Tales from Back East #2

Since we went back east, we decided to go visit some friends of Jeff's. Jeff served his mission in New Jersey, and we thought, hey, since we're out there, we'll stop and look around.

One place we spent a lot of time at was Wall, NJ. As you can see, it is near the ocean. Even though it was a pretty cold and gray day, we decided to stop and hang out on the beach for a little bit. Despite it being cold out, the water was still warmer than the Pacific!



There were a ton of these little shells all over the beach. Although it's hard to tell in this picture, there were little tiny baby shells inside of this one.

We also had dinner with the Mason-O'Connors-Mohamed-Loxton (had to make sure everyone was covered!) family. Jeff had met the mom, Laurie, and her children, David, Thomas and Victoria, on his mission, and they were kind enough to invite us over to their house for dinner. Laurie was nice enough to BBQ for us, and we had chicken and lamb in grape leaves. YUM!

From left to right: David, Mustafa, Laurie, Thomas, Jeff, Jen, and Victoria (Oldest daughter Christina wasn't able to come, and dad Jeff was taking the picture!)

It was a nice break to have food that didn't come from a drive-thru, and we were all able to catch
up. Hard to believe the last time Jeff was there was 7 years ago. We're hoping to go back again soon, and if not, at least not to wait 7 years before our next visit!

-----------------------------------------------

Another part of New Jersey that we enjoyed visiting was Princeton. Jen was dying to go (although she kept making jokes about John Nash and the Whiffenpoofs).

While there, we met with Jeff's friend, William Sotovando. Since Jeff last saw William, he got married, had a little boy, and they are expecting another baby this summer. They were kind enough to take us on a tour of the university. If you flip through our photo albums, you'll see lots of pictures we took, especially of the Hogwarts-like library.

Jeff with the Sotovando family.

We didn't find John Nash but we got cool pictures of ourselves outside the buildings!

-----------------------------------------------

And that covers the chunk of our trip that was New Jersey! Hopefully we can catch up with our blog before we leave again. On Monday, we plan on heading to Logan, Utah, for a speech-pathology conference for Jen (and, yeah, another mini-break). Hope you've been enjoying our photo album, and now that we've kind of figured it out, we should have more photos up from our next trips!

Tales from Back East #1

So, rather than be productive and clean the house or do homework, instead, now is the time to recall some of the misadventures of our trip to Philadelphia, NYC and New Jersey. Rather than bore you with some of Jen's work stuff, we'll just keep it to the vacation parts itself!

--------------------------------------------

Originally we had planned on staying at the hotel Jen's conference was located. However, that really didn't go over too well with us when we found out how pricey it would be to do so. Trying to be a little money-conscientious, Jen searched online and found The Rittenhouse. The Rittenhouse is a small little boutique hotel, kind of like a bed and breakfast. Jen liked it because it was an older building near Rittenhouse Square, a park that Jen was able to walk through while Jeff was in New Jersey and play with some local dogs (Jen was very homesick for our pooches). During the evenings they had little mingling groups, and the staff was very helpful at telling us where things were, like late-night diners and the banks. It was also pretty close to the downtown area in Philadelphia, so we were close enough to Jen's conference (less than a mile away) and still close enough to do some sight seeing!

--------------------------------------------
Here you see the backs of several people. You're probably wondering why we only got this. That would be Jeff's fault ;-)

While touring the monuments of Philadelphia, outside of Independence Hall, we noticed there were several groups of young college kids running around. Some had numbers like a runner in a marathon would wear, others had weird shirts. While we were taking photos, the guy with the #20 shirt approached Jen and asked if she was a local or a tourist. She said we were from California, and he took her over to the group. It turns out that all these people were there for a scavenger hunt, and there task was to find someone from out of state to take a photo with them. The pose they did was from the movie, Rocky, and everyone did the pose with their hands over their heads. Unfortunately, the downside of this was that, after Jeff had taken everyone else's pictures, he forgot to take one with OUR camera. But we did get this of them walking away from us (possibly slightly inebriated). So if anyone recognizes these people's backsides, let me know; I want a copy of the photo!


