Pics

Thought I´d finish off my trip in America with a healthy meal - ahh...salad. And not just any salad - a big salad (can´t you just hear Elaine saying it - i know i can´t resist saying it like that, as Emily well knows =) - it was absolutely gigantic! i love it...

View from plane - you can see how quito is this big city in amongst all these mountains. It looks amazing.

My first meal in Quito, and with my family too. The dad on the left, Gonzalos, mother, Esperanza and older brother Danilo. The other brother, and the one who set up the whole homestay thing - Gabriel or Gabo, with one of their puppies.

My first postre (dessert) - i think it was fig with cheese and this really sweet sauce, that tasted rock sugar-y. Was pretty nice.

This is the heart of the old city. Really beautiful.


I was in the old city with the mum and her sister - i totally had to bend down really far to take this shot =)
Mote con chichorron - Gabo took me out with his friends to have this local specialty. It is basically massive white corn kernels on the bottom, with pork on top, a banana, potato and a sweet empanada. Was pretty nice, but really filling.
My room.

La mitad del mundo -am standing right on the equator.

At the top of the volcano crater, called Pululahua. Not much of a view, since the entire crater´s filled with clouds.
At the bottom of the crater, they grow corn and Luis is showing one off that we just freshly plucked.

View from bottom of the crater.
My gashed knee with special herbal paste Luis applied to it while on the trail.

The clinic I´m now volunteering at 4 days a week.

1st day

Woke early to get to the clinic early - only took 45min, so was really early. I just sat around till about 8.30 when someone showed me what to do, which was to basically help with the filing and so that´s what I did for the whole day. Having four health professionals and a lot of kids coming and going, there´s obviously a lot of filing to be done, so I´m sure they appreciated having me there to lighten the load a bit.

A bit frustrating since I can´t even manage to understand basic simple sentences when people ask me stuff, and then if I do understand or get the gist, I don´t know how to respond - and to be stuttering and stammering when a little kid asks me a question and show my total ignorance, is not the best feeling, but I know it´s just my first day and it´ll obviously get better, so that´s ok.

Mitad del Mundo

Was a big day today. The parents and their employee who lives with them and is more like another brother/son to the family, Luis, took me out to the mitad del mundo - the middle of the world - the equator (hence this country being called Ecuador). But first, they drove out to where my medical clinic is because they just wanted to know where it is so they know that I´m all right every day and if I need any help, they know how to come and get me. Man, they´re so nice.

Anyway, after that, we went to the mitad del mundo which is obviously a big tourist attraction, but still cool to see. They´ve built this whole centre around it all and there´s a big tower that sits right on the equator, which I went to the top of and took some nice pics - will try to post them tomorrow, but have limited time today. Anyway, explored the whole place with Luis and had some lunch. He doesn´t speak any english, but somehow we get by sort of. Having a notebook to ask them to write stuff in is really helpful, so that i can see it and then look it up in the diccarionario. There was also this big cultural dancing show thing going on, so we watched that for a bit and then left to go to a nearby volcano. We got to the top of the crater, and it´s a huge thing - you can´t see the other side of it. I´m not sure whether it´s far away - i´m sure it is, but mainly the reason you can´t see anything is because the entire crater is filled with clouds. It´s really cool. So, mi mama (mm for short from now on), luis and i headed down into the crater. I´m sure it´s obviously been long inactive, since people live down at teh bottom of the crater and there´s vegetation everywhere. So, it was a long long way down and we saw there was hostel down the bottom, and then started our ascent. They were teaching my spanish (it´s a never ending spanish class here) and keep correcting my pronunciation becuase in spanish there´s no "v" sound - v = b, so verde is said "berde" and I just have to keep remembering that. And then "d" sound is so soft it doesn´t sound like a d - it´s more like a really soft "th" sound. So fritada is "fritatha", but really softly at the end. Anyway, it was all going fine and then Luis suggested that we run for a bit, so i started to and probably only got about 30 metres or so, and i managed to stutter out "bastante" en espanol (which i just learnt last night and means "enough") and I was trying to say in spanish all i see is black, and then the next thing i remember is opening my eyes and seeing these two faces over me - MM and Luis and I was so confused because it felt like a dream. I didn´t know where I was and I could have been sleeping for a whole night or 1 second for all I knew. And then it finally dawned on me that I had just fainted. So strange! i´ve never done that before - it´s a really weird feeling. MM was so worried and I just had to sit there and get my bearings again, realise that I was in quito, ecuador, in a volcano crater with Mm and Luis - took me a while. It was so bizarre. I think it was all because of the altitude and the fact that all the air in there is basically cloud, so it´s a little harder to breathe. Anyway, i saw i had a gash on my left knee and it actually ripped a hole in my new pants (grr...) so i guess that meant that i fell forward, which is a lucky thing since we were on a slope on a very rocky path. Luis knows all about the local plants and their medicinal uses and stuff, so he ran off to get some leaves he knew would help, and he then just right there on the path, started bashing them with a rock to make it into a paste type thing, and he then applied it to my knee - very useful and it helped. Anyway, so we then just took the rest of the ascent really slowly and took about another 30min, and then got to the car and came home. phew - so bizarre and kind of embarrassing.

