Thoughts

I have been looking over my past blogs and thinking about the journey I have taken that is chronicled in them. I guess that is a good reason for updating this one, so I can look back and remember what it was like to experience the east coast and grad school for the first time. I used to mainly write for the comments, but I don't think those will be plenty unless I get a dedicated readership outside of our friends and family. However, I now like to think I'm writing to record my journey and let the people we love know that we're okay.

I've had mixed feelings on returning home. On one hand, I love California and miss it all the time when we're in North Carolina. The food's cheaper, family's here, and there are no due dates to worry about. On the other hand, I miss the excitement of North Carolina and how there always seems to be something to do. I didn't think that would really happen. I guess it's not missing North Carolina per se, but the people and being able to do things on my own. I don't feel as if I'm really taking advantage of being home in California again.

Of course, I think it would be more fun if Nick were here. We always have things to do when we're together and it sucks to only be able to talk to him on the phone. I have resigned myself to looking at pictures on facebook when I miss looking at his face. I feel stalkerish and it's my own freaking boyfriend. =)
...

Last night I watched Mamma Mia! with my mom. I have to confess that I love musicals. I really do. However, musicals in movie form have never been that great for me, with the exception being "The Sound of Music." Nick and I might try to go watch "Rent" for our anniversary in January. Quite a step down from Hawaii (what we did last year) but I think it will be sweet and fun. I can't believe it will be 6 years in less than a month.

Merry Christmas!

Hello everyone! Nick and I wanted to wish everyone happy holidays and thanks for being such great friends during our 2008 transition. We feel so lucky to know you and want to thank you for your support. This is an open invitation to visit us in North Carolina. Please come!

I hope 2009 is an exciting year filled with lots of good things. =)

Annika's Christmas Program

Last night I went to watch Annika sing Christmas carols with her preschool class. It was cute. The place was packed with kids. Here are two videos for your enjoyment. Can you spot her? Hint: she's in the front row.

p.s. We have a youtube account now!

Menu for Hope V

If you're a big food blog follower like me, you've probably heard of Menu for Hope. Started by Pim of Chez Pim, it's where food bloggers come together to raise money for schoolchildren through the UN World Food Programme. Last year they raised $90,000.

What Menu for Hope does is simple: participating blogs from all over the world offer up prizes, ranging from amazing dinners to food kits to chocolate to personalized cooking classes. Each prize will have its own raffle drawing. Now, where we come in: $10 gets you one raffle ticket that you can put toward the prize of your choice. You can donate as much as you want and disperse the tickets among the prizes you want. I donated $60 and chose to put it as one ticket each toward six different prizes.

The donations are collected by FirstGiving, so it doesn't go directly to the pockets of the bloggers. You can see how much has been donated directly, and the instructions are pretty simple.

Each region has a host blog that lists that region's prizes. Some of them are very regional, such as dinner at specific restaurants, but others that are listed by region can be shipped all over. I suggest you guys check out the master list at Chez Pim here although it might be a good idea to check out the regional hosts' list because I've seen some prizes listed there that aren't on the master list. You can also see what Menu for Hope has done for school children in Lesotho in the past here and here.

Happy holidays!

I survived!

Well, I survived through finals and made it back across the country to LA. It was pretty hard at times, but eventually it didn't seem to be that important to me. I mean, after I finished my massive GIS project, I felt a lot better even though I had two more finals to take. To celebrate, Nick and I did some Christmas shopping and then stopped at Pop's for dinner. If you remember, in one of my previous posts I mentioned it was on the list of places I wanted to try.

I loved the atmosphere and the butternut squash soup I had as an appetizer. My entree, the special, left something to be desired. It was seared sea scallops on a bed of sauteed vegetables, braised cabbage, and thin strips of cured beef. The scallops were overly salted, the vegetables were swimming in butter, and the beef was very salty. It was a very rich dish which had potential, but it needed something acidic and fresh to cut down the richness of the dish.

Nick had the pan-fried grouper with parmigiano-reggiano and stewed tomatoes and he loved it. I'm going to chalk this up to the special not being quite fully developed and stick to the pasta next time. The bread they served us was excellent too. I really like the feel of the place. It felt like a place you would meet good friends after a long day or to celebrate something.

