Emily and Mitchell in the USA

This weekend we did some solo adventures for once! We started together, we were looking at buying me a second hand bike so that I can come cycling, and found one in Target for 50% off! So I now have a shiny new bike and helmet, ready for adventures.  Later that afternoon, Susan picked me up (Mitchell stayed home and went to improv) and we went for a trip to the mountains. We started with a short hike to heart rock. I'd wanted to visit this last year, but as you may remember, our camping trip to Lake Arrowhead was cancelled because of the fire risk, and we couldn't go. So this time I got to do the one mile trek through the trees to find the little waterfall where the water had carved a heart shape hole into the rock below. It was a nice hike and we got some fun group pictures. This is called the owl pose Can you see the heart? After this, we went to the lake nearby (not Lake Arrowhead, another one) for the lantern festival. It was very misty up in the mountains that evening and ...

This week marks one whole year since we arrived! One whole year of adventures and one whole year of blog posts too.  On Tuesday we went to the mall pick up a T-shirt we'd got Andrea for her birthday. As we were close by, we went to get dinner at Tofu House, a place we'd been to before with the lab. I ordered the kimchi soup again and it came out still bubbling it was so hot! It was very tasty (if spicy) so we had to go get frozen yoghurt afterwards. The nice place by our apartment has shut down (so sad) so we tried a place near to campus instead. It was fine, it tasted good, but there wasn't quite as many options and the inside wasn't as cute.  Asian food is great because it comes with extra veggies! Mitchell would like to talk about his very good science poster now: Hi, I basically presented my recent paper as a poster at a symposium on the UCR campus. The day was filled with talks from other researchers at the University and it's always interesting to learn about ...

We had quite a busy weekend this week. We started with a "Dine-in Movie" which Teresa suggested. It sounded interesting, so we thought we'd give it a go. I drove straight from work and met Mitchell and his lab friends there. They'd been for ice-cream on the way and had picked me chocolate lavender flavour which was very nice. The theatre turned out to be just a regular cinema, but they would bring you food when you ordered on the app. I guess it's good for saving time, but you end up missing parts of the movie while you order and then you can't see what you're eating because it's dark. It was fun to experience, but I think we'll be keeping to normal cinemas.  On Saturday, we had a day of driving around to do errands. First up, Mitchell had to drop a form off at the University. Then the next, and most important, stop was breakfast. We went to a place that Susan had recommended to me before called Mundial. It was very cute, with lots and lots of plan...

We hadn't washed the car since we bought it (which is nearly a year ago now), and driving around all these national parks was not exactly keeping it clean. Everyone here keeps their car pretty clean, or maybe they just don't get dirty in the cities, but I decided it was time. We're not allowed to wash the car in the garage (and it's three flights upstairs to get a bucket of water) so we went to the car wash next to a gas station. Charlotte is all pretty now and enjoyed her day at the car spa.  That was pretty much for Saturday during the day as I did a lot of sleeping in the morning. About 4pm, Laura came over and we got ready to go out to something in Claremont. Teresa had organised it all and we weren't really sure what was going to happen. All we knew was that there was going to be dueling pianos.  We got there and it was a smallish bar with two pianos on stage at the front. We ordered some drinks and a few snacks and then waited for it to begin. They began by pl...