Checking things off the [New York] Bucket List

I'd like to interrupt this woefully boring blog for which I have no one but myself to blame to update you on our summer in New York thus far. First of all, my excuse for being so boring since we got back from our trip to Australia and Indonesia (and for taking more than a month to recap said trip for heaven's sake!) is that it been "unseasonably" (read, MISERABLY) HOT in New York this summer. Take a look at this report I downloaded from Weather.com. In the last 3 weeks, 12 days have had highs over 90 (red boxes)!

Not to mention that Taylor and I live on the 5th floor of a building with no elevator in an apartment that gets freakishly hot without air conditioning AND we're also attempting to train for a marathon in this weather. Good grief!

Anyway, I'll stop my whining there to tell you about some fun experiences we have had since I stopped being a good blogger :)

I'll start with a trip to the legendary Carnegie Deli, but first, the backstory. One of the guests at our wedding, a friend of Taylor's mother who lives in New York, gave us a fantastic wedding gift of a 1-year "Young Professionals" membership to the Manhattan Theater Club. With that, we get 2 tickets to each of their shows this year complete with a "lounge" hour before the show with free wine and snacks :) Good times!

So a few weeks ago we decided to check out our first show. Since the theater happens to be near the famous Carnegie Deli, we decided to check it out. The place was on Taylor's New York Bucket List (NYBL), though I have to admit not on mine. I wasn't even quite sure why the place is famous until we got there, and I was underwhelmed when I looked at their menu which had 3 strikes against it: 1) Cash only 2) Not very many menu options and 3) Expensive. It wasn't until we arrived and a server walked by with one of their "sandwiches" that I had even an inkling of why this place was such a big deal. And. Then. I. Knew. It was without a doubt the biggest "sandwich" that I have ever seen. And I use "sandwich" in quotations because one of the most popular dishes at Carnegie Deli is their open face pastrami sandwich (their pastrami is world-renowned and - I can testify - delicious). But this is no typical open faced sandwich. Sure it has all of the contents of the sandwich on top of the bread, but in this case what you have is about 2.5 lbs worth of pastrami topped with sauerkraut and swiss on top of what might as well be a saltine cracker. It's like an elephant sitting on a playing card, seriously! Taylor and I split just one of those suckers, which set us back $23 which is a bargain when you actually see the thing.
I'm ashamed to admit that we polished off the sandwich and made a valiant effort at their famous cheesecake which, thankfully, is not as gargantuan as their "sandwiches." Oh, and the play afterward was good too.

Moving right along to the second NYBL item of this post, Shakespeare in the Park. Last weekend, it was (shockingly) really hot and I was also feeling pretty sick. So we bailed on our long run which was supposed to happen that morning and pretty much laid around all day. We even napped for a couple of hours in the afternoon, it was fantastic. At 6pm, we finally got around to checking our phones and realized we had an e-mail from a friend saying that they had gotten up early, got to Central Park at 6am, and waited 7 hours to score tickets to Shakespeare in the Park, an annual tradition every summer which I had resigned to never participate in because I am not willing to spend 7 hours in line in 90 degree weather. Well, bless their hearts, our friends were allowed to get 2 tickets each to see The Winter's Tale and asked if we would like to join them. We of course could not believe our good fortune and immediately agreed!

The show took place in the beautiful Delacorte Theater in Central Park. The theater is outdoors and holds about 2,000 people. The back of the stage opens on to a secluded part of a pond in Central Park so it's really beautiful and worked well for The Winter's Tale, which has quite a few outdoor scenes. Of course, I did not know anything about the number of outdoor scenes or, heck, the plot of The Winter's Tale before arriving at the show and studying the absolutely-necessary-for-understanding-Shakespeare plot synopsis in the playbook. I mean, without that thing, it's virtually impossible to follow Shakespearean dialog.

But follow we did and it was actually a really entertaining show. It even featured a newly famous actor, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, from a show that Taylor and I have taken quite a liking to, Modern Family and another Jesse from Law & Order. All in all a great experience. I think Amanda reads this blog, so just wanted to say THANKS for the tickets and we will happily stand in line next year!!

