Trip post continues, Snow Shoeing!

This was my favorite of all the days. We were picked up by our guide, Helge, and as we walked out to his pick-up truck, we learned that it would only be Bree and I on the trip. We went to a bakery to pick up lunch. It was the same bakery we'd been to yesterday. Yet another place where Bree would have difficulty buying anything that didn't have some form of meat. However, we got the shop early enough that the girlwas still constructing sandwiches, so Bree could ask her to not put meat on one and just add an extra egg. Yet another bread and cheese lunch. I ended up ordering a shrimp sandwich. However, this post isn't about food, it's about the hike!

We drove a short 10 minutes up to a hill, strapped on our snow shoes


posed with the King crab Helge had in his truck (apparently he'd caught it the day before)


and headed directly into a field of snow.


There were lots of animal footprints to be seen. Fox, hare and bird. In the following photo (taken by Bree) you can see where a grouse was being chased and then took off into the air:


We trudged in the snow - it's tough work, like walking in really soft sand, even with the snow shoes.


Our guide told us about the tracks we were seeing as well as about the flora, such as the juniper that continues to grow and be green. Helge says that in the summer, he'll catch trout in the river and then smoke it with the juniper branches. I would love to try that.


Apparently, the fact that this tree has berries means that the winter is going to be mild - which it has. Last year this time we heard repeatedly that it never got above -30.


We hiked up to the Russian border:

The yellow post is the border. The fence is there to keep the reindeer in Norway.

We'd worked up quite a sweat and appetite, but then found that you immediately begin to freeze again, especially your fingers, so Bree improvised with her sandwich:



At the end of the trip, we enjoyed our dessert:

Note: I knit the hat and neck warmer I'm wearing :)

I forgot!

In taking my digital SLR to Norway I was reminded that I never uploaded the photos of my sister's car incident. Refresh your memory at the June 29th post "Ooops, She did it again!".

Remember, she forgot to set her parking brake. And then her car rolled down my parents driveway:



Where it was stopped by the fence leading to the pool:




My sister probably still has this attitude about me photographing it and then posting it, but I still think it's pretty damn funny...

Vote for Don!

My cousin Donovan is a finalist in a radio contest in Chicago to win a $27,000 wedding! If you head to Star 96.7 and click on "The 27,000 Dream Wedding Give Away" you can vote for one of the couples. The first couple Jessica and Donovan are the ones I think you should vote for ;)




Don is a great guy, gave the eulogies at both my grandparents funerals, is loving and caring, funny and thoughtful. Being that he grew up in Ohio and now lives in Phoenix (his fiance is from Chicago) and I grew up in Atlanta and now live in Russia, I haven't actually met his fiance, but to be with Don she must be wonderful.

My family and I would certainly appreciate a vote for them :)

Organic Groceries in Moscow

Here's the Moscow Times Article, but since that link may change at some point here are the addresses listed at the end. Placed on this blog not for my 5 readers (hi, y'all) but instead so that I don't lose them:

BIO Gourmet, 40/1 Ul. Ostozhenka, M. Park Kultury, 246-1128

Grunwald, 30/1 Rublyovskoe Shosse, 413-0565

Globus Gourmehttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gift has seven stores in Moscow, two of which are located at 22 Ul. Bolshaya Yakimanka, M. Polyanka, 995-2170 and 19 Novy Arbat, M. Arbatskaya, 775-0918. www.arivera.ru, 984-7400

Azbuka Vkusa, www.azbukavkusa.ru, 504-3487

Dzhagannat, 11 Kuznetsky Most, M. Kuznetsky Most 628-3580

Put K Sebe, 16 Krasnoproletarskaya Ul., M. Novoslobodskaya, 746-5347 and 6 Novokuznetskaya Ul., M. Novokuznetskaya, 951-9129

Organic Lab, 1 Tishinskaya Ploshad, M. Belorusskaya and 8 Novinsky Bulvar, Lotte Plaza, 617-0888, www.organiclab.ru

More on the Snow Hotel

Here's what all the igloos look like from the outside:



And here's a much better picture (thanks Bree!) of our bed:


And me and my reindeer friend:

We interupt these trip posts

For some randomness. I just had an amazingly easy interaction with SFUSD Payroll!! Amazing. My mom hasn't received my W-2, which is probably because I never changed my address with them and so I called. a) Someone actually answered b) she took the time to look for my W-2 and discovered, that yes, it'd been returned to them AND, here's the real kicker, c) she actually took the new address over the phone!! I hadn't changed it before because they had no on-line system and you actually had to physically mail in a paper to them. I couldn't handle it. I just kept forgetting to print out the form and then find a stamp. So hopefully my mom will soon be able to dictate my W-2 to me so I can request an extension so that I can get my foreign residency status and therefore won't have to pay taxes (on foreign income) again until I start earning more than $87,000 a year while abroad, not likely. But I wonder if that will delay the refund of what the government owes me from the taxes I paid out at SFUSD. Hrm...

