Monday, August 31, 2009

back to summer

After my last trip to DC, I returned home and got to spend a day with my sister who was kind enough to travel across the country to hang out with Rusty while I was in DC. We ran all over town and also went to Jamestown Settlement, here are some pictures....



I'm not a huge fan of the animal skins.



Sunday, August 30, 2009

Simon and Simon

I just started watching Simon and Simon (I don't know what it is with me and 80s TV). The end theme song cracks me up every time so I thought I'd share. Enjoy!

Friday, August 28, 2009

What to do?

Last spring my incredibly nice neighbor held a bible study in her apartment. I arrived home as they were leaving one night and one of our other neighbors invited me to join them. I have no desire to join a bible study and luckily I had class the night they met so I had a good reason and didn't have to come up with an excuse or explain my real reasons for not wanting to go.

And then yesterday she was clearly listening for me to come home and caught me on the stairs and told me about another bible study, this time one that is taking place at her church. She rather hurriedly told me a little about the group and then explained that she wasn't going to be able to go to all of the meetings and was hoping I could give a ride to two of the other women in our building. Again, I was totally thrown by the invite. I really don't want to alienate her, she is an awesome neighbor and it's clear religion is important to her. But being a non-Mormon from Utah I am very leery of conversion attempts. I realize it's totally possible she would accept and respect my lack of interest but that hasn't been my experience in the past. I don't want to have to explain to someone I actually know and like (as opposed to missionaries I don't know and only have to be polite to) that I have no interest in joining their church. As I was trying to figure out how to respond I realized that I have a class the night of this bible study too and had an easy and truthful excuse again. But what about next time? How do other people handle these situations?

Ironically the class I have at that time is on religion.

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Twitter

Ok, I did it- I am now tweeting. I don't know how often I'll tweet but I think I may tweet more than I post here. I often think about random things I want to blog about and then never get around to it- so this way I can tweet my random thoughts and there won't be such long gaps between updates. Be fore-warned, I doubt they will be very interesting but there it is.

Keio

About a week after the DC trip Keio started. I have already mentioned Keio and I'm not sure what else to say about it, other than it was an amazing experience. I loved my students I had a great group. My dialogue class, the Yellow Dialogue Class, was by far the best group, everyone got along and everyone participated in class. We hung out together outside of class too and had a lot of fun. The program ended in DC, here are a couple pictures from my third trip there this summer.



Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Next trip

I flew home to Utah with my nieces and spent 3 very nice weeks visiting family and friends there, but I've posted pictures of that already so I'll move on to my next trip. After I got back from Utah I headed up to DC for a research trip and spent a week at the National Archives. My mom was kind enough to fly out and join me for the trip. She and Rusty hung out together in the hotel while I was at the archives. Since she hadn't been to DC before I tried to show her a bit of the town- so I took her to some of my favorite DC sights. We went to Arlington and took the Monuments by Moonlight tour (which I highly recommend). Here are some of the pictures we took.











Monday, August 24, 2009

The next visit...

Shortly after my dad was here my sister and nieces came for a visit- - I miss them a lot so it was amazing having them here in my new home.

Here are some pictures from their trip...

We went to the beach and Rusty actually got in the water- usually he just barks at the waves and runs away.





We also went to the zoo in Norfolk. It was a fun day- but way too hot- we were all rather grumpy after being in the heat and humidity here.







We also took a short trip up to DC. (the first of three this summer- I have been meaning to get up there all year and was giving myself a hard time about not going, I guess I more than made up for it).





I also took them to the Yankee Candle Store (my friends pointed out that Virginia is an odd place for Yankee Candle seeing how it's in the South, and then of course we had to have a debate about whether or not Virginia is really part of the South- I argue that it is since it was the capitol of the confederacy). Anyhow, there is a little show in the candle store- much like Chucky Cheese, ironically it also featured mice and they sung about cheese. My nieces really liked it so I guess that's all that matters.



And of course we had to go to CW (Colonial Williamsburg) here are a couple pictures- they aren't too exciting.





Sunday, August 23, 2009

I'm behind with pictures

I have had a very busy and crazy summer so forgive my infrequent posts- I will attempt to catch you up.

In May my dad came out for a short visit. I took him on a tour of the campus where we stumbled across (not literally) these very odd statues of a boy and a girl lying and sitting in the grass apparantly studying together. They are odd. Rusty did not care for them.