Vacation Recap, Part 3

Whew, this is a marathon, not a sprint, that's for sure! :)

So last time, I wrapped up after telling you all about our weekend in Sydney. After Sydney, we headed back to Melbourne for more Australian adventures. On Monday, Kim and Will had to work, so Taylor and I picked up a rental car and hit the (left side of) the open road! Here we are with our rental car, which we nicknamed "Yarra."

That's Taylor driving on the left. Notice his awesome $2 Aussie Socceroos scarf!


We hit the road and I could tell you all about it, but the photos really speak for themselves. Basically, we spent the entire day driving away from Melbourne, culminating in views of the beautiful Apostle Islands. Then, we headed back on an inland highway.

Taylor was so happy to see the beach!

A beautiful little lagoon

This plant is appropriately called "Neptune's necklace"


The beautiful coastline and a lighthouse from the distance.


Standing by said lighthoue. My mom says this photo looks like it could have been taken in Michigan, I kinda agree!


We took this of ourselves with the camera timer, not bad!


Beautiful view of the Apostle Islands. They were formed when the waves eroded all of the coastline except these rocks because they were made of a more durable mineral.


Another view of the islands.

Aaaaand I'm tired! :) More to come!

Vacation Recap Part 2!

Before my memory officially fades, I want to take time to recap, at least to some extent, the Australia portion of our trip.

We left Indonesia on a Wednesday at 4:30pm. There aren't many direct flights to Melbourne, Australia from Surabaya, Indonesia, so we actually had to fly back to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, which is north to head to Australia, which is south. Not to mention, we had a pretty long layover in Kuala Lumpur just to board our flight to Australia, which took off around midnight and got to Melbourne at 11am on Thursday. Needless to say, we were a little bit tired after our overnight flight and basically headed straight to our friend Kim and Will's apartment (after Will so kindly waited for us at the train station) for a shower and some relaxing.

That night, we met Kim and Will for a wine tasting event in downtown Melbourne. It was very classy and a lot of fun, a great way to start off our time in Australia.

Now, seeing as we were all the way in Australia after all, we decided that we should try to see as much as we could. Unfortunately, some of the more famous (and remote) parts of Australia, such as the Outback and the Great Barrier Reef, weren't really in the cards for our 8-day trip, but we were able to squeeze in a trip to Sydney, which we left for promptly at 6am Friday morning. It actually worked out quite well in that Kim had to go to Sydney for the weekend for work, which came with some perks including free taxis, a built-in hotel recommendation with some generous subsidies, and a very entertaining and not at ALL proud Australian co-worker...oh, and Kim having to work all weekend (that was actually a bummer)!

Anyway, we got to Sydney around 10am on Friday and realized we wouldn't be able to check in to our hotel for a few hours, so Taylor and I decided to get right at it and head out to an area I'd heard about called the Cliff Walk from Bondi to Coogee beach. We opted to head to Coogee first to get some fish and chips. We took a bus there and no sooner had we set foot at the bus station than it started pouring rain. Bummer. It would not stop raining for any significant amount of time for our entire time in Sydney but that's neither here nor there.

We did in fact eat some fish and chips in Coogee, despite what this photo shows.

We then attempted to take the 5K walk to Bondi Beach but were thwarted about 1/4 of the way through due to torrential downpours. We decided to head back to the hotel and thaw out/rest up for the evening. That evening we went out to dinner in Chinatown and were later joined by Will who came in after work on Friday.

Saturday actually started out really nice so we rushed out to see the sights as early as we possible could. We managed to take in a good portion of Sydney while the weather was still nice. here are some highlights:

Bats in the Botanical Gardens
A view of the Harbor Bridge and the Opera House

Downtown Sydney
A quaint little area of Sydney known as the Rocks
and Liter beers...always a bonus!
On our way back to the hotel after the beers, we also spotted this iconic Australian image

Saturday night we headed back to downtown Sydney and saw some amazing sights by night. We even found a fabulous rooftop restaurant with views of the harbor.

