February at the Ocean Sciences conference). Two Brazilians: one coming from Brazil (Ronaldo) and one who is doing his PhD in northern, northern Sweden: Andre. There were two other Americans besides Cascade, Kylla and I, both from Florida State: David and Althea.

On Wednesday afternoon before our first lab, we took 2 small boats from the station and went to explore an island, a remote one not too far, that had been Lars’ field sites when he was doing his PhD. It was really cool to explore the intertidal, which was very narrow on this granite rock. The islands that we had been on were granite with mudflats, and the slopes were such so that a small difference in water level translated into a large portion of exposed mudflat, littered with clams, oysters (invasive Japanese and native Swedish), and algae (Fucus, mostly). The craziest thing is that the tides are not moon-driven. Are they still even tides? Instead, up into the Baltic and even where we were, they are wind and pressure-driven. So as the pressure system changes, the tide goes in or out. Slowly. And it holds for quite sometime. What does this mean? It means that it was low-tide the whole time we were there. Morning, midday, night. 24-hours a day, for more than 5 days. It’s an amazing concept, something that is still so foreign to me! So most things are either limited to deeper water, or are super-well adapted to such long exposure times to air.

Ah, Iceland

Just a quick(ish)? note to tell you about Iceland! It is really spectacular. I am acclimating nicely right now after emerging from the Blue Lagoon--a natural geothermal pool that is milky white with natural silica mud. It's hard to put my mind around because it looks white, like shampoo, but it's mud. It dries lighter on your skin the way mud does, and it has a really pleasant, refreshing smell. It's amazing because the lava rocks get covered slowly, slowly by the silica, which fills in the cracks and pores of the rock and leaves it so smooth like glass. It's gorgeous, really.

I have been in Iceland now 2 days--I was 19 hours late (so total travel time = 36 hours from SFO-KEF) due to the curse-ed Volcanoashcloud. But it was actually a very enjoyable journey--I met an awesome Swedish girl named Malin (pronounced Maaal-n) and we became friends and hung out the whole time. And finally made it to Keflavik after a surprise layover in Glasgow, the motherland! I restrained myself from buying a kilted Loch Ness Monster that said Blair on it :). Or the scottie playing the bagpipes.

I've been staying with Kristy Kroeker's friend Hrönn in Reykjavik--she is a marine biologist here. She gave a seminar on Thursday morning at the Geology department, so I got to hear about her work. That was at the U of Iceland, and then we went to the state's Marine Institute, which was also interesting. A bit different from Hopkins--in a huge tall converted building, and she's the only grad student in the whole place. Cohort of 1.

I wandered around downtown by myself for the rest of the day, in only a sweater and windbreaker (not quite as freezing cold as I had anticipated, but probably will need the jackets in Sweden?--thanks again Kristin!). Saw the cathedral, the harbor (with the active whaling ships right next to the whale watching ships), and went to the National Gallery. Also went into the supermarket (Icelandic súkkulad∂i (chocolate) is delicious!!), the lake to see swans and puffins, and a few shops with viking and puffin memorabilia. And then home with Hrönn to eat pizza and to watch the Sigor Ros Iceland tour video (with amazing footage and history interspersed with music/scenes from the free concerts they gave all across the country)!

Today my friends from Boston arrived, and we are here at the Blue Lagoon, which is a lovely spa, and there are more locals than tourists here, which is nice. We're about to head out to dinner at Cascade's friends' house, and then tomorrow we'll go see the Geiser and waterfalls in the Golden Circle. We probably won't make the trek to see the volcano, but there is the webcam: http://eldgos.mila.is/eyjafjallajokull-fra-thorolfsfelli/. We'll then go to Hrönn's favorite pub which also has all of Iceland's traditional food (salted cod of course, but also reindeer, foal, and whale). And then, flight (Volcanoashcloud willing) to Oslo, train to Sweden for our course!

Crete

So, on a little vaction from my vaction, I am in Crete right now!! My friend Elena from high school is half Greek (her dad is Greek) and the dad just built this sweet house on in the north overlooking the valleys with vineyards, olive trees, goats,etc, all the way to the sea. We are about twenty minutes south of Iraklion, the biggest city on Crete, and it is perfect because we are out in the country but it is very quick to get anything we need. We have been having such an amazing experience, because both Elena's dad and her uncle are Greek and so can bargain and get all the best tips and deals, and plus they have many friends here that help us out. Costa (Llena's dad) has a goddaughter here, who is the cutest little girl ever, and we have been able to hang out with her and her parents several times now.