On Saturday Nick dropped me off on Ninth Street to do some shopping while he went to his ultimate frisbee game. I felt bad about not going, but I really needed to get this shopping done. I like shopping locally and the stores on Ninth are very eclectic and cute. I think I found some great things there. Afterward, Emily and I dropped Lisanne off at the airport and made our way over to the mall for some more marathon shopping. I pretty much finished my list and scored a few things for myself, too. =) All in a day's work!

Now I'm home and I've been enjoying the nieces quite a bit. I hope I get adjusted to the time change soon and eat some more great food. Happy holidays, everyone!

Cash or credit?

I'm dying slowly from finals, but here's a video to make you laugh:

Middle of Finals List Mania

I am stuck deep in a hell called finals week. I have a massive GIS project due and two crazy finals to study for and I am totally unprepared. I wish it was Christmas break already. I would be back in California, stuffing my face full of all the wonderful food home has to offer. I plan on hitting old favorites and new supercool, blog-worthy restaurants.

I decided, in this high-stress situation, that I needed to make lists. So here they are:

Top 5 Restaurants, ever:
1. Chef Mavro, Honolulu, HI - January 2008
2. The Kitchen, Sacramento, CA - July 2008
3. Auberge du Soleil restaurant, Rutherford, CA - January 2006
4. Redd, Yountville, CA - February 2008
5. The Restaurant at the Getty Los Angeles, CA - June 2006

Top SGV eats:
1. Seven courses of beef
2. Banh cuon
3. Hu tieu noodles at Mien Nghia
4. dim sum
5. pho

Top 5 places I want to try in the Durham area:
1. Magnolia Grill
2. Rue Cler and Bakery
3. Lantern
4. Nana's
5. Pop's

Top 5 restaurants I miss in Davis:
1. Thai Bistro
2. Chuy's
3. Zen Toro
4. Seasons
5. Cafe Mediteranee

As you can see, this has nothing to do with finals. Go me!

Gay Marriage: the Musical!

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

Giving thanks

Hey, it's been a while since I posted! The week was as crazy as I expected, and it's not going to stop until December 12. At least I was able to give myself a break for Thanksgiving! We had 9 people over, including Syl from Boston and Jerry and Winnie from Davis. It was really awesome to see them because I hadn't seen Syl in a year and Jerry and Winnie since we left Davis in August. Nick and I used to see them almost every week for dinner!

We were also joined by close friends from the Nicholas school and we crowded around the table eating the delicious turkey that Nick made. He worked his ass off the night before and the meat came out moist and nicely flavored. Yay for Alton Brown! He made some great gravy, too. To go with the turkey, I made (with lots of help):

Green bean casserole
Buttermilk caramelized-shallot mashed potatoes
Cornbread stuffing (I made the cornbread from scratch the day before)
Golden-crusted brussel spouts
and Emily made sweet potatoes, and two pies: pumpkin and apple
and Robyn made apple crisp

Pictures from Thanksgiving here.

After dinner we were cleaned out of everything but turkey, stuffing, and mashed potatoes. We played some Wii and Uno and called it a night at around 11ish. It was a really nice way to have our first Thanksgiving away from home.

The night before we had dinner at Rockwood Filling Station. Lyndsay, if you're reading this, the ham and egg pizza with the fried farm egg on top was as delicious as it sounded. I was let down again by their spinach salad, but I've only got one more salad to go before I write off their salads completely.


Yesterday we took Syl to the taco stand La Vaquita, with the cow on top. She had two tacos, I had two tacos and a tamale, and Nick had a burrito. The tamale was my favorite thing, and came wrapped in a banana leaf. It really reminded me of my favorite Vietnamese dish that's also wrapped in banana leaves. Afterward we went to Target, had gelato at Francesca's and checked out the cute stores on Ninth Street. Nick said one store reminded him of Nucleus in Alhambra.

We came back and I got to watch the No Reservations episode on Hawaii that I had been wanting to see for the last 8 months. It was exciting because he went to a couple places that we went to when we were there. Then Nick and I made curry turkey pot pie as our first turkey leftover remake and it was delicious. After dinner and watching Transformers, I packed Syl a travel bento.

It had a mini bagel with cream cheese, leftover turkey meat, mini cucumber slices, fresh-baked (by Nick) banana nut bread, roasted red pepper hummus, and an almond-raspberry jam cookie from Francesca's.


Here's to another 10 years of friendship, Sylvia!


