Christmas in Philadelphia

Our dilemma for this winter ... should we go and celebrate Christmas with the family in Europe or with Ross and Rachel in Philadelphia? In the end the decision was not that difficult: Philly it would be - although with a little pain in our heart because we would have loved to see family and friends in Europe!

We took off on Wednesday the 17th of December - after a delay of 3 hours - at SFO, had an uneventful flight to PHL and took the train to downtown Philadelphia where Ross and Rachel picked us up and took us - via a slight detour by "the donkey" - to their home. Both Will and I were very happy to finally be able to visit them, a year almost after they came to see us in Ecuador!

The following days were not so pleasant for me: I had felt a blatter infection rearing its ugly head for a while now and there was no more escaping it ... But a friendly doctor, considerable doses of antibiotics, a lot of sleep, water & tlc got me up and smiling again in a couple of days.

Rachel and Ross introduced us to a bunch of their friends and colleagues (including a tour of Ross' lab), took us to a fun play / musical (Cherry Bomb: the Worst Act in Vaudeville for the Holidays), showed us some of Philly's prettiest sights and streets and dragged us to the Redding Terminal Market where we had our first pretzels (! And no, they're nothing like what you imagine them to be: small, hard and very salty, but the very opposite: freshly made, big, hearty, and slightly soft, to be eaten sweet - with sugar and cinnamon - or salty - with some kind of mustard or cheese dip; absolutely delicious!!!).

The other thing that Rachel introduced both Ross and me into was yoga! I took four beginners classes and really enjoyed the physical exercise, tried a headstand for the first time in about 20 years and - luckily - it wasn't all about new age witchcraft love and peace as I had feared it might be.

Before Christmas we had to go yummy-food-shopping. Gil (Ross' mum)'s Christmas present to Ross and Rachel was a cheque to go and buy Philly's best food, so we went to the farmers market to buy a duck, chestnuts, plenty of fruits and veggies, cheese and other delicacies ...

Christmas Eve was celebrated in the Moffat tradition with Chinese take away food, a visit to the donkey and midnight mass in a beautiful church with a great choir singing. The only deviation from this tradition - mainly instigated by Ross and secretly supported by me - was the opening of 1 Christmas present!

On Christmas Day, Will & I woke up to an abundance of presents brought by Santa (I still can't grasp which chimney he would have used to enter the place!). Subsequently, we could finally open those presents that had been tempting us under the little tree for about a week now! At 14.00 h, the four of us packed the duck and the rest of the food and walked over to John and Siobhan's house to celebrate Christmas with them and Bruce, one of Ross' colleagues. Needless to say we had a great dinner, followed by Siobhan's home made desserts and concluded the evening with the cute movie about a small robot Wall-E.

Our enjoyment of Philly culture further included:

• the eating of the traditional Philly cheese steak (tried the three varieties: Cheese Whiz, American cheese and Provolone!),
• admiring the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts (beautiful architecture!),
  
• a visit of the huge Philadelphia Museum of Art (amazing sunset that evening),
  
• the intriguing Mütter Museum or College of Physicians with its amazing collection of medical oddities, many of them on "strong water" and
  
• the Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

We spent our last evening in Philly in the company of Andre - who's birthday it was - and Clara having a great time playing cards and other games.

On the 31st, we had to get up painfully early and took a taxi to the airport where the plane had some delay in taking off due to a minor health related accident (one of our fellow passengers fainting ...). Will then went to work while I tried to defeat sleep by going food shopping with Andy & Steph. We had sushi for dinner and tried no stay awake as long as possible playing with Andy & Steph's Christmas present: a WII! A lot of fun, but to no avail ... We did not make it awake into the new year ...

We tried to make up for that the next day though by walking up Mount Davidson. Instead of the fireworks the previous night we were treated to a stunning view over Twin Peaks under a setting sun clouded in thick mist.

Some pictures ...