--------------------------------------------

We had quite a few more adventures in Philadelphia. It took us a few visits before we saw everything in the historic portion, because the hours were limited and clashed with Jen's conferences. We did manage to go through Independence Hall, but they limit the number of people that go in, so you have to go to the information center, get tickets and then take your tour. We also got to see some of the older buildings, see where the Declaration of Independence was written as well as the Constitution, and check out the Liberty Bell (the photos on the right should be up now, and should show you what we got to see there!).

Philadelphia is also where we had our "big dinner". Usually on vacation, we'll treat ourselves to a nicer dinner than the typical vacation food we pick up on the road or at a quick pit-stop. In Philadelphia, we decided to go to Fogo de Chao. It's a Brazilian churrascaria steakhouse, were servers bring out your food to you. If you've never had Brazilian churrascaria, basically they roast different meats on long swords, just like the gauchos do, and carve off your portions for you. It's a lot of meat, and it's very simply seasoned, but it was delicious! At this particular restaurant, they were very quick to keep the drinks topped off, keep offering us food, and to clean up to prepare for the next customers but still were very friendly. Jen actually timed it; it took 45 seconds for them to remove the dishes, linens and change the place settings on a table!

--------------------------------------------

Well, that's one bit of our big vacation. Hopefully by the end of the week we can get everything shared, because next week we're off again for another much shorter trip!

Take care, all!

One Trip Down...

Hello, everyone!

We just got back from the first of the three planned trips this summer (and definitely the longest!) Jen's work offered her the chance to go to Philadelphia for a conference. The conference ran from Sunday through Wednesday, but since it was so close to Jeff's mission (New Jersey, Cherry Hill, which we found was combined with others and technically doesn't exist anymore), and we both wanted to go to New York, we decided to make a vacation out of it. We flew out of Oakland and landed in Philadelphia Friday night, stayed in Philly until Thursday, and then stayed the rest of the trip in Newark, New Jersey, which was close enough to where we wanted to visit.

Eventually some of the wacky adventures we went on will be posted on here (probably when Jen finishes her homework projects she's behind on) but we did manage to put some pictures on the blog. Now, to the right, there are new Picasa pictures; one from our trip to Disneyland last January, and then all the photos of what we saw back east.

As a small update to whet your appetite, here are some of the other goings-on in the Perry household.

Jeff completed his Spring semester of school, and did well in his classes. He is now working on getting his practicum going. For his degree, there is a three-part series of classes he needs to take in order to get his degree: the practicum, the externship, and the grants project. The practicum involves volunteering for about 30 hours over the course of a term at a child care facility, giving direct assistance to the children and writing up observations. Then, after he completes this, he must complete an externship with another site, like a day care or a hospital, for a set number of hours, depending on how many units he wants, and do more write-ups and observations. The last portion, the grant writing project, involves doing research and creating a presentation for a fictional agency, requesting funds from various sources to accomplish the agency's mission. They have to be taken sequentially, each one a semester's worth of work, along with his regular coursework as well. Slowly but surely, though, he's plugging away.

On the plus side, work is going better for him. A few people that were not working out left, and now he is back to hiring staff. Despite being short-staffed, all appears to be going well for now, so keep your fingers crossed that he'll find great employees!

As for Jen, coming back to work on Tuesday was a little tough. Without going into details, one of the projects she was working on hit a huge roadblock with the budgets, and at first it seemed impossible to get everything done in order to treat the patients and continue the study. But, with a lot of perseverance and work (and TONS of phone calls and emails!) everything came together this afternoon, in time for her patient's visit on Monday and Tuesday. So for now everything is set, and hopefully there won't be any more hiccups!

School is going well for Jen as well. The bad news is, because of our travels, her schoolwork fell behind a little. Fortunately it's a self-paced course, so she didn't miss any deadlines or anything. And on her physiology exam for that class (a tough topic for her) she managed to score 88%, so she is still in range for an A!

Well, it is starting to get late, so we will wrap it up here for now. Stay tuned for some of our stories!