Did you notice I'm wearing my old SGHS sweatshirt??

Finally, it's the weekend

I got through a horrible week only to prepare myself for the one that's coming up next. This past week I had two papers, a presentation, GIS, and homework due. This next week I have a take-home midterm, GIS, a 6 page single spaced paper, an abstract and press release write-up, and another presentation. All of those things except GIS are due Wednesday. Crazy!

Last night we watched "Rachel Getting Married" with some friends at the Carolina Theater in downtown Durham. The theater was creepily empty and I felt like I was in an ensemble bad horror movie. I don't think I'd be the main character so that means I'd probably come to some grisly end.

The movie proceeded to make me feel nauseated because of the shaky camera movement and quick cuts from shot to shot. I think I would have liked it better without all the movement...but it wouldn't be the same movie. I thought Anne Hathaway was excellent in it. The wedding itself was great in all its quirkiness. Not like any Chinese wedding I've been to...but those are crazy in their own ways.

Today we stayed in because of the rain, but this afternoon we stopped by the post office and small Asian market. There's a Habitat Hand-me-Up store next to the post office. It's a store that people donate things to, which customers can buy. The proceeds go to Habitat for Humanity. They have kitchen wares, books, furniture, and building supplies.

Nick and I were looking for casserole dishes. We missed the ones we left in California, and we needed some for Thanksgiving. This is what we found:


Two covered casseroles and a ceramic loaf pan. All for $16. They look like they'll last a long time, which is great because we are planning on keeping them for a while and not buying new ones and contributing to the downfall of the Earth. I love that they're plain white, too. Yay for secondhand stores! They also had a kitchenaid mixer for $75 that we briefly considered getting. You know, for all the baked goods Nick plans on making. =)

p.s. We might also be hearing good news next week. I'll keep you posted.

The right to marry is about love, not politics or religion

I am so sad that people I know voted for this ban. Even my own mom. I could only post this now, a week after the result came out, because I was so depressed. I questioned humanity and my beloved home state last Wednesday. I thought that we could be progressive there, as we have been with global warming and eliminating cigarettes from public places. I think it is fear of the unknown and of the lies that the proponents of the ban spread throughout their campaign. It is not taking away the rights of heterosexuals to marry. It's just opening the doors for them to have the same rights as we do.

People use religion as reasoning for all sorts of things. And most of the time, this is their own personal space. But when it is used to oppress a group of people, that's when it makes me angry. It is hard for me to sort out my feelings about whether there is a God and whether the way religion approaches Him is the right way. However, I feel that God, if He is there, loves everyone equally and would not support what Prop 8 denied as a basic right to every human being. I think He is wondering what we are doing to ourselves.

Basketball and dinner

On Wednesday I scored some tickets for us to watch a Duke basketball exhibition game. They were from campout, where I camped out for 3 days with 6 hours of sleep total and didn't get a ticket. However, my group got some so I reserved two for us and borrowed an ID from one of my half-Asian guy friends for Nick to use. Score for all Asians looking the same here, right?

We ate dinner at Nosh with Emily A. before the game. It reminded me of Pluto's in Davis because it was order at the counter and the menu was full of sandwiches, salads, and pizza. Nick went for a BLT with pasta salad, and Emily got an egg salad sandwich with couscous. I originally was going to get a sandwich as well but I saw a picture of one of their pizzas that had asiago and caramelized onions served with a mesclun salad on top.


The game was against Lenoir-Rhyne which wikipedia tells me is in Hickory, NC and is evangelical-Lutheran affiliated. Needless to say, it was a blowout. 95 to 43, I believe. The thing that was cool about going was that Cameron stadium is tiny. I think it holds 9,000 people total. And the student section is pretty much standing room only. The atmosphere was crazy and I swore I could almost touch the Duke basketball players. I can't imagine what it's like for the big games against Maryland, Georgetown, and of course, UNC. Pictures here.


On Friday night we hosted an impromptu dinner at our house. We didn't eat until really late, 9:30, but it was delicious. Nick made lentil soup with bacon and chicken with garlic, shallots, and herbs. I made sweet potato risotto and salad with the local lettuce we had. Emily made collard greens stir fried with soy sauce and sesame oil, and apple crisp with the apples we had. She even bought me lactose-free vanilla ice cream! They apparently add lactase to the mix.

