* It's very strange to come to a place after you've seen so much of it on TV and the Movies and thought about it and read about it. Here I am in New York City. Of course, as the first days I've had on my own since I left Australia, being here has coincided with some homesickness. I have enjoyed doing the New York things too but am missing people from home quite a bit.

Last night I saw my first Broadway show: 'The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee' which was great - very funny and clever.

I've also been to Rockerfeller Plaza and the Museum of Modern Art. MoMA was incredible: Picassos, Matisses, Pollocks, Van Goghs, Warhols and Monets everywhere you look!

I'm going to head of to Central Park now (have to rug up though - it's quite wintery today!).

xoxoxo

* Hi from Indianapolis where it's apparently considered warm these days if it gets above 5C (Jessie has used the word 'heatwave' a few times today). It certainly is warmer than when I arrived (see the photo in the previous post of snow on the runway after I landed at the airport) and it hasn't snowed for a few days.

When I got here I was amazed to see the amount of snow. This is Jessie&Daniel's street last weekend:

Jessie and I (and Daniel when he wasn't working) have been very cultured, visiting the Indiana World War Memorial (see pic below), the Indianapolis Children's Museum and the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art as well as sampling real American food like Chilli and Macaroni&Cheese. And you can't go far before you get reminded again that the Indianapolis Colts recently won the superbowl (apparently that makes them World Champions (Jessie&I find that interesting considering American football is only played by American teams....)) :)


The Children's Museum (see below) had a beautiful enormous glass sculpture and also a kind of revolving lounge chair thing that you could lie on and look up at a glass floor above that had the bottom section of the sculpture on it. This is us looking up and then what we were looking at. There was also cool (literally!) sculpture out the front.

This was a photo from the American Indian museum we went to today. I thought it was a really interesting reflection on the different perspectives of time for different cultures.

So, tomorrow I head off to New York. It's been great to hang out with Daniel, Jessie, Sydney and Shmoody (and they've put up with my coughing and sniffling admirably). I'm sure I'll be back to visit again.



Bye Sydney! Bye Shmoody!

* OK, well, it's been an interesting 24hours (THIS POST HAS BEEN UPDATED).

I drove from Mammoth to Reno which was a great drive and I was reeeeeeaaaaaaalllllyy early for my flight (I know that some of you were impressed with that ;) ). Unfortunately U.S Airways was not so early - my flight was delayed by approx. 1hour (the plane hadn't turned up yet). Anyway, we boarded and headed for Phoenix (I had to go via there to get to Indianapolis) - just before we got to Phoenix there was an electrical storm right over the airport so we hung around for a while and then didn't have enought fuel to wait any longer so we had to go to Tucson (it's also in Arizona). We sat on the plane at Tucson for an hour or so and then flew back to Phoenix (fortunately despite this awful head cold I have, I had no sinus problems as we were landing each time - yay!).

Of course by the time I got back to Phoenix my flight to Indy had left and I couldn't get on another one until the same scheduled flight the next night (ie 7.22pm which is in about 4 hours from now). I looked into going via other places but there are concerns about weather in some of them also. I also looked into another airline (yes, a bit like the 'Amazing Race' but I wasn't feeling so amazing by this time) but it was ridiculously expensive. So I was going to have to call a number and hopefully get a hotel room (at a discounted rate). Anyway, a large group of people who were travelling together obviously made enough of a complaint (because although it wasn't American Airlines fault re:the weather, we would have avoided the weather if they'd been on time initially) and I overheard an American Airlines worker getting them free hotel accomodation. So I jumped on the bandwagon and ended up at the Clarion Hotel which was not bad at all (actually I wish that I'd been here in summer, the pool and spa look great)!

Anyway, I'm just about to go back to the airport and get on a plane to finally get to Indy (am praying for decent weather in Indy 'cause it's looking fine here in Phoenix). I've spent most of the day in bed trying to sleep and get over this cold. Poor Jessie&Daniel! I hope I don't sniffle round their house all week!

Will put some pix up soon of my beautiful drive from Mammoth to Reno. xoxox.

Update: yes, I made it to Indianapolis - it was amazing to fly in and see snow piled up beside the runway (I took this dodgy photo out of the window after we'd stopped) :

And here are a couple of pix of my drive from Mammoth to Reno:

* OK, I can't pretend I'm in summer any more. I drove here to Mammoth Lakes on Thursday 8th Feb via South Lake Tahoe - what a beautiful drive. It's amazing how quickly the scenery became moutainous. The above pix are my first view of South Lake Tahoe.

I'm staying in Crowley Lake (a bit of a lower elevation than Mammoth (Mammoth is where the skiing is) which is lovely. I'm staying in a lodge owned by the church that my friends Matt&Abby (and their gorgeous little 6 week old baby Nissi) go to.

I got to do a short amount of skiing (making sure I took it easy and didn't re-injure my knee) which is fine as my lift ticket was free (Matt does some volunteering ski instructing here) and the ski hire is pretty cheap and have also bought my first real north american winter jacket while shopping in Mammoth (while it was snowing outside!)

And last night it absolutely bucketed down snow in Crowley Lake (well, from my Australian perspective!). This was the balcony outside my room after all the snow overnight!