Contact details

If anyone wants this, my address here is:

Ave 10 de Agosto, N50-152Y, Rafael Bustamante, Quito, Ecuador

And my ph number is:

092728391

That address is complete - no postcode or anything is needed.

Ready for a long read?

It is only my fourth night here in Quito, but it definitely feels like forever. So much has happened and is going to happen. My family and I are getting along really well and compared to the first day when i spoke absolutely zero spanish, i can at least understand or get the general gist of what the mum and dad are saying and i can actually talk back and hold a conversation, if obviously somewhat rudimentary. It feels like the more spanish I learn, the more french I forget, but that doesn´t matter. What matters is being able to speak to my family, get around by myself and help me at my organisation. I´m now thinking in spanish more and saying new words to myself all the time and speaking as much as I can to my family because it´s not just about being interested to learn the language, as it might have been in france - here it´s seriously about survival and making daily life possible.

I feel like this entire experience so far has been all about fully extricating myself from any comfort zone that I might have had. That zone is so far away from me now, I can´t even see it anymore. Today, being the homebody that I am, I just felt like sleeping in for ages, hanging around the house, maybe using the internet, reading etc. But instead, because I can´t explain why i might not want to go shopping for clothes since that´s one of my least favourite activities, I just had to go along with it and I went with mi mama and her sister who wanted to take me to buy some shoes. I don´t like shopping enough as it is, but to do it under pressure with the mum and aunt with me, was not something that i thought would be ok, but it turned out to be fine. Anyway, they took me to Payless Shoes which is probably one of the few places here that would stock my size. I found some nice shoes for going out, since I only have my havaiana thongs and hiking boots, which are not very appropriate. They then took me to the old quarter, which is really interesting and I did take photos, but will have to post them later. Anyway, the old quarter has this huge clothes market and just to keep it simple, I said I needed a new jacket or jumper (it´s funny, la palabra (the word) for jacket en espanol is chompa - i thought that the mum actually knew the english word for it, but turns out it´s the same in espanol- i guess except that it´s for a jacket, not an actual jumper, but whatever - close enough). Seriously, every female here in Ecuador is really small because none of the stores had anything that could fit me and when i did try on jackets, they sleeves ended at like my elbow or something, which they all found quite amusing. From store to store, the mum would ask if they had a size for me, and the store person would turn to me and look me up and down and have a definite ¨no¨which was such a great feeling. Ah..i love being tall and gigantic compared to the rest of the population - makes me feel all "special". In the end, I resorted to buying a guy´s jacket, which was fine.

I expected clothes here to be cheaper, but in the shopping centres anyway it´s the same price basically as America or Australia. Shirts and skirts for $50USD, shoes for $80. that really surprised me. even the clothes in the market weren´t as cheap as maybe i had expected, although i guess it´s not exactly that expensive. the jacket i bought was $20, so that´s ok I guess.

Anyway, getting back to that comfort zone thing - last night was the same thing. Gabriel took me out to meet some of his friends at the club and bar district, which is also obviously the tourist, backpacker and gringos area. That whole experience took me totally out of the zone, but in a good way. I ended up having a really good time and at least going out is cheap, unlike buying clothes.