Where were we... Dog Sledding!

Right, I have yet to tell you about dog sledding. We had another relaxing day of walking around the city (err, town) before heading off to dog sled. The idea was to do a night time sled and try to see the Northern (aka Polar) Lights. So we go all bundled up for being out in the cold


(At our favorite spot in the lounge)


(Note, I'm wearing 2 hats)

and were ready to be picked up at 5. Our driver, Michael (please pronounce every letter as he is German and pronounces it funny), arrives and tells us we don't need to be wearing our coats as it's an hour ride out into the Pasvik Valley. A rather terrifying hour as Micha seems to like to drive fast on the snowy roads. Yet we arrive in one piece. We put on warmer shoes


Felted booties inside felted boots. Very wooly warm.


and then we head out to the dog garden to harness our dogs. In total there were 6 of us, 4 tourists, Micha and his girlfriend Franny, our guides. Franny has already made the list of dog sledding teams. Each is a team of 6 dogs, two lead dogs in the front, the smarter dogs, two in the middle who "run like the hell" and I forget what the two in the back are for. The dogs are all chained to their individual dog houses


(note this picture is from earlier at the ice hotel in the day light, obviously)

So you walk to the appropriate dog, unchain them, hold them by the collar so they are standing on their hind legs and walk them to the sled. Holding them this way, they know you're in charge - yeah, right. You get them harnessed to the anchored sled and head off for your next dog. Bree and I got our own sled. Before we left we were given these instructions:

Here are the two brakes, one is the soft brake for slowing, this big metal bar is the hard brake for stopping. The metal bar has hooks on it you try to force into the ground.

Then we were given these rules:

Rule 1: Don't let go of the sled. Even if you fall hang on!
Rule 2: Don't forget rule 1.
Rule 3: Make sure the rope holding the dogs is always straight, if it's not you're moving faster than the dogs, so then use the soft brake.

And that was it. Then we were off. I was the first driver and it was a bit scary at first, but thankfully my training has a teacher has enabled me to be able to commit rules to memory. So when we rounded a corner and I fell I held onto the sled. As I was being dragged along on my knees, Bree yelling "You ok back there" I remembered to hang on. After controlling my laughter, because it was actually quite funny, I stood back up and was in control the rest of the time. I drove for about 30 minutes then had the relaxing job of riding in the sled as Bree brought us back home.

Things they don't mention in the brochure:

Before you start it's incredibly loud. All the dogs are barking "PICK ME! PICK ME!" and once they're on the sled you really have to make sure it's anchored so they don't run off without you.

It smells! ie Dogs can poop while running! And they do... a lot. So if you're riding in the sled it is smelly!

After the sledding we ended with yet another fish dinner in a long house. There's a long fire place in the middle. Good thing too because the wall looking over the river was only covered with plastic for the winter. Dinner was fresh pink trout. Delicious :)


Down to one hat now!


The long fire.

Novgorod Photos are up

Saint Sophia
Originally uploaded by Traveling Em

A few of them anyway. I've got Bree's photos on my computer but need to upload them to flickr. And I still owe you stories. But really, I have a lot of grading to do, so I'm actually going to work while at work.

Stay Tuned

Dog sledding, snow shoeing and the return to Russia all yet to come!

Snow Hotel

After our first day of walking around, we went to stay a night at the Kirkenes Snow Hotel.





Modeled after the one in Sweden, this is basically a bunch of small igloos all connected. Inside it's a constant temperature of around 4 degrees. We slept in heavy duty sleeping bags. I was actually hot at one point. And we ate a delicious meal of reindeer sausage, cod and salmon. We also shared an $80 bottle of wine. It was good, but not that good.



It was hard to get photos of the rooms because I don't have a wide angle lens, but here are a few photos for you.


