The Fun Goes On and On....

Laura: Hello again! Today I would like to catch you up on a few fun things we did in between visiting Philadelphia and taking a summer vay-cay in ITALY! (See how I keep teasing you with future posts about ITALY! Is it working....are you hooked?!). Looking back on this time period in early 2013, I am surprised how many fun adventures we were able to squeeze into really only about 2 months - the short span of time before I had to start studying the the dreaded Step 1 exam. This is a test that basically tests everything I learned in the first two years of medical school, and once school was over in early May I started studying LITERALLY like it was my job for 6 weeks. Soooooo thankful that we got to have fun before that madness started. Here's a little recap! 

1) Foof's Family Visits Rochester!  In late March, my family was able to come visit for a weekend. Of course we had to eat at Sticky Lips - first order of business in fact! Then we did some stuff, played some games, ate at some other places...and then we went to the Corning Museum of Glass! Alex and I had visited the city of Corning and this awesome museum last fall (sorry we didn't make a post about it...slipped through the cracks I guess...?), so we knew it would be a fun place to take my family. Now you have probably heard of the Corning Glass Company and their famous products - used for art, cooking, industry, and more - but I bet you didn't know their headquarters is in Corning, NY (about 1/5 hours south of Rochester)! Well it is - and if you come visit the museum you can learn all about the history of the company, the history of glass-making itself, and the science behind the unique properties of various types of glass. The museum is really an art gallery, museum, science center, and artist's workshop all-in-one.

While visiting the Corning Museum of Glass with my family, we actually took some glass art classes. My dad took a glass blowing class where he got to make an egg-shaped ornaments with black & gold Mizzou stripes (the only appropriate decoration for any piece of art!). My mom made a glass bead to wear on a necklace which required working with a pretty intense blow torch and tiny glass rods. Alex, Elizabeth, and myself worked at the glass fusing table to make wind chimes and a night light (basically you glue pieces of glass together and later in the kiln (aka oven) the heat will fuse the glass together). We had a lot of fun making our glass art project, exploring the museum, and visiting the ADORABLE Main Street area of Corning. Even stopped to have dinner at the Market Street Brewing Company - super delicious!

2) "Med School Prom!!!" - aka URSMD Formal 2013 - One of the coolest things I got to do during my second year of medical school was being a member of the Interclass Senate - a group of 4 seond year medical students (elected by their peers) who organize events to engage all 4 medical school classes (aka freshmen - seniors), basically help people mingle and get to know each other. This year the Interclass senate planned a number of small parties and a talent show, but the big event of the year is Formal, aka Med School Prom!!! This year the event was held at the Rochester Yacht Club (hence the Captain's hats) and was a huge success! Here are a few pics from that awesome night.

Interclass Senators 2012-2013

3) Lilac Festival in Highland Park - Every spring/summer in Rochester there are a zillion festivals to celebrate all the awesome things about our city or that just make summer fun. One of the first big festivals of the year is the Lilac Festival, which occurs around the time all the lilac bushes in the B-E-A-utiful Highland Park are blooming. We tried to go last year, but it had been so hot early in the year that most of the lilacs had already bloomed and wilted away. However, this year the weather must have been much better because there were tons of flowers! We spent the afternoon taking pictures and drinking fresh-squeezed lemonade.

After I took my Step 1 exam (I passed!!!), we did a couple more fun things before zipping off to ITALY for 10 days (teasing...teasing...teasing...).

1) BBQs w/ Med School Friends - Thankfully the weather was still glorious after my classmates and I emerged from our study caves, so of course we had to have some outdoor parties - gotta get that Vitamin D! Here's a few pics of my med school friends at a BBQ...
 

Lucy was a little freaked out by these mega balloons!

2) Foof in STL - The weekend in between taking my Step 1 and leaving for ITALY, I zipped home to visit my family for a few days. I was greeted with lots of hugs, congratulatory dinners, and a bouquet of GIANT balloons! Thanks, Family!!! Also got to swing by the construction site for my sister and her fiance's new house - they're building it themselves!!! These pictures are pretty out of date, the house is practically finished now!

Checking out Lizard's new house!

That about covers all the major activities we did in the spring and early summer of 2013. Stay tuned for some epic posts about our trip to ITALY!!!

-The Lorax-

Philadelphia

Alex: Back in April we hitched a ride with our friends Kathy and Dylan when they went to visit their home town of Philadelphia.  Neither of us had ever been, so it seemed like a good opportunity for another adventure!

Our friends dropped us off out in the northern suburbs at a train station that would take us further into the city. We got pretty confused finding and riding the trains, but eventually (Laura: by the grace of God!) we arrived at our home for the weekend - The Gables B&B. Probably didn't get there until after 8-9 pm, but still had time to grab some Indian food at Desi Village Indian, which was just a couple blocks away.

Just arrived in our room at the Gables B&B!

We stayed at The Gables in West Philadelphia.  Maybe the Fresh Prince's old house? We watched a little Lethal Weapon 2 on VHS until we got tired of the yelling and went to sleep.

Laura: The house was a HUGE mansion-type home from the 1800s and was filled to the brim with all sorts of interesting antiques, old pictures, and knick-knacks. It was fun just to stop and take a look around in the hallways or living rooms downstairs...for me at least. ;0)

Alex: After a decent breakfast at the Gables, the first stop of the morning was the Mutter Museum, a creepy place whose own signs admit it is disturbing.

The place is filled with various old timey medical instruments and body parts.  Their analysis of the possible diseases referred to in Grimm fairy tales was pretty entertaining, and some of the odd skeletons and the medical examinations of presidential assassinations were interesting.  It got to be a little much in the basement, however, with the casts of people's diseased faces and the pickled babies in jars.  Seriously, how many babies in jars do you need?  Isn't one too many?  Still, interesting place.