It´s funny being an Australian here because nobody knows anything about it. I guess it´s like how nobody back home knows anything at all about Ecuador. I´ve had people ask me what language we speak there and if we spoke French as well. Also, if most of the people there are black or white etc. I gave my host family my aussie souvenirs of a dish cloth with the map of australia and aussie animals on it and also a stubbie holder with the aussie flag on it, and they loved it because it´s just so foreign. they´re displaying the stubbie holder on the mantle with a little cup in it (they couldn´t find anything to fit in it) and they´ve hung the cloth up on the wall. It´s nice.

Whenever I meet anyone here I get two questions and now when i get asked them, i just laugh because they´re so random and I have no idea why they are the first two questions I get asked. Number one is whether I like ¨reggaeton" and the second is whether I like whiskey. Random hey? Reggaeton isn´t even ecuadorian - it´s just this type of caribbean reggae music - not really sure how it´s different from reggae. i think it´s got a faster beat and you can dance to it and I´m guessing it´s really popular here in Ecuador. I have no idea how to explain the whiskey thing. It´s not really a common drink or anything as far as my family tells me (although they did ask me that questions - maybe they think australians drink a lot of whiskey? i´ve got no idea).

Yesterday I met up with the Children International volunteer coordinator and he gave me information about what I´ll be doing and where I´ll be going and what the organisation is all about. Turns out that this is like working on the other end of World Vision - actually it´s exactly the same. Children International is a child sponsorship organisation and so there are 30,000 kids being sponsored here in Ecuador by probably Americans and so I´m going to be in the medical clinic that Children International offer to their sponsored kids. For those who know that I was originally debating whether to go with an organisation that set me up with a local clinic, set up my accomodation, etc etc and was going to cost me about $4000, and whether to go it alone and figure it out the cheaper way - it actually turns out that if I had paid the $4000 and gone with that organisation to set everything up for me, Children International is who they would have set me up with. So I´ve totally circumvented that whole thing and just happened to hook myself up with the very clinic I would have paid thousands of dollars to be connected with. Crazy and very satisfying that I did do it this way and avoided that huge cost and ended up with the same result.

After having our meeting at the main office in teh city, Christian (the director) then came out with me to the clinic, which was a really nice and necessary thing to do because the clinic is 1hour from Quito and requires me to take two buses, one of which doesn´t even have stops - you just have to hop on and hop off whenever the bus feels it can stop. It´s a crazy journey - the bus screams down these steep roads full of pot holes and narrowly avoids people on the street and other cars, but it makes for an interesting transit. So we arrived at the clinic and it´s a really poor area - it would have taken a photo of the place, but even with Christian there I felt uncomfortable about bringing out my camera. I´m sure it´s fine, just as long as I don´t show that I own anything of value and display my volunteer badge because Christian said that they respect that. He then introduced me to the two doctors that work there and the two dentists. There are also four other administration people and they were all really nice and didn´t seem to mind that I couldn´t speak spanish yet. They just seemed really happy to have anyone come and give them a hand.

Christian told me that actually in one week, on 2 July, another girl from Canada is going to be coming out to volunteer at the same place and so I´m looking forward to that, to meet another foreigner who is going through the same stuff.

After meeting everyone, we then headed back into the city and back home. I´m really glad he did come out with me because otherwise I would have found it very difficult to find it out all on my own. Everybody here is really friendly and helpful like that. Gabriel and my family are really concerned about me and make sure that I know where I´m going and they want to know where I am and if I need a ride home or a ride there etc. On Thursday night, we all went out because they wanted to drive me around Quito and show me the sights. It was really nice of them because obviously these sights aren´t that special since they live here, but they all came out to show me around. They then drove me to Children International´s head office even though it was 11.30pm on our way home, so that on Friday morning when I had to go there to meet Christian I would know where to go.

Well I´m fairly satisfied that this posting has been detailed enough and long enough. the curse of being a typist - it means my verbal diarrhoea is never curtailed.

One last thing - I decided it would be a good idea to get started with spanish lessons immediately - i mean, why wait? Gabo was really nice and went ahead and got the info for me, called up the school and booked me in, then came with me to the school, made sure everything was all right and so thanks to all that, i´ve been set up with a private teacher and have already had four hours of lessons already and will do more and more each week.

Ok, i think that´s enough - signing off for now. Will try and post photos at some point soon.

ECUADOR!!!!!