I was very happy with how the risotto came out. I was a little worried when I started cooking it because I haven't ever made that much before. The arborio rice and sweet potato went together really well. Of course Nick's food was delicious, and Emily's stuff came out really well too. We brought out the last of our parmesan-black pepper bread from Guglhupf and we spread the soft garlic from the chicken on it.

Afterward we talked a lot and got to talking about boy bands of the late '90s. Emily, Lisanne, and I started singing along (and in Lisanne's case, dancing) to old Backstreet Boys videos like "I want it that way" and "Quit playing games with my heart." The guys (Nick, Martin, and Mick) got tired of this and started playing Wii sports. Later we joined them and had lots of fun. Things ended around 1am. Hopefully this bodes well for our Thanksgiving party!

Local Food Challenge

Nick and I are participating in the Local Food Challenge this week, where we pledge to eat local foods and be mindful of where our food comes from. To help, we ordered a local food box. It came with:

Apples, butternut and acorn squash, a bell pepper, yellow and sweet potatoes, kale, collard greens, lettuces, half a pound of black eyed peas, 1 lb of Chapel Hill Creamery farmer's cheese, two loaves of locally made bread, half a dozen free range eggs, and 1 lb of grass fed ground beef. We also got a free range roaster chicken.

Needless to say, I've been trying out new things just to use all this stuff up. Sunday we made shepherd's pie with the ground beef, potatoes, and cheese and I braised the collard greens with ham hocks for my first southern dish. Yesterday I braised the kale with chicken broth and red pepper flake. Tonight we're roasting the acorn squash. I saw a recipe for sweet potato risotto and we have some Arborio rice so I might make that.

Have any recipe ideas for what i have left? I was thinking of making a black eyed pea salad but I haven't decided yet. Let me know!

Museum and Gardens

We decided to take advantage of the beautiful day on Saturday by visiting Duke University's Nasher Museum of Art to check out the soon-leaving exhibit entitled "El Greco to Velasquez: Art During the Reign of Philip III." We didn't take any pictures in the exhibit or in the permanent collection, but there were some awesome Spanish and Greek paintings and abstract art exhibitions that we really liked.

Nick and I ate in the museum cafe for a late lunch. Everything served there is from local food sources, from farms to bakeries. They have a Spanish-inspired menu at the moment to go with the current exhibit. Nick ordered a bocadillo with NC free-range chicken, Chapel Hill Creamery mozzarella, and romesco sauce with local greens on the side. I got the butternut squash soup with white beans, marcona almonds, and saffron and a local greens salad with shiitake mushrooms on the side.


Then, we shared a sampler plate of tapas. We chose the braised local greens with turnips, garroxta, and aioli, green lentils with cremini mushrooms, roasted potatoes with chorizo, and a tortilla de espana with onions, peppers, and cheese.


It was delicious, and we ate it on the patio under an umbrella on a beautiful 72-degree weather day.

Afterward, we wandered over to the Sarah P. Duke gardens. It reminded me of the Huntington, but not so distinctly themed. Fall is definitely here.

Halloween

I have the pics up on facebook. It was insane. Here's a teaser picture of me and Nick:


I will tell you that I can see the weekend is going to be a "Only on Halloween" sort of story for a lot of people in my program. There was some crazy stuff going on!

Nick and I went to a dinner party on Friday and then to house party later on that night. Then Saturday night we went to the official student social group party in the Duke Forest. It was FREEZING. Nick and I were cool and wore different costumes each night. Go us! And he actually danced with me. I can die happy now. =)

More to come on our visit to the Nasher Museum of Art (and its cafe) and the Sarah P. Duke Gardens.

Hotel Cafe Tour

Simply put, the concert was awesome. We headed over to Chapel Hill last night to catch the Hotel Cafe tour at the famous Cat's Cradle venue. $17 a ticket. The venue itself is pretty small and intimate, which I liked.

Samantha Crain, Thao Nguyen, Erin McCarley, Meiko, and Ingrid Michaelson all rocked it out. They each did two songs before the "break" and then they each did three songs before singing a round called "The Chain" that Ingrid Michaelson wrote.

Meiko, who I went for, was really cool to watch. You know how some performers sound worse live? She didn't. She's also cute as hell. I mean, really. I have a total crush on her.

