Chicago

Millennium Park, not so bright but definitely early one morning.


View of the downtown skyline from the Field Museum


Grant Park


Clock Tower


Chicago River


They had all these cool street displays since it was almost Halloween


The Water Tower Building. This and the Pump House across the road are some of the few buildings that remained after the Great Chicago Fire in 1871.


The Pump House


I would just love to live in a house with these kind of stairs! It's a real East Coast thing.


Beautiful Fall colors.


Downtown


A couple more of that fantastic structure


Inside


Fall in Chicago

NZ photos

Photo overload.. sorry about the wait folks :)

Family... bet you will never guess which ones are related!


Auckland Motorway - seems lonely without all the cars around :)


Auckland Harbour Bridge. Once upon a time this was SOOO big!


Downtown Auckland and the Marina


High tide at Orewa, just north of Auckland


We made a trip up to Whangarei to visit a special friend from University. These photos are from the city centre... who wouldn't want to live here?


Hehe... a "fish and chip" shop!


Here they come!


And in the wrappings.. hmmm I can smell the goodness from here


Especially for Aimee


On the way back down we had an afternoon at Martin's Bay. A is right at home!


Only too soon were we on our way to the south island. This is a picture of the Air New Zealand tail


The next lot of pictures are from the area where I grew up. Just posting them makes me feel homesick. I was lucky to fully appreciate the beauty of the landscape! It surely has to be one of the most beautiful places in the world.

15 minutes out of the city.. complete with telephone poles!


About an hour away, by Lake Lyndon and Porter Heights ski field. Was a windy day!


Cass

Almost at Arthurs Pass - Bealey Spur


Arthur's Pass only has about 3 building and this the community centre, where we used to go for school camps when I was at primary school.


Finally the Franz Josef Glacier


My good friend


On the way back home I stopped actually on the Arthur's Pass to take some photos. Just as soon as I got out of the car I realised why you NEVER stop the car! Kea's. A national bird of NZ and a total PEST! For those of you who don't know what they do.. they attack anything plastic or shiny... not a good idea on a rental car!


Coming back across the coast


A's trip to Queenstown

At the airport, somewhat smaller than SFO


Coming into land in Christchurch... a great view of the plains and the Waimakariri River. (this is a braided river)


Back in Auckland on a much nicer day.


What a lovely bunch of people


Real bakery food... yummmm!

Life...

I really will publish some photos soon! My goodness I am slack :)

We life has just been plodding on for us two. I have been convinced to do a half marathon in March so am training for that. I tell you the best part of going for a run is lying down on the gym floor afterwards :) A is going round telling everyone that I'm doing one, probably because he reckons I'm going to chicken out! He's going to do it with me but hasn't started training yet :) My aim is to finish in 1.3x his time!

So between going for runs and the never ending cooking/cleaning routine life seems to be whizzing by. We managed a weekend out in DC recently. Never thought we would get home since when the plane was coming into land a goose made the unwise choice to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and hence its life was cut short. When we were boarding the plane A noticed they were *drying* the wing. We found out later that they were actually wiping up the remnants of the poor goose only to discover that it had made a rather impressive dent in the wing! So out came the epoxy filler, lights to dry and 4 hrs later we were off! Lets just say we didn't have too much sleep that night.

I'm off for a girls weekend in Tahoe soon, while the boys are going to be hanging out here doing all sorts of boy stuff. I know who will have the better weekend!

The only other news is that I think we have decided to hang round here for a few more years. Life is really not that interesting when you have visa's to consider all the time!

Chicago

This last weekend A and I went to Chicago!! Admittedly it was for a neuroscience conference but still it was rather fun to have an excuse to go traveling... not that I think either of us needs one. The conference was huge, about 30,000 people. I went to it one afternoon to have a look around and heard the most interesting of lectures about how children learn abstract concepts and what the number 7 means! I think that coming from education I found it more interesting than A did as she didn't actually talk too much about how the brain processes this information as it's still totally unclear.

It was so wonderful to see fall too. To see the beautiful deciduous trees, to feel the crisp air and to rug up really warm!! It was somewhat like walking through the wardrobe into Narnia when we first arrived. :) Though it didn't take long to warm up, until it was almost like SF weather when A left.

Here's some pics of our trip.

Rain, Rain, Rain

I'm finding today really really interesting.

There is a *storm* coming through SF today and tomorrow, bringing a ton of rain and it's been really interesting observing others and their reactions to this rain.

To give you an idea, the sand bags that the local council were offering to households have run out. People are hoping that their power doesn't get cut tonight. All the shuttle drivers can talk about is accidents. And apparently, the local news station was out interviewing people on the street yesterday afternoon to ask them how they are preparing for the rain!!! Yes, it's raining, but seriously it's just like a prolonged Auckland shower!! Life still continues, although it is somewhat novel when you very rarely get rain.

My Frist Paper

It's official... I am now a *real* scientist. If having your name on a paper (not just in the acknowledgments) is the requirement.

And, for the geeks amongst us, it's in PNAS no less!! :)

Actually it was quite amusing to get correspondence from PNAS over this paper as they addressed it to Dr Kells! When I told A this he just laughed saying, obviously they were addressing it to him!! I guess they don't often have people in my situation being mentioned as authors on papers at this level.

On a more down-to-earth note, we are heading inland this weekend to visit some NZ friends and to see some sun. California has had a heat wave to end the summer. Hence, its over 100 inland and FREEZING here. I was actually going to get my camera out this morning and take a picture because you would hardly believe the amount of fog we are in. It seriously looks like winter and we haven't seen the sun for about 6 days now!

Excellent News

We are back home. It sure was nice to come home and see all our own stuff :) I did tidy up before we left, but once we were back home it lasted all of two minutes. Unfortunately when we picked up our bags in LA, we realised that one of our bags had ripped open - the one that we had crammed all sorts of clothes into the top of, of course! I stressed the whole way back to SF wondering what I had lost (was so sure it was the new tops I had bought in NZ!) so once we got home all the clothes got taken out of every bag... only to discover that we had lost nothing despite the gaping hole in the bag!! We were so lucky, and I have promised to myself that I wont stress about anything (in)significant again... hmmm.

Anyhow, the rest of the trip home was excellent. We upgraded our flight to LAX. It was so lovely to be traveling in (comparative) style. We did have a rather hopeless air host, who tried to convince us that since we had ordered a special meal thats what we had to have as they were *tight on food*. Neither of us was impressed to say the least. He got himself sorted in the end and we got a lovely meal complete with a lamington. Haven't had one of those in years.

So, I digress from our excellent news too. Saturday morning we had a knock on the door from some people asking to borrow a can opener. Thats fine. A asked them which apartment they were in... NEXT DOOR!!! You can't imagine how happy I was when A told me this!! You see, we had some interesting neighbors living on the other side of our wall. An older couple with a 2 year old baby.... who would bang on our wall if we spoke too loudly, or in one case, had visitors over and were playing cards. Seems like they moved out while we were back in NZ!

It's raining here at the moment. The first rain of Fall. Apparently there was thunder and lightning on Saturday morning - we never heard any of it - hardly surprising after going to bed in the early hours of the morning after watching a SHOCKING first half of rugby. We decided to go to bed as they were no where near capable of winning after not even winning one line out and having a superstar kicker on the SA team.

No more news. Just back to work for the two of us. Seems like we have never left but thats good thing!

Will post some pics of NZ soon. ie: check in three months time. Can't post them now mainly because I've just done some baking from my Edmonds cookbook! Going back to NZ inspired me to do baking since its impossible to get a nice slice in the US!!!