Emily and Mitchell in the USA

After getting back from the wedding on Monday night, you would think we would have a chilled out week, but that's not us! On Tuesday we were out for a Stranger Things themed quiz night with some friends. Mitchell hasn't watched the show, but I have so I was able to confirm a few answers although I wasn't very helpful. That was fun, and then on Wednesday I met Mitchell on campus for a little lunch date. They were holding the International Awards and Mitchell had been nominated for best international post-doc scholar. They had some speeches and gave us lunch and was a nice afternoon. Thursday we did nothing, and Friday they were hosting a department sponsored bar crawl on campus for graduate students. There are no bars on campus, but four different departments had tables laid out with cocktails and shots. The entomology department even had edible bugs on their jello-shots! We had fun and met some new people. Saturday we slept in and then went for a beach day. We drove down to...

This weekend we went on quite the roadtrip!  I'd also had some time in the week, so I went for a little solo hike. Chino Hills State Park is very popular right now, as it's in full bloom with California poppies! Apparently it's very busy during weekends, but as I went on a Wednesday, it was nice and empty.  A very empty car park I took a long walk through the park and saw long yellow flowers popping up almost immediately. I pushed my way through them like they were stalks of corn, following the trail. The first half was next to the road and easy to follow, but I then took a less busy trail, which started off fine, but was very overgrown in certain areas.  As well as these long yellow flowers, there was a lot of grass and in certain areas, poppies! There were also some pretty purple flowers, and they looked so nice together, overlooking a green hill and the snowy mountain in the background.  In some areas, the poppies covered big patches of ground and you could see or...

This Thursday, I met a couple of girls I met through meet-up to go and watch Fiddler on the Roof which was touring in Riverside. It was pretty good and the theatre was really pretty inside, with Spanish tiling on the inside as well as the outside. The real star of the day though was the food we got beforehand. Lorraine had told me about it before and wanted to go again, so we went to go and get southern style soul food at Messi's Soul Kitchen. I got a plate with collard greens, red beans and rice, mac and cheese and yams, which were so sweet and must have been cooked with sugar.   We spent Friday evening in the hot tub with some friends which was cute. It's still too cold for the pool though. Saturday was our big adventure day. We got the train into LA from Riverside early in the morning. It took about an hour and a half and the walk from Union Station to our destination was only another few minutes walk from there.  Union Station We arrived in Little Tokyo just before 11...