This room was chosen by another couple. We picked the octopus room - basically octopus tentacles encircled our bed. But I could only manage a photo of its head

ok, that picture is quite terrible sorry. But that orange light was on all night, which means when you wake up at 4, you have no concept of time.

Here's the foot board.


In the morning we walked around and looked at the reindeer. They're short! I didn't expect that. But they're so cute. One followed me around :)




We took a sled from our hotel to the snow hotel and back in the morning. It was about a 20 minute journey. I'm not convinced that the sleds were any faster than walking.

Kirkenes!

Oh, Norway, how I love you. Let me count the ways:

Real Winter - ok, last year it was below 30 C all winter, and this year it's been more around -10, but that's still winter like.

You've been non-smoking in all indoor places for 4 years.

You make me think Moscow is cheap.

You're beautiful!

Your people are very friendly.

You have very accessible nature.

Even though it was incredibly expensive (we're talking $12 beer, $5 soda, $20-40 entrees, yes, I know, I'm always about the food), we had a great time in Kirkenes. We booked our entire trip - including the hotel in Murmansk - through Anne at Radius Kirkenes. And she was great about helping us when we had to cancel our shuttle after we found out about our visa restrictions.


Welcome to Kirkenes,


You're really far away from cities people have heard of.

On our first day we just walked around, like this guy, except maybe we're not so hip:


And we soaked in the sun,


Admired how cute town was:




We also went to the war museum, which in addition to information about WWII also included some modern art such as a dress made from shirt collars:


Kirkenes, being the last stop before Russia, was invaded by the Germans in 1941. Hitler thought he could bust right through and head into Russia and get to Murmansk. Murmansk was Russia's only port connection with allied supplies. Kirkenes was bombed over 300 times. The town was completely destroyed by Russian's bombing the Germans out. As the Germans left they burned anything that was left standing. Amazingly though, very few residents died thanks to shelter in Andersgrotta, their bombshelter:

Below ground it's huge inside.

Muransk

Well, it's been a great week. Bree (name slightly modified - though this is what her mom originally wanted to name her but her actual name has a bit more "oomph") and I are great travel partners! Although perhaps we encourage each other to drink a bit too much, we were always up early every day and off exploring.

We started the journey with a flight to Murmansk. This is the largest city in Russia (though maybe the world??) north of the Arctic Circle with just over 350,000 residents. Our flight was quite easy on an old Aeroflot plane. If you pushed an empty seat forward it fell flat. This was the source of much amusement to me. The flight from Moscow is just about 2 hours. Our bags arrived with us, everything was great. We waited in the snow for only 10 minutes, waiting for the bus that was parked only a few feet away. Ah, Russian systems. Of course, the people waiting for the bus have to stay out in the cold. Anyway, our bus ride was only $1.50 and in just under an hour we'd made it to our stop. It was a short, but uphill, walk to our hotel.

This is actually on our return to Murmansk, but you get the idea.

Also at the airport, me with Putin.

Once inside, we didn't want to venture out into the cold again, so we stayed in. We had a lovely dinner in the hotel actually with vodka, pickles, trout and salmon. The next day was exploring Murmansk. This is a cute port town. Parts of it reminded me of Oakland with the big port cranes, Monterey with parts that resembled Cannery Row and South San Francisco with the apartment buildings all close together. Another nice thing that we noticed was that there were many birds! I hadn't realized the absence of birds, other than pigeons and huge crows, in Moscow until we were surrounded by tweeting. It was really nice.




Lots more graffiti in Murmansk.


Alyosha, a WWII soldier looks over the city.

We only had half a day in Murmansk, but that felt like enough time. There's not really all that much to see there. So we headed back to the airport. Originally, the plan had been to take a shuttle bus into Kirkenes. However, our diplomatic visas restrict us to where we are allowed to leave and enter Russia. The border with Norway is not one of those places, however, the Murmansk airport is ok. So, we return to the airport only to find out that our flight has been canceled due to ice in the originating city and the airline is going to put us on a shuttle bus. We explain our visa situation and are assured that they'll call ahead to the border to explain. Sure enough, we get to the border and are only detained 10 minutes by the Russians. Amazing!

Plenty more photos in the Murmansk photo set

And we're off!