Greek Easter is a week later than our Easter, so it was last Sunday, and the celebration started the night before with a late night church service (celebrating the comeback of christ, somehow), and then many too-loud fire crackers and too-close fireworks, etc, at midnight (the noise started earlier, when the priest was dutifully giving his sermon over all the noise) followed by a 1am FEAST of lamb, salads, beef, rice and potatoes, and desserts galore that we had spent the day preparing (It was the end of lent and hypothetically we had been fasting and not eating any red meat or dairy products for the past forty days, and nothing at all that whole Saturday). So at 1am on Easter morning, we fed a table of 12 all of that roasted lamb. We went to bed at 330 on a full stomach, then woke up the next morning to make more tiropita (cheese-pastries in phyllo dough) and a phyllo-apple pie, and went to a daytime Easter feast on the other side of the valley, at the home of the architech of the house. They cooked lamb and port on skewers as well as in the outdoor forno, and man was it tasty. But my god, so much food!!! We came home at 5, slept till 9, and then were awake trying to figure out what to do with ourselves. And we had lunch plans the next day.

Between all of our wonderful meals (I could go on about the food, and I will), we have been exploring the island. We went to Knossos one day, and visited the Minoan ruins which were really impressive but I thought that it was sort of a bummer that the emphasis was put on the archaelogist and not on the ruins themselves...but it was still sweet. The frescos were all fakes with the real ones at the museum in Iraklion, and all of the pottery, etc, were there too. So we went to the museum and it was so cool to see all of the intricate jewels made out of gold, the pots made of marble...and the frescos upstairs were so beautiful!

Yesterday we went to Agios Nicholas, a really beautiful port town--check out Elena's blog to see all the photos, and, actually, a recount of the whole trip:

http://web.mac.com/esevas/iWeb/Site/Welcome.html

Tomorrow is the housewarming party/dedication of the house, so it will be a fancy catered affair and there will be a gyro stand that we are trying to convince them all to put in our room. Yum.

El Salvador

I went here with my Dad's Rotary group, my brother and my friend Kev at the end of January and it was incredible...the recount of the trip will have to wait till I get home, though. Bummer!

After so much time....

...I will actually post something on my blog again. This turned out to be like my journal--after getting more and more behind it seems like a chore to update what I have been up to and so here is a brief, brief recap of the past, oh, year (ok, nine months).

Costa Rica was incredible. After living there for three months, I am alright at Spanish--I can say basically anything I need to say, whether of not it is perfect Spanish is another thing. I met such wonderful people through the families I was living with, the friends I met through them and also all of the women I worked with at the Orquideas and also the guys at the Escuela de Ganaderia. I am still in touch with all of them, and I'm hoping to go back sometime soon!!!
My parents, Andy, Aunt Sue and Karl all came for a week, and we got to travel around the island in the comfort of a car, something I had not done in 3 months of being away from home. It was great to be with all of them, and show off "my" Costa Rica to them, as well as doing all of the touristy things. She-Rene, Kev, Greg and Ted, my wonderful friends from school came down and we had an amazing time that cannot be put into words and only can sort of be captured by photos, but the week involved horsebackriding in the rain, broken toenails, guaro, beaches, and rafting. Sweet.

In October, for my parents' joint (10 hours apart) 60th birthdays, all four of us went to Europe together, something that has not happened since Andy was in high school (some, 10 year ago?). We arrived in Paris and stayed with Marie-Helene in Sceaux, and got to spend a few days with our friends in the city. Then, we took our rental car across to Slovenia, stopping in Alsace, which had such wonderful wine, and storks, and then across Germany staying on Chiemsee (really sweet, too) and then out to Lj. We didn't get to see Irenca because she was sick, but we got to be in Dole with our relatives Slavka, Tone, Tamara and little Gian (who is 4 yrs old and knows to sing lullybyes to his dad in slovenijan when his dad gets mad at him--the cutest thing ever!!) Mom and I were able to stay after and go to the National Park together, and we had all sorts of tour guides with us and it was such a beautiful experience. The two of us drove back, had some more time in Paris and then she headed back for the states and I caught up with my friend Greg in Barcelona--he was living there, chilling and drawing. My time in Barcelona included getting ditched on the discoteca floor, sangria, lots of walking around, gaudi, the aquario, and of course, yummy food.

After studying and taking the horrible godawful GREs, I went out to DC for a long weekend to visit Katiefoster and She-Renie (who is gone from SF for a whole year for a masters program!!). It was Kfo's birthday and Halloween, so it was a lot of fun. We moved Kfo to the burbs of DC, she's so grown up!

El Salvador is really going to need to be its own entry, so I will get that up and running when I get back. That was in January.

Right now I am living with my brother in Paris for three months. He is taking intensive French classes, and I am volunteering in a patisserie/boulangerie in the 16th, it is so incredible! This is thanks to our friends the Schillis, who gave me the hook up. I am working underground with all four pastry chefs and a bread baker, and it ROCKS! I work four days a week when I can, meaning when no one is visiting me (my parents, christ and renie have all been), and I am learning so much! I will give more details later, but basically I wanted to just go off and do something crazy and learn a new skill now, while I can...I am starting my phd program at Stanford in the fall, so this is the time to do it!!

