Hi everyone!

Sorry for the lack of updates lately.  It’s partially for the lack of doing anything.  I’ve just been doing random things to get ready for school like cleaning, organizing, sleeping (got to get ahead in that sleeping because I’ll be deprived come the school year!).

One thing that I did discover that I absolutely LOVE is Singapore Vegetarian restaurant in Chinatown.  To steal from Rachel Ray, yummers!!  I have some pictures inside the restaurant that I’ll put up when I get home.
I’ve been riding my bike a lot lately which is really nice!  I found a great route that is easy & pretty unpopulated in regards to vehicles.  It’s very lovely.  However the other day someone took advantage of my basket and put their water bottle in it.

Hello sunshines!! So I got back from my trip home yesterday.  This is my funny story from my bus trip back:

(I get on the bus in Sunbury, the first stop. At the next stop, Shamokin (a town highly inhabited by coal miners, also where the whaleback geological formation is, and where my dad grew up), a girl gets on and sits behind me.  About an hour later at the Shenandoah stop another girl gets on and sits across from me.)

Shenendoah girl (with strong english accent):  Where are you heading?

me: Philly, how about you?

Shen. girl: Philly too!!

me:  Cool! What are you doing there?

Shen girl:  Well I was visiting my cousins who were first visiting my home in the U.K. I’m staying in Philly a night and then flying out to Seattle.

Shamokin girl: Wow, your English is really good for being foreign!!

Shen girl:  I should hope so, I’m from England…

Shamokin girl: (very serious)  So where did you learn English?

That kept us amused for a while  : )

 

So my parents were down and we had a day in the city.  We did the Big Ben Bus tour and visited Eastern State Penitentary.  Pictures!

The first hospital in Philly.  Stay away from the statue because it’s made of lead. 

 

Ben Franklin Parkway:  Only 3 of the flags are out of order (the flags represent the 90 countries from which Philly gets most of it’s population): Poland, Vatican City, and Israel.   There’s a statue of Copernicus on the Parkway so they have the Polish flag next to him.  This statue is also ironically right next to a Catholic church, so next to Copernicus flies the Vatican City flag.  Then there is the first statue completed in remembrance of the Jewish people that were lost in the Holocaust so Israel’s flag is there. 

 

 

I thought this kid was kind of creepy. 

 

The chinese gate:

And from the tour of Eastern State:

Al Capone’s cell:

A normal citizens’ cell:

 

Mom and Dad on death row….

 

My mom and I:

This one amused me.  This lady went to prison for killing her husband & her card is marked widow for marital status.  Obvi. 

And lastly, my niece from my time home:

a self portrait

And remember last post when two of her hermit crabs past from fighting each other?  Well here’s Rainbow, her first hermit crab.  Haley picks it up and it comes out of it’s shell all flailing it’s legs and Haley just smiles and goes, “Beautiful.”  Her brothers are also afraid of it so she chases them with it and the younger one runs screaming, ‘A crap! A crap!” because he can’t say his b’s yet. 

Hi everyone!  So I have a VERY exciting day planned for tomorrow!  My mom and dad are coming down!!  We’re going to do the Big Bus tour & go to Eastern State Penn for a tour.  It should be really fun.

Then I’m going home with them for a few days & will be back sometime next week.

And for some good news on the academic front:  I am not graduating on time.  This will allow me to finish my honors program, take more geology classes, not have to take the GRE’s right now, and will let me take my senior year(s) nice and slow instead of cramming in too much.  However, this coming semester shall be interesting because I’m taking 3 Upper Level Geo classes and the Upper Level Physics class.  yikes!

Hi everyone!! So my nephew and niece came down for a week and I haven’t had time to shower properly let alone blog. So I have a lot of picture of our adventures & just some short captions. And these are in no order.

Chieftan Shikellamy at the Art Mumeum!! (my high school was named after Chief Shikellamy)

More Art Museum:

Some really crazy crab lives in here

The kids running up the stairs. Complained about walking the entire time, but dashing up the stairs.

Mikey’s scenic picture

Haley hustling up the stairs. I told her whoever got up them first got one extra token at Chuck E. Cheese.

Rocky!

Oh Haley…

Mike took this picture

Sparkles the hermit crabs grave

Having a good sit at the park

Haley at Logan Square

Kids playing at game piece park (i don’t think it’s the name, that’s just what we call it)

Chuck E Cheese!! (by the way, my nephew hasn’t stopped talking about him)

WAGNER MUSEUM!! This is where I lovvvvve to go!! It’s all geology and wonderful! Haley loved the skeletons…especially the buffalo.

At the zoo getting sugar back in the girl.

Philly Flavors

Oh this girl!  These two pictures were after each other and cracks me up!

She found my gloves and asked me what they were for.  I told her cleaning & this is what I found in my kitchen a few minutes later.

Going into circulation 2009

Haley just LOVES the Liberty Bell!

Hanging at Temple!

Hooter having a banana with us

Lunch at the beach.  We recreate Disney movies.

I think this is the cutest picture of Haley ever!  She’s smiling at her brother riding the swing ride!!

Rollercoaster (of Love!! hey stover!)

beach faces

This is Jake, the baby nephew, from the Sunbury fireworks.

Abby, the baby niece, taking a tumble.

Wow.  The end.

This fourth of July was the best!!  Last year it was raining and miserable and this year was the same but it was great!!

Here’s Betsy Ross & Ben Franklin together.  They’re getting married.  It’s so sweet!!