Wow - here I am again, in a foreign country struggling to type because have to get adjusted to the new keyboard.

Anyway, I can´t believe i´m here! it felt like ages to get here - three planes in 17hours - it wears you down. I probably won´t write much because i´m feeling pretty light headed. could be because i´m really tired or because of that altitude sickness thing that i´ve heard about. i think i just need to sleep. man this place is so amazing already. flying in was something else just because of the view. it´s so high up and in amongst all these mountains, it´s awesome! i seriously can´t believe i´m here.... in ecuador - it´s crazy. i did take photos, but will add later after i´ve adjusted a bit more.

the homestay guy was there to pick me up - gabriel, or gabo for short. it was really nice, he was there with my name written on a balloon and some flowers, and it was nice to be welcomed in this strange place and not just try to struggle to get to some random hostel all by myself. so he drove me around teh place to get a bit of an idea of what the city is like. the traffic is pretty bad and a lot of crazy cutting and swerving around by trucks, buses and cars and pedestrians everwhere - but it´s not as bad as i´ve seen elsewhere. i showed him the address of the children international organistion where i will be going on friday, and we actually found it, so now i have an idea of where to go. it looks pretty good - the office is pretty much in the city - but not sure if that´s where the medical clinic will be. will find that out later.

so we drove around a bit, and he was telling me about the good places to go and told me about his family - he´s got an older brother, danilo, who i´ll meet later on tonight, if i´m not sleeping. gabo actually told me that he´s actually leaving for LA in 10 days, so he won´t be here for the time that i´ll be here, but i´m sure that will be ok.

i´m now in their home, which is really nice. it´s totally clean thanks to the mum and my room is really nice - will send pics soon. the mum doesn´t speak any english, and me with my below rudimentary spanish, will have an interesting time communicating, but she´s really nice and we´ve got this translation website open so that we can translate what we want to say to each other. gabo and the dad have gone out, so it´s just me and her in the house now - am looking forward to learning spanish from this whole thing. i think i don´t have much choice in the matter, unlike france, so should be good. they´re all really nice about it and very patient. the mum told me just to call her mama, and she said i´m her ´nueva hijita´which is new daughter, so that was pretty cool.

anyway, am getting kind of dizzy, so will go and lie down. i think the key to this thing is just sleeping it off and drinking a lot of water, which i intend to do.

yay! ecuador!

oh, just one more thing - it was really funny when we landed because as soon as the plane hit the tarmac, rapturous applause broke out and i heard someone shout ´viva ecuador!´ very loudly from somewhere in the cabin. so bizarre - made me wonder if a successful landing was a rare thing? it was pretty funny.

Last US post

Mon 18/6

Headed out to the Cascade Mountains to go hiking. Some of the tracks in the valley would have been fairly muddy, so we went higher and hiked in the mountains. Here's some pics:



That's fairly close to the top of trail where we stopped - so beautiful.
Here's us at the top:



Kim brought snacks - apple rings and chilli and lime peanuts for us to munch on before heading down again. It was totally freezing at the highest point that we reached - there were clumps of snow around the place, which Rufus totally loved and he bounded all over. So cute. Man, he is such a forest outdoorsy dog. He rode in the back of the car with me and Emily:



Emily and I felt quite satisfied with our first hike - we were only out there for 2hrs, but that was long enough for us to feel tired enough, but proud enough of how far we actually went for a first time. We then headed down to the town at the bottom of the mountain called North Bend - home of Twin Peaks (I think that's where they filmed it). So we checked out the local diner:


And sampled their local specialty:



Cherry pie....mmmm...yum.....

We headed back to Seattle, got out stuff together and then went to a quick sushi dinner in the city.

It was cool talking to Brian because he's been all around South America and so gave me some travel tips and heads up for cool areas to go and places just not to bother with, so that was cool. Our time was quite limited, so we ate quickly and then headed to the airport where Emily and I flew back to SF.

Hope to see you soon Kim! Hope it's sooner than our last 6yr break (before Malaysia).

Tues 19/6

Getting myself together - packing, doing errands, buying last minute stuff, sending off parcels, doing washing. Am now posting last blog for US. Going to go out with Emily now and get a "big salad" and then will head to the airport to fly out to Quito. I arrive on Wed at about 1.35 and the homestay guy, Gabriel, will be there to pick me up. Will hopefully email and blog as soon as I can get access to the net there.