Laura: I'll admit...there is some really strange stuff in the Mutter Museum. It definitely lives up to the description on the banner above - "Disturbingly Informative". As a medical student and someone generally interested in the human body and disease, I thought this place was WICKED AWESOME! A lot of really interesting specimens of diseases that we talk about in school but don't really see in person anymore thanks to advances in medicine or their shear rarity. Plus, where else can you see slices of Einstein's brain, a huge collection of skulls, historical medical texts, and so much more?!? The babies in jars were a little creepy though...but still educational...to me at least. Hopefully Walex wasn't too traumatized by the whole endeavor. :0P


Alex: From the Mutter Museum we continued to walk downtown...

City Hall

City of Brotherly what again?

'ol Ben Franks got his start in Philly

 As we worked our way East we stopped by the Reading Terminal Market...

 

This is a pretty sizable indoor market with a number of various produce, meat, bread, specialty, and miscellaneous food stalls.  Along with the take-home food are dozens of restaurants / food stalls of all shapes, sizes, and varieties of foods.  We had trouble deciding on lunch, but finally went with shawarma and falafel.

After lunch, we continued East to the site of the original colonial government, first US capital, and famous Independence Hall. Typically you are supposed to buy tickets in advanced for the tours here, but we failed to do so since this was such a last minute trip. However...funny things can happen to those who wait....

We arrived too late to buy a ticket, the park rangers were turning everyone away from the ticket counter, so we decided to check out some of the museum in the Visitor's Center before heading out. On our way back to the exit, one of the rangers at the ticket counter whispered us over, saying "hey, come here.  you want to take the tour?  here ya go...".  It felt like getting black market tickets or something, but at least he was at the info desk (granted, the far back corner). Apparently some large group hadn't showed up to collect their tickets for the final tour of the day, so we got to take the tour instead and for free!  Thanks Ranger guy!

The tour of Independence Hall was pretty quick.  It's a surprisingly small building (take a closer look at those old paintings -- those guys are really crammed in there!), with just a couple main rooms.

The supreme court room, along with our tour guide pointing around where the old British government symbols would have hung.

The Assembly hall is where the Declaration and original Constitution were drafted and signed.  Exciting!

After the guided tour we made our way next door to Congress Hall, which housed the Legislative branch until the capital in DC was ready to house the government.

The House of Representatives room was pretty large and packed with shared long tables.  The Senate room upstairs was much smaller and cozier!

The statue of John Barry - father of the US Navy - in front of Independence Hall gives the big point off into the distance.

 Photo-op with 

Independence Hall!

We hustled over to see the Liberty Bell next.  It was getting a little late, so the buildings were closing, but thankfully they grabbed most of the last minute stragglers (like us!) in line and shuffled them through rapidly.  We didn't get to stop and read any info in the museum area or anything, but managed to grab a quick pic by the bell.

After some more halls of various founding fathers, assorted patriots, British officials and American Indian chiefs, we called it a day on the history bit and made our way south a different style of American pastime...BASEBALL!!!

Because the Cardinals were playing the Phillies that night!  Awwww yeeeaaah!

 We grabbed some cheese-steaks and found our way up to our seats.

 It started to get a little chilly in the upper decks, so we didn't stay too long, but...

We got to our seats by the 2nd, and left after the 5th, so we saw all five runs in the game.  Nothing like capping off the day with a 5-0 Cards victory! 

Laura: We sure crammed a lot of adventure into one day! After the baseball game, we dragged our butts back to The Gables for one more night. The next morning we spent a little time at the 30th Street Train station (which looks awesome on the inside and even has the little flippy sign-board for telling you when trains are leaving!) and ran back to Reading Terminal Market for lunch before heading out to the burbs to meet up with our ride back to Rochester. Pretty great trip overall - not sure if I'd want to live there, but Philly is definitely a fun place to visit. :0)

Stay tuned for more fun times from earlier this year and then....ITALY!!!

-The Lorax-

Watkins Glen

Laura:

 Once upon a time...over one year ago...we went to a MAGICAL place called Watkins Glen! And then we forgot to blog about it, so here we are...lol.

 Watkins Glen is a state park about 1.5 hours south of Rochester at the southern end of Seneca Lake - one of the Finger Lakes. Now when I think of a "glen" I think of a wide open meadow with little bunnies and baby deer prancing around, but this glen is actually more like a canyon carved by a stream and it's waterfalls. Below is a picture of me at the opening to the glen - where the stream is exiting the canyon.

 Our first stop on the trail was this heart-shaped pool, naturally carved from the waterfalls over the years....

Then we made our way up some stone stairs (not carved by the waterfalls) that run along the edge of the crevasse carved out....

 We stopped again to check out a wider part of the stream. The water here is very calm and hardly looks like it's moving!

 After this minor pit-stop we continued hiking through the gorge along the stone-stair trail. The entire trail through the gorge is about 1 mile long and contains several waterfalls. At this time of year I think we hadn't had a lot of rain, so the waterfalls are pretty minor. I would love to go back in the Spring when all the snow is melting - I bet they really get going then!

 Of course it wouldn't be a Lorax Adventure if we didn't stop to take some pictures of each other!

 Admittedly it has been a LONG time since we went to Watkins Glen, but I think this field trip was definitely one of our favorites from last summer. A really neat piece of nature not too far from home! Maybe we'll go back this fall to see the leaves changing...or maybe in the winter when everything is covered in snow...or maybe the spring...or maybe tomorrow!!!

-The Lorax-