Even from the toilet, I'm serious, I took this shot from the pot!
Sunday we went to an Australian Rules Football game. I cannot even begin to describe this sport, but suffice to say that it was very entertaining even though the Sydney Swans defeated our new hometown team, the Essendon Bombers of Melbourne.

After the game we grabbed dinner in Sydney with Kim before catching our flight back to Melbourne.

Whew! That was longer than I meant for it to be! I think I'll wrap up this post and resume later with photos/tales from our trip to the Great Ocean Road.

At long last, the vacation recap, Part 1

I'm bummed because it took me so long to get around to this blog, I'm afraid that it won't be nearly as detailed (or interesting, for that matter) as I was hoping! If you've had a chance to look at our photos, you've got a general idea of the trip, for sure.

The main impetus for our big vacation this year was to go to Australia to visit our friends Kim and Will who have been living there since last February. Since we were already traveling 90% of the way there, Taylor really wanted to stop in Indonesia for a few days. Luckily, we were able to find tickets that worked from a timing perspective and weren't too expensive, so that's exactly what we did!

The first leg of our trip, getting to Indonesia, took 32 hours and involved 4 separate flights. You can imagine, then, that we were quite happy when we finally arrived in Indonesia on a Saturday evening :) We went straight to our hotel for a much needed shower and some relaxation. Taylor was absolutely bowled over when we arrived at the hotel and were greeted by a bell hop who said, and I quote, "Welcome Home." Apparently, he remembered us from our time there last year (which isn't altogether surprising because it's not too often that white people come stay at the hotel, especially not ones that speak English).

Here's a picture of Taylor with his Indonesian bell hop/best friend and he friend Dewa, who lives in Indonesia but is actually coming to America in about a month for a 9-month study program.

The next day, a couple other Taylor's friends from Indonesia, including Dewa, came to see us and take us up to his village, which is about an hour and a half outside of the city we were in, Surabaya. Taylor's village is near a town called Pacet. In Pacet, we stayed at this beautiful hotel called the Sativa. It really is like heaven on earth. Here are a few photos:



Shortly after checking in to our hotel, Tutik, one of our friends, came back to take us to Taylor's school. They had planned their graduation ceremony around our visit, which didn't seem like a big deal when I originally heard that since it's a small school, but it turns out that the school has grown considerably since Taylor left and the ceremony was a really big deal! Not to mention, we actually ended up being the guests of honor on account of the fact that Taylor and his Dad had decided jointly to sponsor a scholarship every year for his school. We were actually there to present the scholarship to the three recipients. It was quite humbling, since they called us up on stage and the recipients were really happy and one of them even cried. To give you an idea, the scholarship is for $600 and pays for the first year of college for all three students.

Here we are with the recipients!

The graduation was about 5 hours long, most of which was in Indonesian, so I can't say I remember a whole lot, but it was a really great experience to get to be a part of such a momentous occasion. The ceremony ended at about 11pm, so we just went straight home to bed.

The next day was Monday, and we spent most of the day relaxing at our hotel and getting lunch with Tutik and her sister. I experienced my first motorcycle ride on Monday, here I am putting on my helmet. Thanks to my Michigan upbringing, being on a bike is old hat by now :)

We had lunch at this place that Taylor absolutely loved. Basically, they are a fish hatchery where you can catch your own fish and then they cook it for you. We caught a few fish each and then sat down to our meal. Taylor had been raving about the food ever since he first had it, so I was pretty pumped to try it out. That is, until I found out that you have to eat with your hands and that the fish comes out with the bones and all and you have to actually pull the meat right off the bones! Taylor enjoyed it thoroughly, as you can see, but I was a little dubious.


But, I warmed up to it eventually:


Monday was fairly low key so I'll move on to Tuesday :) On Tuesday, we headed up to Taylor's school and village. When Taylor was in Indonesia, he taught at the school and lived abotu a 10 minute walk away in a village called Kembang Belor. We first stopped at his school for some photos and to visit some of Taylor's fellow teachers. Then, we headed up to Kembang Belor with his former Principal, our friend Tutik, and a former student. It's kind of funny actually, Taylor's old Principal actually moved his family of five into the house that Taylor had lived in by himself!