The college counselor and I leave tomorrow for our Arctic Circle adventure. We fly north to Murmansk, Russia tomorrow. Sunday we'll be heading to Kirkenes, Norway. We'll spend 5 nights in Norway. The agenda is dog sledding, snowshoeing, saunaing (wow, I can't believe spell check didn't highlight that one!!), reading and knitting. Hopefully we'll get to see the Northern Lights. We're back a week from Sunday. I'll let you know then :)

I've been playing with Google Maps. Click on the blue bubble to see the city names.


View Larger Map

Valentine's Day

I'm not so into the idea of Valentine's Day. In America, the past few years, I'd cooked a meal at home because I tend to hate prix fix menus (on holidays that is. I loved Pizzaiola's Fixed Monday menus, of course they've now canceled those). I've enjoyed the day a lot at school today though. Students were encouraged to wear red, white and/or pink and they did overwhelmingly. Maybe it's because it reminded me of my days teaching at O'C, but it was almost like the students were in uniform. And the grade 10s (of which I teach 3 classes) had the most students dressed to show spirit. This is huge as these students tend to be the least spirited as a group.

We also had a very fun assembly. Yes, a fun high school assembly. One of the student bands played so I was rocking out. Then I got to go up and recognize all my math students who one at our tournament. Then they hosted a mock "Dating Game." I don't remember if that was the name of the show, but it's where you have a male looking for a date and 3 female contestants that he asks questions to and then eliminates. Well, they did two games, one with a male and 3 females and then another with one female and 3 males. The later was by far the most amusing. The girl was a senior and after she was blindfolded the 3 male contestants who volunteered were all 9th and 10th graders. And these boys were hams! One of them was one of my students who drives me crazy in class, but this role was perfect for him. When asked to sing his favorite love song he got up and with great accompanying dance moves broke into "Baby Got Back." So funny! He was picked as the winner of the "date" and he walked up to the girl with the rose he was supposed to hand her between his teeth. So funny.

And now tonight, I'm heading down to the school cafeteria for an evening of dinner and choir music. Should be lovely.

So that's Valentine's Day in Moscow, year 1.

Math Team!

That's right, the geekiness never ends. I loved math team in High School. I never did all that well, but I still had a great time. So I jumped on the chance to help coach our team here. It was a huge learning curve for me, trying to be prepared for our extremely bright and fast students, but somehow we made it. This past weekend our school hosted the CEESA (Central & Eastern European School Association) Math Counts tournament. Teams came from Helsinki, Budapest, Bucharest, Sofia, Prague, Warsaw, and Kyiv.

There are two groups - junior level (9th and 10th grade) and senior level (11th and 12th). Each team consists of 3 members. Yes, only 3! It was quite a challenge here picking the 3. Especially since we hosted. So, what we did instead was submit our "official" 3 and then we submitted 1 unofficial junior team of 2 students and then another 3 unofficial teams in the senior level.

I'm so proud to say that our official teams took 1st place at both levels and the unofficial teams took 3rd place. It was a great weekend of math :)

Quiz Night

Our PTO hosted a Quiz Night. It was super fun! You had to reserve tables of 8 and the table I had been on fell apart at the last minute. However, at the very last minute (2 hours before starting time) a friend backed out and I got his spot. So I took it. I'm so glad I did. We had a blast. I love trivia of any kind, but especially team trivia. And this was so well run! They had a different style for each round all modeled after TV quiz shows. There was Jeopardy!, Wheel of Fortune, Price is Right, some British show, Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?, etc. There was also a "compete the song lyric round" where each table nominated someone to go up and sing. I was nominated by our table and out of 20 contests I ended up winning the whole round! I got really lucky. The first song was "New York, New York" and during the 2 rounds of singing it, I always got to finish the second line of a stanza. So I could work of context clues and rhyming to figure out my part. Once we were down to 8 or so contestants they changed the song to "American Pie." While I was at TIP for summer camp, I learned all the words to that song. It was fun!

Grocery Store Foibles

Did I spell foibles right? Is it even a word? Who knows, I obviously don't.

Anyway, I've been meaning to post random grocery/food buying stories for a while now and while I sit waiting for a student who has been absent and said she was coming to see me I'll add them here.