Got Milt?

Arrived Friday night - Kim and Brian picked us up and took us back to their house. Kim's renting a room in this lady's house and there's a whole lot of pets around. The owner, Vera, has a little dog called Wasabi and a cat, and Kim owns a huge poodle called Rufus and a cat called Daphne. Here's a pic:

Rufus is really cute - Wai you'd absolutely love him. So mild-mannered and well behaved, and he's still just a puppy really at about 1.5yrs old. Anyway, all of us were totally tired, so we just basically crashed and that's that for Friday.

Saturday was pretty casual. We all had a sleep-in, got ourselves slowly together and then headed out to go watch the Summer Solstice parade in Fremont, which is this annual event where anyone can basically participate and it's just a fun, free-spirited parade. Here's a few pics:

These are the naked bicyclists. You totally forget that they're nude because their body paint is so cool - there were some really creative "costumes". There was this huge bunch of Where's Wally/Waldo characters, there was a Fidel Castro, and just heaps of really cool colour designs.

A few more pics:

That one on the right, it's hard to see, but there was a line of four figures all chained together - Condi Rice, Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush and there was this lady walking around the crowd chanting "What do we want?" "Impeach!", "When do we want it?" "Now!".

Fish are everywhere in Seattle.

The parade went for a while, and it was really cool and fun to watch. Anyway we were starving after that and so headed out with Kim's friends, who were also there with us watching, to this brewery & pub for lunch. By the time we got back home after that, we were all very deep in our food comas, so we had a nap and got ready to go out again.

One of Kim's friends was having a Redneck themed birthday party, so to get into the spirit of things, we all put on some patriotic USA/redneck tatts. I went with the "Mom":

And here's Emily's:
The party was pretty cool. At some point skipping ropes appeared and everybody started playing Double Dutch. It was totally hard - here's Emily's turn:

The birthday boy: (Jack) in his mu-mu - he was just playing around.

So that was that for Saturday.



Today, we again took it pretty easy in the morning and then headed off to do this Underground tour. Seattle's original town had to be fully raised and built upon because of flooding from the bay, so there is this underground area where the town used to be, so we had a guide take us around and tell us all about it. Here's Kim and I in front of a "crapper" (they were all still called that since it was invented by Thomas Crapper around that time).
After the tour, Emily and I stumbled upon one of the greatest food experiences ever :-). Are you ready for this? OK - it was cheesecake.....on a stick.....dipped in chocolate....and covered in nuts!!! How crazy is that?! We were both in this state of shocked wonderment and amazement at this ingenius creation. Emily's expression says it all:

We tried to rack our brains to think of something that could be better, and we drew a blank. That definitely was really high up on the list of ultimate desserts. Oh man....soooo good.

I love America!

We're all just at home now - Kim, Emily and Brian are making pizzas and we're going to watch Indiana Jones (since I've never seen any of them) and then a Kurosowa film. Should be good.

Jokes courtesy of Emily, Brian and Kim

Q: What's brown and sticky? (Originally from Liana)
A: A stick.

(Picture Emily rotflol)

Q: What did zero say to eight?
A: Nice belt.

(ha .. ha...)

Q: What do you call a spanish guy with a rubber toe?
A: Robberrrrto (said with heavy "r"s)

Two statisticians were on a hunting trip and they see a deer. One takes a shot at the deer and misses it just barely to the right. The other tries the shot and misses it barely to the left. They both look at each other and say, "Great we got it".

Q: What do you call a piece of chocoalte cake thrown up in the air?
A: "Brownie"-in-motion

Two statistics are in a bar. The first statistic says to the second statistic, so how are you enjoying married life? The second statistic replies, "Well it's very nice though I do lose a degree of freedom."

Q: What is a bucaneer?
A: Expensive corn.

Q: What did the fish say when it came to the concrete wall?
A: Dam.

Q: Why did the tomato blush?
A: Because it saw the salad dressing.

(The following state ones are asll from Liana)
Q: What did Mississippi sip?
A: A Minne-soda.

Q: What did Della wear?
A: A New Jersey.

(From Emily)
Q: What do you call a triangle that was hit by a truck?
A: A wrecked-angle.

Q: Why was six afraid of seven?
A: Because seven eight nine.

