2013 in Review

This year was full of traveling. Just for fun, here is all the places I went to starting a year ago:

December 23rd - December 30th: Costa Rica - Christmas break
December 30th - January 3rd: Omaha, NE - New Year's
January 3rd - January 6th: Des Moines, IA - Jenna's wedding
January 6th - January 8th: Omaha, NE - few days before going back
January 13th - January 20th: Houston, TX - Lab collaboration
March 24th - March 25th: NY, NY - Picking up my passport
March 27th - April 1st: San Diego, CA - Hanging out with my parents & spring break
April 14th - April 17th: Houston, TX - Lab collaboration
April 25th - April 29th: Jamaica - Seeing Anton & Lyuba
June 6th - June 13th: Estes Park, CO - Hanging out with Nate's family
July 6th: Martha's Vineyard, MA - Biking with Olga
July 7th - July 12th: Dover, VT - Conference
July 12th - July 14th: St. Louis, MO - Rachelle's wedding
July 29th - August 4th: Houston, TX - Lab collaboration
August 25th - September 1st - Ukraine - Hanging out with my grandparents
September 1st - September 9th - Italy - Anton & Lyuba's wedding
September 9th - September 15th - Russia - Hanging out with my parents
October 31st - November 10th - Mexico - Conference
November 15th - November 20th - San Diego, CA - Conference
November 26th - December 2nd - Omaha, NE - Thanksgiving
December 7th - December 14th - Switzerland - Post-doc interviews
December 22nd - December 27th - Miami & Mexico - Christmas break cruise

So of the 369 days shown here, I have been out of town for 124 of them. That means almost exactly a third. Crazy! This amount of traveling also means 45 flights (15 international, 30 domestic), 7 road-trips of more than 3 hours, and a bazillion frequent flyer miles. The frequent flyer miles are way too hard to calculate because there were a few tickets bought on miles or credit card reward points, and I have 3 frequent flyer numbers that I use interchangeably. I flew enough to circle the earth at least once. Seeing as I have been pregnant since July, this fetus has traveled more than most normal people and he doesn't even know it! Actually, Nate has only been to two more countries than Chase, and it was only one more country until this past week when Nate went to Mexico for the first time and extended his lead (since Chase had technically been to Mexico in November).

In terms of the apartment, this year, we replaced our microwave and our windows. We also had many, many house guests -- both short-term and long-term. We had two students for Bio department recruitment (two weekends), two students over the summer (3 weeks and 1 week), and one friend-of-a-friend (8 weeks), along with Sakina, Olga, and Liz all visiting. I may have forgotten some people, but suffice it to say that our apartment has seen lots of different visitors!

On the craft front, my sewing machine has had quite the workout: a blouse, a bright skirt, cropped cardigans, baby jacket, and candy crush costume. I also did other crafts such as crocheted bears, paint nite, and For the Makers, and some paper crafts.

Other than all the fun crafts I have planned in 2014, we will be putting the apartment up for rent this year as we move to Switzerland, so that will be all chronicled on here (hopefully in a more timely fashion than the last few months). Happy new year and here is to 2014!

Mexico Trip

Another intense trip I took this Fall was to Mexico. Specifically, I went to Mexico City and to a town 4 hours north-west of Mexico City called Guanajuato. The best part is that we traveled there on Halloween, so we were there just in time for Dia de los Muertos. In general, growing up in San Diego, I was very weary of Mexico City, thinking it was very dangerous and dirty. In actuality, it is just as dangerous as any big city in the US (aka much, much safer than I imagined), but it is beautiful and full of culture! It is also HUGE and full of traffic; it's hard to wrap your mind around how large it really is!

We started off looking at the center of Mexico City and went through the Templo Mayor and the archeological museum. It was so interesting! So many things to learn about. Then, we walked through the Mexico City Cathedral, which was very beautiful.

Since it was around Dia de los Muertos, many public places had offerings set up. These varied from place to place and were really interesting to look at. The Cathedral even had one! We went to many different museums (including the museums of Frida Kahlo and Dolores Olmedo) that had offerings set up to different themes or artists. 

Something really cool that we got to see right outside Mexico City was Teotihuacan. This is a ruin site that consists of two main pyramids -- both climbable. We climbed on top of the higher one, the sun pyramid, from which we could see a nice view of the smaller one, the moon pyramid. The view was amazing!

You can see the moon pyramid to right and behind me in the right hand picture. 

Guanajuato was a really cool town, also. We were there for a conference, but we got to look around a little bit. We went to the Diego Rivera museum there and on a Callejoneada, which is like a singing walk around the town lead by a small band. 