An alternative title for this post could have been the $60 shrimp. Yes, that's right, I went to the grocery store one day and thought I was going to pay $8 for a 1 kg (2.2 lb) bag of frozen shrimp. Not so terrible. While I was checking out, I noticed that the price suddenly jumped, but I was busy collecting all my groceries back in my basket to then later take to the lockers were my bags were to pack. The total was really high - about $90 - for what I had bought, however, my Russian is not good enough to go through the items and argue. It was only upon packing up the bags and looking at the receipt that I discovered that my $8 bag of shrimp was actually $60!!! I haven't been back to the store yet to see if I just looked at the wrong tag or if the price was listed per 100 grams. Nonetheless, I was pissed. But you can bet your ass, I will be enjoying every single one of those shrimp.

I have more foibles to add, but I fear if I don't post this now, I'll never get around to it.

Whoo Boy!

What a week! Report cards for the first semester were due and for the first time in my teaching career I didn't fail a single student! 2 got D-'s which at our school means they had roughly 50%, but still. And it's unclear whether another 2 (well, one of these two is also one of the D- two) will earn credit due to so many absences. But we'll see.

And then last night I threw a cocktail party! Yay, fun! I wish there was a BevMo or other such place to buy cheap booze here. As it was, I made a bunch of appetizers with some great help from friends and asked people to bring drinks. I would have rather offered a stocked bar, but oh well.

The first guests showed up early at 7:10 and the last left at 3:30 in the morning. Yes, me, up until 3:30!

Which reminds me I haven't updated in a while! Bad Traveling Em! Last weekend I had another true Russian dacha experience, this one in the winter. I work with a guy whose married to a Russian woman. Her family has this great dacha about an hour outside of Moscow. So my friend the college counselor, who I'm going on February break with, this guy and two of his Russian friends all went out to the dacha. When we arrived it was -2 inside the house. We immediately got the fire started and B and I worked on getting food ready. The guys went for drinking water from a spring and got to work on heating the sauna. At 1 a.m. after snacking and a liter of vodka, the sauna was ready. So we got naked and went to sweat in the dry heat and hit each other with Birch branches once you get really hot you run out and lay in the snow. It was great. They spoke nothing but Russian all weekend and I immersed even more. My understanding is getting better and better.

Discovery Week

In March, we'll take the 9th, 10th and 11th graders off on a "Discovery Week." There are a variety of different trips, led by many teachers. For example: golfing in Spain, Spanish immersion (you guessed it) also in Spain, college tour in the UK, trekking through Turkey, exploring Istanbul, a musical tour of Vienna, study/community service in Thailand, adventure in Croatia, etc. Teachers who were not leading trips had to rank their choices of places they'd like to chaperon just like the students had to rank their choices as well. However, the students have to pay, teachers don't. Well, my choices were 1. Thailand, 2. Croatia, 3. Turkey (the trekking one). I found out today I got my first choice! Durian here I come! Woo hoo!

And I'll get an idea of the weather in Thailand in March. In my head I'd like to move to Thailand because I love the food so much, but could I really handle the weather???

Getting out in the Snow

I woke up to the first snow of 2008, well since I've been back anyway. And I went out anyway. Another 2 teachers and I walked for an hour and a half to the Pushkin Art Museum, stopping by way of a lovely French bakery. And to be silly:

That's me on the left all bundled up...

Across from the Pushkin is Christ the Savior Cathedral, so we stopped in there first where they were having mass. It was amazing. The inside is incredibly painted, every wall is covered with saints and angles and such and then sine it was mass, there was singing as well, which just resonated so beautifully. Sigh.





We then went into the Pushkin side gallery and saw many great impressionist works up through a few modern pieces. Quite an impressive collection of French artists. We finished with a great, as always, lunch at Daikon, my favorite Asian restaurant here and took the metro home. Now I'm going to enjoy sitting on my couch watching the snow from inside the apartment!

Oh, and just for Mickey I also uploaded a bunch of my recent knitting photos. Actually, only the fingerless glove was made recently, the rest are old, I just finally got around to photographing them:

Ah, routine!

It's very nice to be back into a routine. After work yesterday, I headed over to another teacher's for yummy shared dinner (leftover spicy pork curry and dal from my freezer, basmati rice and mung beans from their kitchen) and then craft night. I sewed in all the ends on the fingerless gloves I made, picture coming as soon as I decided to sit down in front of my home computer again, and worked on another set. And then I came home and slept straight through the night from 9:30 until 5:45. Ah, sleep, I love you.