There's an engineer, statistician and economic on an island and they need to get off because they're stuc,k there and so the engineer designs a beautiful raft contraption to get off the island and the mathematician goes off and proves that it's actually possible to do and then the economist just says, "Well suppose that we're not on an island..."

Possibly more to come....

Thurs 14/6

Decided to get out of the house for a bit since it seemed like a nice day outside. It's finally as warm as I sort of expected it to be - not like the freezing weather of last week. I walked down to the Berkeley campus which is only a couple blocks away. I window shopped for a bit down the main street, Telegraph Avenue. There's this pretty big t-shirt store there, and they actually sell Threadless shirts. I thought it was only an online store, but I guess not. Pity I don't have any money. I then just read for a bit on campus and had one of the well-known hot dogs from Top Dog and a nice cookies'n'cream pearl drink.

Met up with Emily at the rock climbing gym after and played basketball again with Jason. Here's some pics:

Emily's friends came over for a bit of a pot luck dinner - Mac'n'cheese, KFC, curry, salad and veg - and watched Spaceballs.

Update

Ok - here's a breakdown of what I've actually been doing over here:

Wed 13/6
Stayed at home reading Harry Potter
Helped Emily clean her car & did laundry
Went to El Cerrito Parkway cinema because of their Wednesday 2-for-1 offer. So we saw "Lives of Others" for just $3 each - so cheap, I love it. This place is not a normal cinema - you can order food and eat it in there because they've got tables and sofas etc. But it's not fancy like gold class or anything, it's just a cosy little place. It's pretty cool. It has got to be the first time that I've ever snacked on broccoli in the cinemas before. Emily ordered the combo pita and veggie hummus plate. It was pretty good - I've never felt healthier after coming out of a movie.

Tues 12/6
I met Emily after work at her rock climbing gym where she climbs regularly with her friend, Justin. They've got a basketball hoop in the parking lot, so while she climbed I played. Jason, another one of Emily's friends, came and played with me for a bit. It felt good to play after so many months. Justin, Emily and I then went out for dinner at this gourmet burger placed called Barney's. It was really good - man they do make a tasty burger over here. yum... And also really good curly fries with ranch sauce (they serve that with almost everything over here). Here's Emily with the smallest curly fry:

Jason then came over after dinner and I can't believe it, but we actually watched probably more than two hours of ultimate cage fighting, much to Emily's disapproval :)

Mon 11/6
Emily got us and her friend Dan, free tickets to a San Francisco Giants baseball game courtesy of her company, which were really good quality seats ($70 tickets) totally near the pitch and everything.


Might have to zoom on that pic, but you can see how close we were. It was so cool! We saw Barry Bonds hit a home run and he's only 9 home runs away from holding the title of most home runs ever! We were pretty lucky because apparently he hasn't hit a home run in the last 13 games, so it was cool that we got to actually see the drought breaking hit. He's a San Francisco Giant by the way, so he had heaps of support from the crowd. Anyway, was gonna get a hot dog, but since could only afford one thing, Emily insisted that I try a local speciality - garlic fries:

whoa man, those fries had a lot of garlic!! It was like someone slipped and put a whole jar of minced garlic over the whole thing. Hmm..think I prefer just plain old chips and gravy, but still was quite an experience. Anyway I'm sure you'll all be glad to hear that the San Francisco team won, beating Toronto Blue Jays 4-3. It's not as slow a game as I thought it would be, but really in the end, it is still a pretty low scoring game.

Sun 10/6 - Giang's SF Tour
Emily's friend who lives in the same apartment building, Giang, was nice enough to drive us around today to SF. First up we went to the exploratorium, which is the San Francisco Science Museum. Man, I love science museums. We assembled RNAs, constructed a double helix, watched a cow eye dissection, tested if we were tone deaf (of which Emily and I are not, but unfortunately Giang is, or so she says), made giant bubbles and I tried really hard to burp into the echo chamber, but sadly with no success ;) Here's Emily and I with these hearing devices that try to reverse the direction of hearing or something:




Giang and Emily with their deer ears for enhanced hearing.

Would you do it? I couldn't bring myself to - it just seemed wrong. It said that the toilet had never been used and the water was drinkable, but still, I just couldn't.