I really liked Thao Nguyen, who I had never heard of before. She's kind of crazy on stage, but the energy is infectious. One of the highlights of the night happened when she started one of her songs by beatboxing. It was awesome!

Ingrid Michaelson was the unofficial headliner. She's the most well known, and always came on last. She's hilarious in concert and kept us laughing and singing along to her songs. She also rapped the "Fresh Prince of Bel Air" theme song while the band played the music to her "The Way I Am" song. I was amazed at how well it sounded. It was the other highlight of the night.

At the end, I managed to get Meiko to sign my cd. I wish I had brought the camera. She was really down to earth and didn't have many people clamoring to get her autograph, which surprised me. Meeting her was probably the most exciting thing to happen to me all month!

Discouragement

We did not go to the barbecue festival. It rained this morning, which discouraged us from driving 1.5 hours there and 1.5 hours back. Instead, we got Nick a cheap bow tie, a potato masher, and a probe thermometer, stopped at a local artisanal bakery (where we scored a chocolate brownie cookie, an apple danish, and a loaf of black pepper-parmesan bread), and did some grocery shopping. I got a carton of Mayfield's black walnut ice cream. A classmate from Atlanta told me it was the ice cream brand of the south.


Yesterday, we had dinner at the Honduran place with the homemade tortillas. I had a pupusa con queso and two tacos al pastor. Nick had a torta cubano and one taco lengua. Along with all that we got complimentary salsa, chips, and some pickled cabbage. I got to try my limited Spanish again and we made it out successfully. They were really nice there and seemed anxious for us to like our food. I think I'd go back for the pupusas and posole I saw on the menu, but not for tacos. I'm aiming to try a local taco stand for better tacos.

Lastly, we tried making Indian food and it was a FAIL. Better luck tomorrow with slow-cooker chicken hard shell tacos...

We also attended the theater department's production of Sweeney Todd. They did a great job, which meant I was disturbed all night and couldn't go to sleep. I will never look at a barber's razor the same way again. Or meat pies, for that matter. Nick sometimes had no idea what was going on because they were singing most of the words. It is a musical, after all, hehe.

p.s. I'm procrastinating on my epidemiology midterm. I need to decide what to take next semester. GIS lab is kicking my butt. I would welcome words of encouragement. Maybe some "Get productive, you lazy ass" comments would help as well. =)

Thursday confession

I have a confession to make. I held hands with a guy other than Nick today. Don't worry...he already knows about it. Who is the lucky guy? My fellow classmate Tomer. How did this happen? It's a short story...

In the GIS lab I was working on one of the labs due next week when Tomer took the computer next to mine and remarked that he was going to be working on the same one.

I joked, "That's great! Now we can hold hands while we work through it together."
He was trying to log on so his reaction was, "uh...hold hands..."
I said, "hey, you could be a little happier about the prospect. haha"
So then he said, "You want to hold hands? We could do that." He held out his hand and we clasped hands for about 5 seconds. Then we laughed.

See, this is what grad school has reduced my daily amusement to: feeble jokes and slightly uncomfortable situations.

In other news, upcoming plans include the barbecue festival in Lexington, NC and the Hotel Cafe tour in Chapel Hill. Oh yeah, and Halloween is less than 2 weeks away!

I started to think about making a list of restaurants to try here in Durham, because I was tired of thinking about population densities and map elements. Near the top of the list is a Honduran place called Costa Azul that makes its own tortillas, and a place next to a gas station that has tamales. I learned from Hometown Chinese food in Davis that being connected to a gas station is not necessarily a bad thing.

I'm also adding Rue Cler to the list. A three course prix-fixe Parisian menu for $30? Sounds like a deal to me. The other restaurants on the list for "special occasions" include Magnolia Grill, Lantern, Nana's (a 5-course tasting menu for $50), and Vin Rouge. Note to self: budget is much smaller than when you lived in Davis and had a paying job.

I'm also angling to return to the Rockwood Filling Station because I browsed the menu some more and need to go back for two things: the Ham and Egg Pizza (featuring a sunny-side egg on top) and their custom ice cream sandwiches (your choice of homemade ice cream between two pieces of brioche). It sounds so amazing.

Football and Pizza

This weekend Nick got to go to his first Duke football game at Wallace Wade stadium. We decided to go because it was homecoming and we knew the stadium would be packed. As we were waiting to park, I bought Nick a scalped ticket for $15. We started laughing when we realized we bought a $10 group ticket that was bought in the name of a local Baptist church. It's kind of ironic, don't you think?