So now, I'm feeling less anxious about being in Moscow, in case you were worried. And I'm excited to hear where all the other teachers are headed after they went to the job fair in Thailand over the break, thus far: Johannesburg, South Africa; Tunisia; Kobe, Japan; Myanmar (former Burma) and Shanghai! Makes me excited for my opportunity to head off and explore other possibilities. However, professionally it's a really good idea for me to stay here 3 years, so as always, stay tuned as I change my mind another 50,000 times.

Moscow: Love and Hate

Last night was rough. I was up from 12:30 until 4:30 contemplating what I'm doing in this city. Listening to the construction/traffic noise, smelling the air because I was too hot to sleep and therefore had the window open. Feeling very unsettled, needlessly and foolishly, because I am very settled here.

And then I came back to work this morning. I worked out and headed to the locker room to shower. On the way I was stopped by two of my students, both wishing me happy new year. Post shower, three more. And then a student came by my room. She is from Kenya and didn't get to go home as anticipated over break due to the political unrest there. She stayed in Moscow with -20 temperatures and said that she only really went out on Sundays to go to church. And she had come to apologize for not being able to get me an ink stamp from Kenya. The students here are so amazing. I'm constantly blown away and reminded that I love my job.

Now to figure out what I'm teaching today...

In the twists of my mind

As always, my mind continues to flip flop. Never shutting up. I'm so torn between wanting to share my life with someone (is there such thing as a marriage clock that ticks away in people like the biological clock?) and wanting to continue to travel. And wondering if I'll be able to combine those two things or if at some point I'll have to give one up.

Post turning 18, I've never lived in the same city for more than 3 years, unless you count college, and well, even if you do count college, those 3 or 4 year spans have been dotted with long periods of travel.

And now being part of international schools, I can continue the life style, traveling at will, moving every 2 or 3 years and being well compensated for it. But I really want someone to share it with. I miss having an intimate connection to someone. And I see many single women at my school my age or older and I don't want that. I don't want to continue on this path solo. But is there any point even worrying about this right now? Of course not - I'll be in Moscow until June of 2009 at least. Why won't my head just turn off and let things happen rather than constantly trying to envision the future, visions which are always wrong anyway.

In Houston, I had the feeling that I could settle right back into life there. But how long could I happily stay there - especially when the heat and humidity returns? At times, I think of how nice it would be to finally have the vegetable/herb garden I long for, but would I really stick around in the summers to tend to it, or would I be off somewhere?

That's what's got me up at 4:30 in the morning since I've returned to Moscow. That and stupid jet lag.

Howdy, y'all Part 3

People either love or hate Houston. Personally, I love it, well, except for the weather. Although the weather in winter time is right near perfect. Yesterday, I went on a walk with my aunt. I was wearing shorts and a tank top. About halfway into our walk it started raining on us and it was still enjoyable to be walking in the rain. I had stayed over night at my aunt and uncles, was awaked at 8 by the patter of little feet in front of the door and the sound of whispers asking each other if I was awake yet.

I emerged and was immediately set upon by my cousins. I must admit, they're terrible cute. I spent the morning with them and the aforementioned walk with my aunt. I wish I could get my parents to start exercising. I sure would enjoy going on walks with them. According to my aunt my mom has never really been into fitness.

I once again got to hear about what a terror I was in my youth. I refused to sleep anywhere but my parents' bed until I was 3 - how my sister was ever conceived remains a mystery to this day. And apparently I loved those canisters of Cheeto Balls. In case you're curious I was finally bribed into my own bed by being told that if I didn't sleep there Santa wouldn't know where to find me. What?! No presents? Sign me up for my own bed.

I had the pleasure of hanging out with many of my college buddies yesterday afternoon/evening. They all own their own houses, all of the houses are beautiful. Well, I'm just assuming Phil's is because he lives in Dallas so I haven't yet seen it, but it must be great. It's always such a pleasure to see them. It's so easy to slip back into the rythym of being friends with them. Actually, I find this to be true with all my friends across the world. I was commenting with RebeccaT last night that I must bring this out in people since it always seems to happen with me. She agreed that it's because I know that even though I live somewhere else, I haven't changed and don't act like my friends must have changed even thoguh I've been gone.

Seeing all of them so nicely settled, makes me yearn a bit to be settled myself. I could easily slip back into life here, but would I end up going crazy? At some point I'll have to figure something out. My California teaching credential will expire in 4 more years and I'll have to get a permanent credential from some state. I also want to get my masters in math, something I don't want to do online. So there you go, a wrap up of the last few days and hint of the rattling in my brain.