Muchas Cositas!

So it has been a long time since I have written anything! I can't believe how fast the time has been going by. Here is a quick recap of the past month:::

--My parents, Andy, Aunt Suz and Karl came to visit, it was wonderful. I got to show them my children (the crocs), and in doing so, one of them bit me! I still can't believe this is how they repay me. We had lunch with my Tico parents at the house, and I was mightily impressed with the Spanish skills of my gringo family. Even Mom, in French, had something to add. :)
We went to Volcan Arenal first, it was beautiful. We were able to see the lava spewing from the top while we sat in the thermal bath at the swim up bar, sipping banana daqueris. Awesome. From the breakfast room at the cabinas we could also see the tip, although later in the day it got its little sombrerito, its little cloud halo.
After Arenal we drove around the lake all the way back to Monteverde. It was all dirt, very slow going on windy roads. But beautiful! After about 4 hours of driving, we arrived to Montevede, which is about 19k from Arenal. But it isn't possible to go the short way. Monteverde was awesome, as always. Although I told my family to bring tons of raingear, expect downpours at any moment, etc, it was incredibly sunny and hot. A very different place without the moisture. We were able to see howlers, tons of birds, and Mom saw a fox!
Afterwards, we went to Playa Conchal, in Guanacaste. The beach is not sand, it's all shells. It's in this little lagoony, area, so there aren't big waves and it is perfect to swim around in, and there were tons of fish. The perfect place for Suz and Karl to don their hats and just talk while floating around in the water.
When we got back to Atenas, we had to prepare for Mom, Suz and Andy to leave the next day. I of course got sick and couldn't even say goodbye to them, but when I recovered, Karl, Dad and I still had a few days to hang out together. It wasn't quite enough time to get to Nicaragua or to Torguguero, so we opted to just stay near to Atenas and find little things to do. One day we went on a Rainforest tram in the National Park Braulio Carrillo, which was beautiful. It is a private park where they didn't build paths, they built a little ski-lift type thing so that you can see the forest from the canopy and not from below. It was very beautiful, we saw lots of monkeys and cool trees and plants, which I think are cooler than the mammals. We also spent a day wandering around SJ, and when it started pouring we had a cafe and a lunch in the Grand Hotel, which is very European, facing the National Theater.

--I went to Puerto Viejo with my friends Noelle (roommate, actually), Steven (prounced "Esmit" in Spanish) and William (who from now on will be referred to as Bentley). This was also a great trip. We left Atenas at 4am and were on the beach in Cahuita at 10, after having found a little $4/night hotel near the beach. We swam, lay in the shade, got slammed by waves while body surfing, had cervezas, ate, played cards and watched a bunch of old reggae guys play in a bar. The next day we went to Pt Viejo and rented vespas!!!! The roads have tons of potholes, and although we were cautioned to go slowly, I was on Bentley's vespa and we went crazy fast everywhere. We drove all around, spending all of our beach time at Punta Uva, an amazing little beach south of Pt Viejo. We played in the waves and swam all day, except for driving our vespas down the coast more to Manzanilla and then to have lunch at this tiny place unknown to tourists. It was so good, run by a dad and his daughter, and there were only 3 tables; they had to make another one for us using logs and a piece of plywood and a tablecloth! We drank starfruit juice and had fresh fish for about $3. it was perfect.

--I have just been hanging out in Atenas other than that, I really love it here! Noelle and Steven left, followed by Bentley. But we had a lot of fun, especially when Bentley's mom was here and I went all around with them, to Grecia and to dinner, and we also just hung out up at their pool. I went one day to a little town of Los Angeles to spend the holiday of the Virgen of Los Angeles with my tico family's family, and another day I went to San Carlos to see a biological reserve where they are going to start having volunteers. They rescue animals and help them get back on their feet and then release them back into the wild. So, it is there that I saw a puma, tapir, ocelot, and jaguar. Very beautiful animals. Also, tons of cool birds, warthogs, and monkeys.
Last friday I went horseback riding the whole day. One of the guys I work with, Salvador (the other guy is Esteban) needed to survey the land that the university owns, so we got to get our horses all ready and go! We spent a lot of time galloping in the fields, I loved it. The vistas were so beautiful!!! The whole day was perfect, except when we went under a low hanging tree that apparently was a wasp's nest--I was stung all over my back and shoulders and when it first happened all I could think of was that acid was dripping on me. It hurt a lot. But, otherwise, perfect!!
I have been hanging out a lot with my novio and his family, they are incredible people. Here they use words like mother-in-law and daughter-in-law for boyfriends and girlfriends too, so I have been hanging out at my in-law's a lot. His sisters are great, one of them is 14 and is way cooler than I am, and his sister Marcela is so sweet and funny and we do a lot of cooking together.

I love it here!