I walked to church (just a 5/10min walk) in light snow this morning which was gorgeous. It's been fantastic to see this beautiful part of God's creation in rain, snow and sunshine (the sunshine came during church).

Church was fantastic too - only one song I knew: 'How Great Is Our God' http://www.stlyrics.com/songs/c/christomlin5864/howgreatisourgod864975.html (which was the same 'one song' I knew at church last week in Davis - it's also one of my favourites (thanks Matt T from SGCS for teaching it to me!)) - it was great to worship with other christians and to be really challenged by the preaching to not have a hard heart - there was heaps more to it than just that one idea but I'm still processing.

Here's some more wintery pix: http://picasaweb.google.com/bec.kimpton/MammothCalifornia_8142_07

* My time here in Davis is nearly up but I've had time for a few more adventures. Alex and I took the kids for a walk to the park down the street where one of the attractions is a giant slide (well, it's pretty wide and about twice as long as a normal slippery dip - and it's made out of cement!) Basically just a big cement hill that kids slide down - with or without a cardboard box to slide on. Surprise, surprise, while we were there (but on the the other side of the park) 2 fire trucks and an ambulance arrived as a kid had broken his leg on the slide. Once he was taken care of the fireman gave Stu&Catriona (Alex's kids) a plastic fireman's hat so it was all a big adventure for them.

I also got to check out where Rob does his Vet work at UC Davis. How do you get a large animal (eg a horse) onto this for an operation? You use this: (the hydrolics are amazing).

Today we also took a walk through the Arboretum at the university http://arboretum.ucdavis.edu/ - like a botanic gardens really.


It was lovely and provided all the cliche North American winter pics (ie squirrels

and fir trees (although I hope no-one too horticultural is reading this because I'm not too good on my identification of trees - there was a Sycamore tree though (it had a label) so I sang a few lines from 'Dream A Little Dream Of Me': http://www.mathematik.uni-ulm.de/paul/lyrics/mamasandpapas/dream.html)
- I also sung the appropriate references from 'Little Known Facts' from 'You're A Good Man Charlie Brown': http://www.allthelyrics.com/song/226047/ - Rosie should appreciate that :) )

One last pic for this post: the view from Rob&Alex's house - I thought it was a typical American scene (ie the huge cars and the basketball hoop on a quite little suburban street).

You can see more pix at: http://picasaweb.google.com/bec.kimpton/SanFranDavisCalifornia_1207

* Today was exploring Davis day: breakfast down at the posh Nugget supermarket with Steph, Rob&Alex, Stu and Catriona. After lunch Steph, Al and I got on the push bikes (no helmets required - very freeing!) and rode into Davis.

This whole area reminds me of many seemingly conflicting things: Canberra (ie the grid style, very planned layout of the suburbs + mostly single storey houses. Oh, + the cold!), Movies&TV like 'Stand By Me', 'The Wonder Years' and 'The Brady Bunch' (ie the cycling through the neat little streets, the standard sloping driveways and typical American style house architecture) - what a confusing melting pot of memories, hey? It really is a lovely place.

Al&Steph had foot massages while I walked around and got reasonably (but not permanently) lost, despite the very ordered layout of downtown Davis streets (ie a grid of letternames (ie A,B,C,D,E etc) and numbers (ie 1st, 2nd, 3rd etc)). I had a yummy hot chocolate while reading my new book that Chuckie bought me before I left Aus and then met up with Al&Steph for a visit to Borders.
Steph showed off her ability to ride 'no hands' on the way home (and I got some 'Hershey Kisses' - my fave American chocolate)!


Tonight I put in some time online looking into New York options (re: theatre and accomodation (what else would I need in New York?!) for later this month.

* After 2 years of God preparing me for some changes in my life, 1 year planning this specific change, here I am at the start of this 'next thing'! (Check the itinerary here: http://picasaweb.google.com.au/bec.kimpton/BecSItinerary/photo#5027523744344956754 )

It's been fairly emotional saying goodbye to people (and places: see the pic of my fave Sydney beach Tamarama) for the last month or so but also wonderful to spend the time with friends and family.

And on Thursday the 1st of February 2007 it finally came: the final packing of the bags (and suprise, suprise, some of it was still happening on the morning of the flight) and the trip to the airport. I had a pretty good flight (here's a tip: on the sides the last couple of rows of the plane there are only 2 seats (instead of the normal 3) and extra leg room if you have the window seat (which I did) - it was great!). I sat next to a fellow Monty Python/Musical theatre/TV fan (funny since I was reading some Monty Python that Erin had printed out for me) so we got on well.

And at the end of it all were Alex&Steph (friends from Sydney), waiting to pick me up at San Francisco. We had a great day (which forced me to stay awake - very helpful in changing time zones) seeing Fisherman's Wharf (including heaps of seals and a view of Alcatraz),

buying a new digital camera, a cable car ride through the steep streets of San Fran and a little sleep in the car on the way back to Rob&Alex's place. Most pix here are self explanatory but I just had to take a pic of the 'Shoe Pavillion' sign - most of you know my 'thing' for shoes - I managed not to go in - aren't I strong! You can see more pics here: http://picasaweb.google.com.au/bec.kimpton/SanFranDavisCalifornia_1207