Early December

Caving

After our American caving career took off with the trip to the Lava Beds National Monument for Thanksgiving, Will and I went on another trip to a cute, little town surrounded by little lumps of gold and big trees: Volcano. Anyone interested in the trip report can check it out on the Spekul blog; it is written by John Tinsley who was our trip leader (yes, we have official trip leaders in the States!) that day. It was on the 6th of December which is "Sinterklaas" (to be translated by, but not to be confused with "Santa Claus") and one of the caves we visited that day was called - you'll never guess - Santa Claus ... because it happens to have a chimney! We also visited Mushroom Cave and Pearl Cave (very briefly) and had a nice dinner with the other guys @ Giannini's.

Oh and Will and I both got a GPS for Christmas, which arrived a bit earlier on the 5th of December so that we could already start experimenting with it on our Volcano trip ... ;-)

On the 12th (a Friday, so Will couldn't make it ...) Bruce and Pat (aka Pa & Ma Lava Beds) invited me to go sea cave mapping with them, Beej and Rich near the Cliff House and Sutro Baths in Northwestern San Francisco. The tide was extremely low that day, so a good opportunity to map some of the newly discovered sea caves the month before. We mapped one of them, but could not do the other one - baptised Brigadoon, alluding to the story/musical as well as to its sandy nature - due to the high level of sand. Winter storms should have taken the sands from the San Francisco shores to deposit it more to the South before bringing it back over the Summer, but a lack of storms this year (did anyone say something about climate change?) is filling up all the caves rather than freeing them.

The day after, we went to the SFBC Christmas party, which traditionally involves a pot luck dinner, gift exchange and auction and was not any different this time. Needless to say that we had a great meal involving turkey, ham, some great side dishes and home made beer. We had a lot of fun with the gift exchange game and collected loads of money for the grotto's bank account ... Will² graciously had us stay over at his place that night, gave us a tour of the Stanford campus the day after and introduced us to yummy dim sum.


The museum

The second week of December, I started working as a volunteer in the Hearst Museum for Anthropology and Archaeology. I had come across the museum website by chance and found out they were looking for volunteers, so I applied ... I'm working there three days a week now on three different collections. The museum has more than 3 million artefacts in store spread over four buildings and a lot of that material is still terra incognita ...

There's the North American Archaeological and Ethnographic Map Collection with old USGS (i.e. standard topographical maps from the US Geological Survey, with or without archaeological sites from previous surveys marked on them) and non-standard maps in it (i.e. maps that have been made for certain publications). Jonathan is in charge here and I (and other volunteers) help him with the cataloguing and making the inventory of the maps.

Natasha, who is Collections Manager for North America, needs assistance with the physical inventory of the California archaeological collections which means checking the object's name of record with the physical object, as well as verifying the storage location and archaeological site of the object. It's amazing to see how in geographically separated cultures like those of the Middle East and those of North America people came up with such similar tools!

One day a week, I'm also helping Paolo out. He's actually the only archaeologist working for the museum, the others are all anthropologists - although Natasha has worked as an archaeologist for years. He's in charge of the Archaeological Collection which contains material from all over the world. I got to inventory lithic material from some of the famous French Palaeolithic sites and pottery and stone tools from North Africa, but they have stuff from all over the world that has - in the past - somehow ended up at the museum one or the other way ...

Besides this, I've also been to one of their other storage units where I've helped with the relocation of an amazing collection of audio tapes from the early 20th century containing interviews with native Americans in languages that are now extinct and the unpacking, dusting and relocation of an enormous anthropological collection of basketry from the Far East dating to the first half of the 20th century. A lot to do there!

Other stuff

Before going to Philadelphia, we had a Christmas party at home with the house mates. Andy & Steph got us a real Christmas tree, Hilary & Taylor had the decorations, cats and dogs were dressed up properly, Hilary and Steph as well, we had a yummy meal together and a funny gift exchange in which a home made monster was bestowed upon us!

Picasa webalbum

Another week went by ...

Highlights of the past week were the arrival and assembly of our bikes (don't think I've ever had such a good bike as now - apart then from the purple and pink monster that was given to me for my communion when I was twelve ...) and the preliminary arrival of two Christmas presents: a naughty book-with-a-wink about Syrian lingerie and a bread machine! Bread is insanely expensive here and not necessarily that good of a quality, so I'm looking forward to baking my own bread again.