The game against Miami University started off well. Traditionally, Duke football has been bad. Downright sucks, in fact. With our third win this season we have won more games in like the last 5 seasons combined. It's crazy. We answered Miami's touchdowns with some of our own, and even had a 10-point lead at one point. Then...it unraveled. We couldn't convert, we dropped passes, we committed errors. Before long Duke was losing badly so we left. It was quite depressing to lose a homecoming game. At least at UCD it always seemed like we played the worst teams in the league so that we'd be sure to win the homecoming game. By the way, I'm putting up some pics from the day on facebook.

Nick, Emily, and I consoled ourselves by dropping by Rockwood Filling Station for some neapolitan pizza. The wait on a busy Saturday night was long, but after 45 minutes we scored some seats at the bar. I could see the wood oven going on through a window the the kitchen. Emily and I ordered salads to start and each of us got a pizza. Let's just say the salads aren't as great as the pizzas. Emily had a custom pizza with pesto and goat cheese. I had the white pizza which had artichokes, caramelized onions, ricotta, and goat cheese. Nick got the chicken liver pizza that had mozzarella, pancetta, and battered chicken livers on top.

Here are some photos:

Iceberg wedge salad with crispy pancetta and bleu cheese dressing

Custom pesto goat cheese

The White Pizza

Scott's Chicken Liver Pizza

It was all delicious. I'll be returning for their other pizzas and their homemade ice cream. The bartender, Terence, who served us was awesome. He gave Emily some free prosecco that another table decided they didn't want. I also introduced myself to the guy that runs the front of the house, John. I read on some other blogs that he opened the place with Scott Howell, who is the chef and owner of nearby fancier restaurant Nana's restaurant. John even remembered all of our names as he said goodbye on our way out. Bonus points!

The pizza reheated the next day was still great, if you were wondering. I ate it while slaving over my ecotoxicology midterm. I just finished that today and I'm beat. Now Nick and I are off to secure our Halloween costumes at the local thrift store. It's gonna be an exciting week!

update
Nick and i got our costumes and it's going to be awesome! We need a few more pieces, though.

Odds and ends

Procrastinating a bit by posting again...this might be a bad trend. I sent my mom off with an airplane bento so that she wouldn't have to spend $5 on a bad sandwich or box of processed snacks. In it I put: a mini bagel with cream cheese, cheddar slices with crackers, a lychee jelly, three strawberry gummies, mini oatmeal cookies, and cucumber and carrot sticks. Not pictured are a container full of puffs, goldfish crackers, and pretzels and a Daisy Cakes madeleine.


We found some interesting purple bell peppers at the farmer's market a while ago. Has anyone seen these before?


I just need to get through this week and then we're going to the North Carolina state fair! I'm looking forward to expensive carnival rides and a plethora of fried foods. Deep fried avocado, anyone?

Day 1

Here's to the new blog of our adventures in Durham, NC! I'll try to update with snippets of what we're up to, what we're eating, and what we're seeing while we're here on the east coast. Since I am a grad student and we all know Nick isn't a blogger...updates might be scarce. I'll try!

Mom's visiting this weekend and she's cooking up a storm. She made us xoi ga, steamed fresh tilapia, homemade (!) shrimp and pork wontons, and among other things, this:

Xoi vo (sticky rice with mung beans)

Nick was so excited that he's making his own che tonight. I'll keep you updated.

After a quick trip to the Durham farmer's market (I'm still pining away for Davis), we stopped by the Daisy Cakes airstream trailer to pick up some cupcakes. Our stash included fresh madeleines and four cupcakes clockwise from the top: a black and white, a s'more, vanilla dream, and a red velvet. Total: $12.50.


We also saw the Dead Sea Scrolls in Raleigh at the NC Museum of Natural Sciences, just steps from the state capitol. Let's just say there were a lot of biblical references and exhibits trying not to be religious leading up to 6 fragments of really old leather. The most interesting part was learning about how the curators of the 1950's really messed things up by sticking fragments together with scotch tape...the wonder invention of the era.

There are only a few hours left with Mom and I'm trying to make the most of it. I think there are plans for thit kho later and an airplane bento for tomorrow!

Mom and I with the Duke Chapel tower in the background