Howdy, y'all Part 2

After leaving Biloxi it should have been a quick 6 hour trip to H-town. However, we didn't leave until almost 11. Check out took a while because my mom regailed the front desk girl with the horror story of our dinner in the casino's steak house the night before. "Let me s'plain, no, that will take to long, let me sum up:" We were one of 5 tables in the restaurant, yet we still had to wait 45 minutes for our salads. That was the highlight. However, due to mom's expert storytelling, for our return trip on Monday we were upgraded to suites and given a $50 casino credit.

"Oooh, Antique Village Exit 10!" Mom exclaims. Dad and I give each other a knowing look, this could be trouble. And indeed, it was a "town", term used very loosely, very similar to Waynesville, Ohio, where my parents antique store is located. It was a main street lined with antique stores, my mom's own little paradise. I managed to make it through 4 antique stores and actually managed to pick up 2 skirts and a funky denim jacket. However, really, I was looking for books. I learned in the many roadtrips of my youth that antique stores are the cheapest place for used books. And they tend to range from literature to cookbooks but mostly consist of pulp fiction, perfect for road trips. However, these stores seemed to be more high class, nary a book insight. It wasn't until the 4th store that I found a meager selection of books. However, books found I was able to pick up a few for $1.50 and head to the car to read it). Dad threw in the towel after the second store, he went to the car to nap. Mom made it through all 6 and 2.5 hours later we were on the road again for the 15 minutes it took us to stop for lunch of delicious Lousianna gumbo and raw oysters.

Finally, 9 hours later, at 8 pm we pull into my aunt's drive way. Where the cousins yell out "Aunt Margie, Aunt Margie" my dad walks in to a very cute "Hi, Uncle Joe!" and they sort of look at me. Maybe I need to visit more. However, by the end of our meal (my aunt cooked, it was delicious) my cousins had warmed up to me and vice versa.

Howdy, y'all Part 1

Two days ago I left for Houston via roadtrip from Atlanta with my parents. I bought them Roadfood a great book of road side diners when I was in SF. We tried one out along our way, Martin's Restaurant in Montgomery, Alabama.

Reasons I loved Martin's:
1. We had to wait for a table, but not long enough to be annoyed
2. Each day the menu has only 4 entrees for you to choose from and about 8 side dishes
3. The sides included all my southern favorites - blackeyed peas or lima beans (depending on the day), greens, dressing (stuffing), string beans, cole slaw, etc
4. The crowd was truly diverse, some in suits, some in jeans, some old (we're talking no teeth old), and I'd say it was equally split between black and white folks.
5. It's in a strip mall, but the second you step inside you feel as though you've stumbled into a deep south cafeteria.
6. The coconut cream pie slice was as big as my head.

Our journey for the day continued on to Biloxi, Mississippi. I'd never actually been to Biloxi; most of my five readers have probably never heard of it either. It is a casino town in the little tail of Mississippi that touches the gulf between Alabama and Lousianna.



On my many drives between Houston and Atlanta I never bothered to stop in Biloxi. When I would stop halfway, it would be in New Orleans. See, Biloxi is a casino town and I have absolutely no desire to gamble. However, my parents, well, odds are if you come to my parents house you'll find my dad watching poker tournaments on tv. He really enjoys playing. He rarely wins very much, but (to the best of my knowlege) he doesn't lose very much either. My mom claims to not like casinos or gambling. However, once at a casino, odds are you'll find her at a video poker machine. In fact my sister was able to give me the exact location of where I could find my mom in the Grand Casino based on previous trips with them. Mom tends to win, I'm not sure how she beats the casino odds, but she does.

Biloxi was destroyed, like most of the gulf cities in Hurricane Katrina. However, they seem to be staging quite a come back. To me hurricane damage was most notable in trees that have been obviously torn in half. A few roofs still have blue tarps on top, but mostly both homes and casinos have been rebuilt.

As I said before I don't like to gamble, and unlike my mom, I mean it. However, I'll admit that I enjoy staying in a hotel - the Grand was no exception. They have a great, albeit small, fitness center and a really nice sauna/steam room with hot tubs and a cold plunge. And the chair in my room that I sat and read in was quite nice as well.