On our way back to Mexico City, we stopped by a town called San Miguel de Allende. There was a beautiful cathedral there, and some more beautiful streets and architecture. It was a nice town to visit!

In all, I had a wonderful time in Mexico. I was able to see it from a completely different angle and really experience the culture and art, especially during Dia de los Muertos. These pictures also don't include the wonderful and delicious food we ate! All in all, it was so much fun and I can't wait to go back again!

Candy Crush Halloween Costume

This year for Halloween, I decided to make a Candy Crush costume. Candy Crush is a highly addicting game for iPhone (and technically Facebook) which I have been playing for quite a while and have made it to the "end" a few times (before each level update -- I think I'm on level 485 at the moment). I got the idea for this costume from this youtube video, but I changed it up a bit.

I first made patterns for all six pieces and stapled them to the appropriate colored felt. I decided on felt because it is so cheap and on stapling because I didn't have enough pins! For the blue pieces, since they have a band down the middle, I put in the band with an extra small piece of felt. After sewing all the pieces (which surprisingly went incredibly quickly), I removed all of the staples and patterns (this part took quite a while)! Here are all of the pieces stapled and cut out, a close-up of the blue pieces, and all of the pieces of paper removed after sewing:

After removing all of the staples and patterns, I turned the pieces inside out (also very time consuming!). I made 6 of each color with one of those being stripe-y, and three of the brown ones with multi-colored dots. Here they are all laid out along with detailed shots of a few of them: 

Next, I stuffed and closed up all the pieces. I also thought this would be time consuming, but it was relatively quick. Here are all of the cute pieces: 

I went ahead and put stick-on velcro on the back of all the pieces. I also made a very simple skirt (out of some black material I had) with a elastic waistband.

On the skirt, I put the other side of the stick-on velcro. I decided to do 4 rows of 5 pieces on the front and the same thing on the back. Then I started putting the pieces on: 

All done (I thought)! I took a few pictures of me wearing the skirt and found out that the velcro -- especially the side stuck onto the skirt -- was not too secure (you can see how one piece is missing off of the back view!). On the pieces, I used a glue gun to attach the velcro more securely. On the skirt, I sewed over the velcro. The sewing over velcro turned out to be a terrible, terrible idea. The sticky part on the velcro not only gunked up my needle, but also the inside of my sewing machine. I had to clean everything out and it was so icky! I do not recommend sewing over stick-on velcro. Ever. I have definitely learned my lesson. Either way, after I secured the velcro on both sides, the pieces stayed on a lot better. 

I went to a Halloween party wearing my costume (right hand picture, with the cobweb) and people not only got a kick out of the Candy Crush aspect but were also delighted when I told them they could move the pieces around. I had so much fun making this and wearing it! The pieces are really cute!

Ukraine, Italy, and Russia Trip

As I'm in Geneva right now, waiting to fly back to the US early tomorrow, I figured I'd finally update about my Europe trip this past September.

I first arrived in Kiev for a week, where I spent some quality time at the summer house (aka one of my favorite places in the world).

Then, my cousin, uncle, and aunt-to-be flew to Italy where their wedding was to be held. We spent the first night in Genoa, and then settled in our villa in the cute little town of Portofino. Our villa was situated in a picturesque part overlooking the sea and Portofino. However, this meant that to get to it, we had to climb up a hill for 20 minutes. We did have our own swimming access, which was wonderful and scared me really badly due to sketchy-ness of the stairs connecting the dock-part to the steps up to the villa.

Genoa was beautiful port city which had very Italian streets. Nate, my brother, uncle, and cousin posing in the street. 

View from the dock of the villa and the rickety stairs I was really scared of. Nate, my brother and cousin making fun of me at the bottom. 

View of the town of Portofino from a villa (not the one we were staying at) at the top. 

The wedding was in a cute little church, only accessible by boat. The reception was extravagant and went late, late, late into the night.

On the last day, my mom and I traveled to Cinque Terre. Because we got a late start on the day (due to aforementioned reception), we only made it to two of the towns (Monterosso & Riomaggiore), but they were amazing! We heard lots of good things about Vernazza and were meaning to see that on the way back but due to train schedules, it was just impossible. Next time!

Nice map stolen from Wikitravel that shows the five towns. 

The two towns we did make it to. So cute! The second had so many stairs!!