Anyway, we got so hungry after spending 3 hours in the museum, so our attention waned slightly, so after feeling quite satisfied that we had explored all the exhibits as thoroughly as we could, we left to go have some clam chowder down at Fishermens' Wharf. It's pretty cool because the clam chowder is scooped into a huge bread bowl:

Yum...this is what I came to SF for. After finally getting some food in our bellies, we continued walking down the wharf, which is so absolutely touristy.

Here's Emily and I looking "naval" down on the dock - ha..ha...get it? yeah yeah...i'll move on

We then went to Ghiradelli, which is this famous chocolate store/restaurant. There seems to be a constant line to get inside. Crazy. But we went anyway and got some sundaes:

They were pretty good - brownie sundae and a berry sundae. So sweet, but perfect to finish off lunch with.
Giang then drove us around showing us where everything was in SF - she used to live there and so knew quite a bit about the city. She was even able to take us to see these:

Recognise them? They're called the "painted ladies" (I think) and they're the famous SF houses shown in "Full House". Remember? They look so nice - so many of the houses in the city there look really really nice. These houses are on heaps of the postcards and tourist memorabilia, so was glad I could see them for free all thanks to Giang's tour :)

She then drove us down to Ocean Beach

It was FREEZING! Totally windy, but cool to actually see the other side of the Pacific ocean.

Sat 9/6
Emily and I drove out to meet up with Sean for breakfast out in Davis, which is where Sean studies and lives and is about an hour's drive from Berkeley. Jason also came out too since he lives around there as well. We went to this nearby restaurant, can't remember the name, but turned out to be pretty good. We had massive omelettes and another perk of the place was that the tables were covered in butcher's paper and there are crayons at the table, so we kept ourselves amused by drawing on the table. It was cool to see Sean again after like 6 years or so. Here's a pic:


After breakfast we went to Sean's place where he shares a 4-bedroom place with 5 guys or maybe it was a 3-bedroom place, can't remember. anyway, it's too small for them all so Sean said he's probably going to be moving soon. Here's the lovely centrepiece table of his lounge room:

And the worryingly large bottle of bug wash:

I think Sean said it was radiator fluid, but still the fact that they had the huge bottle in the first place is still concerning.


Anyone for leftovers?

Anyway, after leaving Sean to continue studying for his finals, Jason led us to the Jelly Belly factory which was nearby.

That whole portrait is made entirely from jelly bellies - pretty cool hey? Emily and I got the factory tour, which was cool, but could have been better if it wasn't the weekend and the factory had been in full operation. But anyway, was still cool to have gone.

Fri 8/6
Emily caught the flu that I had had, so had to call in sick. So we just hung around the apartment for most of the day. Later on though, Emily went rock climbing with Justin and I tagged along to go and see her gym. It's pretty impressive - Chris I bet you'd love it. I just sat in the lounge area they have and read Harry Potter while Emily and Justin climbed.

Thurs 7/6
I went into SF for the first time. I caught the BART in (that's the name of their metro system) and met up with Emily at her work. Here she is looking patriotic/business-y:

It was one of the biggest flags I'd ever seen. Was flying in the opposite square to her building - well I guess it is the Bank of America building, so they've got to show who they represent. Anyway, we met up with another one of Emily's friends, Manny (sorry if I spelt that wrong), and went to Chinatown to have Malaysian food. Apparently Malaysian food is not all that common and are usually restaurants serving Malaysian and Thai together, so not quite authentic, but was still pretty good. Emily then had to go back to work, so I continued to walk around and headed downtown. After she finished work, Emily came and met me and we went and saw "Waitress" which turned out to be surprisingly quite entertaining. Then because on Thurs betwen 6-9 its halfprice, we went to the SF museum of modern art (MOMA). It was pretty interesting but unfortunately the top two floors out of the five were closed off, so we didn't get the whole experience, but hey what do you expect for a half-price ticket.

Wed 6/6
hmm...can't remember..might add more later if i can think - but i'm sure it was nothing that significant.

Tues 5/6
Can't quite remember except that we saw "Pirates 3" with some of Emily's friends. I thought it was pretty good - long, but in a good way.

Mon 4/6
see wed 6/6 entry

Sun 3/6
This is the day I arrived - I'm sure I've broken that down for you all in emails, so I won't elaborate.