Last Saturday we spent quite some time trying to adjust the dérailleurs of Will's bike and then drove up Persia and down Avalon to the Mc Laren Park where we had a good view over the bay. Check out some pictures from our ride and of the house!

The Sunday - yet another incredible sunny November day with a sun still capable of causing minor sun burn - we had a pancake brunch at the house with Mike, Brendan and Jutta. Good company, yummie food! We dropped Mike and Brendan off at the Glen Park BART station as an excuse for a little walk and then went on a bit further and discovered the beautiful Glen Park Canyon!

Yesterday evening then was the last Tuesday of the month, which meant another SFBC meeting. The annual grotto elections were held with all positions filled unanimously, something unheard of at Spekul ... ;-) No bitter election campaigns, heated discussions or people voting against. It was a painless affair and very quick, no time to get bored! ;-)

We were all looking forward to this month’s program which sounded very promising. Dave DesMarais of NASA Ames gave a very interesting talk about “Exploring Mars for Evidence of Habitable Environments and Life”. The majority of those present seemed already rather well informed about the Mars expeditions, but for me it was an introduction into a whole new world. He mainly talked about the Mars Rovers who were sent there to gather information about the past and present climate and gather evidence on the (past)(non-) presence of water and possibilities for sustaining life on Mars. He showed a cool animation showing the take off of the space shuttle, the landing on Mars (very bumpy with bounces more than a 100 m high, but a cushion of air bags protected the shell that contained the Rover!), the unfolding of the Rovers (think transformers!) and the start of their voyage. Check Wikipedia or YouTube for some more info or a cool animation!

Tomorrow morning we'll leave for our first caving trip to the Lava Beds National Monument. Looking forward to that!

About a birthday, amazing weather and how to throw the perfect barbecue!

This Saturday Andy - our house mate - celebrated his 27th birthday. Good weather had been announced so Taylor saw an opportunity there to suggest a barbecue to celebrate the event. All of us did some last minute shopping ... mostly groceries and a lot of booze (as in a big bottle of rum, coke and lime to make Cuba Libre and a (large!) keg of beer!) and ice. But Andy also wanted a special piece of grilling equipment allowing you to shove a can of beer into the chicken's a*!# which indeed makes the grilled chicken very juicy! It was a cool party with lots of sun, very nice people, great food and an introduction for us into beer pong! Check here for a couple of pictures.

Sunday was yet another sunny day (thanks to East wind blowing desert air over SF). Will and I took advantage of it by going for brunch with Lukas, one of Will's geeky friends. In the afternoon we had a visit from Mohammad - who moved last year from Belgium to San Jose a bit to the South of SF - and spent some time with him in our backyard enjoying the sun, ice cream and apple juice. The day was concluded with two episodes of the original Star Wars movies ... Taylor had managed through Craigslist to lay hands upon four or more boxes full of VHS tapes! ;-)

Other notable events of the past week include us hosting our first dinner at the house, discovering the public pool two minutes walking from the house, me attending my first dancing class and registering for City College only to find out after that that I'll have to pay as much here to attend one class for six months as in Belgium for all of my classes for an entire academic year!

Oh yes, and we've met up with the cavers on the other side of the Bay from the Diablo Grotto. They're a nice bunch as well and their meetings are easily reachable by BART and somewhat less formal than those of the SFBC (although I don't mind the formality that much and they seem to have interesting talks at the SFBC meetings; about some kind of Mars research next time!) We've also managed to sign up for the Thanksgiving Lava Beds trip from November 27-30th! Our first appointment with actual "caves"!

The week that the US elected a new president (in a nutshell)

Last week Will and I did some touristy stuff. Went for a ride with the cable cars and a romantic walk at Embarcadero last Tuesday (at night this time, therefore romantic ... ;-), but also cause we went for pizza after that). Thursday evening we visited SF MOMA, the Museum of Modern Arts. They have an impressive collection of photos, some famous works of art and a very cool Jacob's Ladder in the main hall! On Friday then, we visited the California Academy of Sciences and were sufficiently impressed! Something to write on your to do list for those who plan to visit SF at some point! Check out the caimans and go and have a look at our Picasa webalbum!