This dragon….there was someone inside it!!!  They had such good balance!

And then there was a recycle truck.  That’s only exciting because Morris and i just went to get a recycle bin.  It was funny because everyone was telling us where to go even though they didn’t know what we were there for.  I guess it was obvious  : )

& here’s Mayor Nutter…the same one I saw at Whole Foods getting a chocolate chip cake with his security.  He was so funny during the concerts!! The camera’s would randomly go to him and he’d just be rocking out all Michael Nutter style.  That’s why I stayed out in the rain.

& John Legend!!!  Now there’s a few other funny things to mention about John Legend.  First, the announcer from abc6 called him “John Legend” and the same announcer also went “Ooooohh!!” when the other mentioned the fireworks…as if he had forgotten!!  And then during John Legend’s performance he pulled someone up from the crowd to dance with him.  She was one lucky lady!

And then there were fireworks.  Today was also rather exciting.  Next week I’m bringing my nephew and niece down for their vacation and I was cleaning.  Not so exciting right?  But I found a tick on little Leonidas!!  It was so scary.  As for now, the tick is off and being preserved in case Leonidas does get sick.  Hopefully nothing does!!

And lastly, a special birthday shout out to Kristen!  Happy b-day girlie!!

Morris just brought me some home from the Pretzel Factory.  And they’re the size of my forearm.  Yummy!!

And I cannot wait!!  I’m two finals and one quiz away…and 3 classes.  And one of the finals is for my online class and it’s almost done, it’s such a refreshing feeling.  Here’s a quote from my one essay that I think is really thoughtful: “And in a sense, America is dying from within, because they forgot the instructions on how to live on earth.”  This was said by a Hopi elder.  Yep…

So to kind of tag along on Cory’s blog a little bit ago, I love having a bike in Philly!!!  Remember a few months ago when I got Sunshine Kimberly? Yeah, well, we had some rough spots but now we’re best friends.  Right now I have a flat though so I’m driving and I dislike it a lot.

So one think I’m looking forward to doing is pretzel run.  It takes place every Tuesday at midnight.  A lot of bikers go to the Art Museum and then bike to the Pretzel Factory in south Philly and boy do I love my pretzels!!!  I think I mentioned this before, but I figured it was a good plug to being kind to the earth and to ride your bike.  
Take care everyone!!

Hi everyone!! So I have A LOT to update about.  A lot.  So to get it all out there, I’m just going to post pictures with some notes.  And I’m watching something about the creation of the earth, and oh boy do I love geologic processes!!

Okay, to get started.  Michael’s birthday was two weekends ago…here’s some pictures:

The b-day boy

Group shot of a few of the kids.  I really like the girl peeking out from behind her dad.

Haley (left, my niece) and her friend Emily (the sister of Alez, Michael’s bf4e)

The puppies first swim!!!

Who is that fine women macking on me??  (it’s my mom!!! and she would kill me if she saw this up here!!)

Jake and Abbie, the babies:

I’m sorry I forgot to rotate that one!!!

In line for the train!  This was the dogs first ride, and Xerces wasn’t having it.  Leonidas however kept moving his head around so he could see where we were going!

I just have to throw this in.  There was a commercial on the show I’m watching and it’s like “It can tell us about the first humans in America.  It’s highly explosive.” and then some other thing and I was like “Coprolites!!!” (which technically isn’t right because that means that this material is fossilized and it’s not always most useful in the fossilized state, I just figured that was the most polite way to put it), and i was right!!  I’m such a science nerd  : )

And lastly, Haley and her grill.  And this was like, 10:15 p.m., we had arrived at 10:00 a.m.  I was exhausted.  She wasn’t.

And then there were two culture festivals at Penn’s Landing this last weekend.  The first was Asian Festival and then Irish Festival, just perfect for Morris and I!!

Not muh buckit!!!

Kind of look similar, yes??  Anyway, if you like the lolrus, here’s more:  http://icanhascheezburger.com/category/lolrus/

Start on the last page.  It will make more sense.

Irish festival, in case you couldn’t tell from the kilt and the green.

Irish monument:

The end.  Enjoy!!

Hi everyone, i just want to apologize for not updating more often.  This last weekend I had two friends pass away and I just haven’t been in the mood to be all “look at how wonderful my life is!”  I’ll update possibly next week.

Thanks for understanding.

Hi everyone!!! So I’ve been a little MIA lately. Sorry. Like any studious college kid, I’ve been focusing on my classes. And it’s paid off nicely. I just got my first calculus II test back and I got a 104%!!

So last weekend I was a very busy little lady. There was a big event down at Penn’s Landing called ArtStarCraftBazaar and Morris and I went there. It was so hipster and great. Basically the story is a graduate of Tyler School of Art (part of Temple) found there really wasn’t much availability for artists to sell their art in the area. So she and another Tyler Alum started this annual event. So here’s some pictures!!

And look who made an appearance!!!

My oh my!!

And then a boat with Camden in the back (it was also boat safety day):

and then Center City from Penn’s Landing:

And that weekend was also my former roommate’s birthday.!! We decided to go out to McFaddens, which is kind of just down the street from where I am now.

We got all the roommates from sophomore year back for a picture that evening. This is our serious picture:

And then the not-so-serious picture:

And before leaving for the evening Laura, my roommate, and I decided to do the Electric Slide. I didn’t quite remember how it went. Yikes!!

And that’s it for last weekend! This weekend I have a friends graduation party and I’ll update on that and more later!!!