Finally, my parents and I traveled to Moscow, where I spent some more quality time at another summer house. This one was recently remodeled and was just so awesome. It now has a shower that plays the radio! My parents and I also went into the city and once again, I was overwhelmed with how Americanized everything has become in large European cities. We saw lots of American restaurants -- even a Krispy Kreme. Even here in Geneva, there is Starbucks and McDonalds on every corner. I even saw a Pain Quotidien today!

Remodeled summer house -- once built by my great, great, great grandfather. 

Martha's Vineyard

Olga visited for July 4th weekend and on that Friday, we went to Martha's Vineyard for a day.

We woke up early and drove down to Wood's Hole to take the ferry to the Vineyard. We wanted to get some Pie in the Sky before getting on the ferry but underestimated the available parking in Wood's Hole. Turns out we had to drive back about 20 minutes for parking and take a bus back to Wood's Hole (another 25-30 minutes). Therefore, we grabbed a later ferry than anticipated, but still made it to the island before noon.

Once on the ferry, I called a bike shop on the Vineyard that I had googled. We were able to reserve two mountain bikes to bike around the island. We got a great deal: something like $35 for two bikes for the day (helmets and a lock included). We were able to grab some lunch before setting off on our ride.

Here is the route we took:

We started at Oak Bluffs and went to Edgartown (but didn't quite make it) and then came back through Vineyard Haven to Oak Bluffs. We tried to geocache but the only one we ended up getting involved us badly bitten by small bugs, so we decided to cut our loses and stop there.

Here is a view of our bikes at the closest point we got to Edgartown:

Some photos from Vineyard Haven (where we ate some yummy ice cream and checked out a cute book shop) next to the water:

And finally, one last photo of Oak Bluffs on our way back to the ferry:

In the end, we were on the island for about 7 hours total, biked over 15 miles, ate yummy food, saw some beautiful sights, and got a bit sunburnt in the process. A wonderful day trip!

Catching up (again)

Since the last post, I have had a very busy last few months with only a few craft projects and tons and tons of traveling (4 countries: Ukraine, Italy, Russia, Mexico; 3 states: Missouri, Vermont, Texas; and an island: Martha's Vineyard), so a catch up is in order. The posts that follow this one will go over the international trips, the trip to Martha's Vineyard, and my halloween costume.

For now, a few smaller projects:

1. My friend Kate had a baby in the middle of July and I made her a cute little newborn jacket from this book (that my brother got me for Christmas last year).

2. I made another small crocheted bear for a friend, this time modifying this free pattern.

3. We finally got new windows last week! I first posted about this a year ago, but we finally got around to it. They are wonderful! They look exactly the same from inside and outside, but you can't feel the wind through them and our heat hasn't gone on since I got back 24 hours ago. The only issue is that our blinds had to be removed and don't fit back in so we are going to need to get new blinds or better curtains. Stay tuned on what we decide. 

Hiking Flattop Mountain

Every year, Nate's family takes a vacation to Rocky Mountain National Park. We have been going a few years now and usually there is one intense hike that we do. Three years ago, we got up to hike in the dark and then watch the sunrise from above tree line. This year, we didn't get up that early (only 4:30am), but did have an ALL day hike. This was the 8.6-mile round-trip hike to Flattop Mountain. This is a hard hike in general, but since this was early June, there was still a good deal of snow on the hike. For about a full mile to mile and a half in the middle of the hike (meaning up to 3 miles round trip) we attempted to hike through, around, and on top of snow banks, measuring up to 3-4 feet. That is the part that really got me. I could handle the sun, elevation, exhaustion, but that snow... it really did me and everybody else in. However, we persevered and all got up to the top! And then persevered again and all got to the bottom in one piece! It was definitely one successful and intense hike!

L: There was 4G pretty much all the way up the mountain so Nate was using a remote desktop app to control his computer at home and run some code! Of course!

R: Nate and I at the Dream Lake Overlook (995' climb up and 1.6 miles in)

T: Panorama as we were approaching the tree line (with Nate's cousin and uncle)

B: Nate and I at the Emerald Lake Overlook (1,882' climb up and 2.9 miles in) -- this was after a good deal of the snow so we are happy but exhausted

T: Nate taking a picture of the crew all huddled up and eating lunch (2,660' climb up and 3.9 miles in)

B: Panorama of the perennial snow bank right before the top (I may have taken this a bit too quickly because I was unrealistically worried about the threat of avalanche)

T: Panorama of the top of Flattop Mountain (4.3 mile hike and 2,849' climb up to put us at 12,324' -- over two miles up from sea level)

L: Nate and I posing by a flag near the top

R: A shot from the top where you can see the parking lot where we parked our car (surreal and sort of sad!)