Saturday then was the big day. We were finally moving out of the Gaylord Suites and into our new home at Balboa Park (in pouring rain! Something apparently rather exceptional for here ...). Our housemates: Hilary & Taylor, Stephany & Andy and Oscar; the cats: Goose & Cin Jin; the dog: Chinook. You can check out the street view with Google Maps, it's the brown house, somewhat hidden by the car and the tree, with stairs going up to the front door and with the blue house on the left.

Saturday evening we were invited to Jeff's (one of Will's colleagues) BD party. I really enjoyed that party: great food, great people and a very relaxed atmosphere! The only drawback was the wading through the puddles to get to Jeff's place. California's definitely not used to dealing with rain!

The Sunday Will and I set a record! We spent almost the entire day in IKEA looking for a bed & mattress, (computer)table & chair, bookshelves and minor items. Came back with heavy bags and were treated to a bbq by our housemates! ;-) That was very cool!

Monday was dangerously-leaning-out-of-the-window room cleaning day

Tuesday - apart from being that historic day when the US elected their first African American president (what a relief ...) - Ikea delivered our furniture and we went to the SFCB's vertical practice (including bbq and lots of yummy desserts!) Check out a very cool pic of Hilary celebrating Obama's vistory (and some others)!

Wednesday UPS finally brought our stuff that came from Belgium after messing up the previous day and - o joy - that evening we slept for the first time in - eeuh - more than a month in our own bed! :-)

And yesterday evening we went to a concert of Natacha Atlas. Despite rumours about her being notorious for cancelling concerts she did show up, and did so in style and accompanied by great musicians! Both Will and I enjoyed the concert a lot!

Meet the cavers!

Tuesday evening, Will and I met the local cavers and they seem to be a nice bunch!

Unlike our cosy weekly meetings with Spekul, SFCB (San Francisco Bay Chapter Grotto) members only meet every fourth Tuesday of the month. Admittedly, they seem to live much more geographically separated. For us, getting to the meeting took us an hour and 20 minutes by public transport!

We met them first at a pre-meeting dinner in a hamburger restaurant. Arriving at the restaurant we saw a huge table of young guys sitting all together, while none of the other folks looked, behaved or were present in numbers that would suit a thriving caving club. After some debating (we felt a bit intimidated, especially because there were no seats left around the table) we did go in and ask the group if they were the cavers. They turned out to be a football team ... Pfwieuw ...

The cavers we found hidden in a more secluded area of the restaurant and as in Europe, they turned out to be of all ages, some of them looking somewhat gruffy, an estimated 42 % of them female and all of them rather welcoming and very talkative ... ;-) Many people of the club seem to be (rather distinguished) geologists or other scientists, so we might learn a lot.

The meeting went well, although very different from what I'm used to at Spekul; so much more formal, but with a kind a humour that felt very familiar ... ;-) I've tried to sign up for a caving weekend for 7-11/11,- that is - if they have an opening ... They seem to have limits on how many people can go on a trip and also seem to insist on having a trip leader, a job which not too many people seem to want or can take upon them ... (first impressions ...) Will wouldn't be able to come that weekend since he "volunteered" to go to work that Saturday; they'll have a "hack day" at Metaweb or something the like ...

Yesterday, Will and I had a fun and very relaxed evening. We met after work to take a ride on the cable cars, went to Embarcadero - which luckily wasn't as touristy as during the day - paid another little visit to our friends the sea lions, had a nice view of the lights of SF, went to a book store and took the cable car back getting of at a small Italian restaurant where we had a late dinner.

Tonight we plan to visit the SF MOMA (Museum of Modern Arts, they're open almost until 21.00 h on Thursdays) and on Friday we'll give the California Academy of Sciences another try. Hope there won't be such a crowd on a weekday as last Sunday. On Saturday then, we'll finally be moving out of the Gaylord suites and into the house at Balboa Park! Looking forward to that!