Emily and Mitchell in the USA

 This weekend we went to LA to visit the Academy Museum. This is a museum dedicated to Hollywood and the Oscars and had all sorts of exhibits. The reason the group wanted to go was because of a Miyazaki exhibit, the person who made a lot of Ghibli films, which is like the Japanese Disney.  To prepare, we had a movie night during the week at Susan's where we watched Spirited Away which is the Ghibli film which was nominated for an Oscar (and Susan hadn't seen it). We got some Mexican food and some snacks and had a nice evening.  On Saturday, Susan and AJ picked us up and we met Andrea and Christian at the museum. The first stop though, was lunch! The museum had a cafe and we got some tasty food and sat around a very fancy table in an area which had been decorated in a 1920s style. The lamp display outside Then it was into the museum. The Miyazaki exhibit was very pretty with lights on the walls, an illuminated tree and original artwork on display. Unfortunately, we weren't...

Hello! This weekend we went for our smallest big adventure yet! I had decided that this weekend was probably one of the last viable weekends to go and visit Death Valley properly, before it got too hot to do any more than drive around in an air conditioned car. It is the hottest recorded place on Earth, having reached 56c in 1912 and regularly reaching 45c+ in the summer. So, this weekend we packed up our stuff and were out the door at 6:45am Saturday morning. It took just over three and a half hours to get there as the roads were pretty empty at that time. By about half way, we'd left behind the freeway and were driving through long desert roads, watching the mountains get bigger and bigger. We even saw some Joshua Trees on the way! Our first stop was at the campsite. It was pretty rustic, but it had flushing toilets and drinking water, so it suited our needs. It was first come first served which was a bit scary as we'd travelled so far, but there was plenty of room and we set...

On Saturday, we went for a group hike. Quynh had told Mitchell about it, but hadn't said anything about it other than where it was. It was on the other side of LA so we were hoping it would be worth the hour and a half drive there. Susan picked us up early and we arrived at the trailhead around 10:30am.  We started the trail and there were signs leading the way, but they quickly stopped and we were left with a fork in the trail and no directions! We picked a side, but it turned out that this was the wrong one as it was very steep and vanished when we got to a set of large boulders. By this point we'd already been going for 45 minutes, so we decided to press on and find a way over the boulders to reconnect with the trail. We clambered over some and jumped some crevices and finally made it back onto the trail we wanted.  When we were nearing the end, the trail vanished again, and we were left wandering around trying to find the cave which was the final destination. We couldn'...

This weekend we took the car to be serviced before I started work, to make sure she'll be reliable for my first weeks and beyond. While we waited, we went out for breakfast at a new place in the town centre. It was very pretty inside, with big windows and they are very into their coffee. Neither of us had the coffee (I had a chai latte and Mitchell an orange juice) but we did enjoy some tasty food.  We picked the car up (which was much cheaper than last time as all they replaced was a windscreen wiper) and then headed into Downtown Riverside for the Dickens festival.  This festival was run by the literary society and celebrated all things Victorian. There were people dressed up and running panels and Q&As as Jules Verne, Mary Shelley, Edgar Allen Poe, Jane Austen and more. There were also a lot of regular people who decided to dress up, just to attend. It was really fun seeing all the costumes and looking at the stalls selling clothes and hats.  We also visited the fo...