When we got to Taylor's village, EVERYONE started coming out of their houses, alleyways, you name it, to see him! He was like a celebrity! His first stop was his old friend who owns the village store (which is an exaggeration, it's actually more of a storefront). We took some photos with him and his family before heading toward Taylor's old house (and his boss's current house).

Taylor's neighbors, too, were very excited to see us, and many many people came out to say hello. I can't recount what they say, since of course I don't speak Indonesian :) But I think the basic gist is, "Where are you living?" "Who is this blonde lady with you?" "Is she pregnant yet?" "How long will you stay?"

After greeting everyone, we made a next very important stop. I had the best coffee of my life when I visited Indonesia and stopped at the home of this woman in his village who charged 10 cents for a cup of instant coffee. In fact, the photo at the top of this blog is me drinking her coffee. I was very eager to go back there! When we went there, about 30 kids from the village followed us right in to her living room. I don't know how she and her husband felt about it, but they were very gracious and they gave us the coffee for free :)

After coffee, we went back to Mr. Cecep's house, where his wife whipped up some DELICIOUS donuts for us :) We entertained ourselves with her adorable little daughter Izza, who is learning English and Indonesian and loves to show it off :)

Later that afternoon, we headed back to our hotel to relax.

With that, i'm going to take a break from this blog and will resume soon with tales of our time in Australia!

I'm baaaaaack!

Hey friends! I'm so sorry for the delay in posting about our massive trip to Indonesia and Australia! I think it will probably be Wednesday before I have time to sit down and blog about it, so here's a link to our photo album in the meantime!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2199891&id=4700966&l=3015af4510

C

Trains, Trams, Planes, Airports, Cabs and Motorcycles!

Today, Taylor and I leave for a 2-week trip to Indonesia and Australia! There will be MANY, MANY hours/modes of transportation before we reach our final destination just as you are waking up on Saturday, but it will be worth it in the end!

Here's a brief itinerary for our trip!

We leave JFK airport tonight at 10:40pm and fly through Vancouver, Hong Kong, and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia before arriving in Surabaya Indonesia Saturday night.

Saturday - Wednesday we will be in Indonesia, spending most (if not all) of our time in the village that Taylor lived in when he was on the Fulbright. The school he worked at actually scheduled their graduation ceremony around our travel schedule, which just shows what a big deal it is that we are going to visit. Taylor is a celebrity there :) The photo at the top of this blog is of me drinking the world's most delicious coffee in Taylor's village. That's one stop I will DEFINITELY be making while we're there!

After a few days spend relaxing, eating DELICIOUS but terrible-for-you food, and visiting with Indonesians, we will head back to Kuala Lumpur to catch a flight to Melbourne, Australia. Our good friends Kim and Will live there and we will be spending 9 days in Australia with them.

We arrive in Melbourne Thursday morning and on Friday morning we leave to go to Sydney for the weekend. We don't have any firm plans in Sydney but will definitely be hitting up some popular stops. On Sunday, we're going to an Australian Rules Football Game, which I'm really excited about because I have no idea what that is!

When we get back to Melbourne on Monday, June 7, Taylor and I have rented a car and are going to drive the Great Ocean Road for an entire day. I'll be honest, I don't even know what exactly the Great Ocean Road is, but it sounds promising.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, Kim and Will are taking the day off of work and we are all driving to a place called Mornington Peninsula. We will be staying at a quaint little cottage at Somerset View. Mornington Peninsula is a wine region so we will hopefully be drinking lots of wine and having a grand time :)

We don't have any real plans for Thursday and Friday, but will probably just tour around Melbourne before catching our flight back to New York at 11pm Friday night.

We arrive back in New York Saturday afternoon so that gives us a day to recover from our jet lag!

Sampai Nanti Semua! (See you later everyone)!

A personal best in the Brooklyn Half Marathon!

Yesterday was the Brooklyn Half Marathon, part of the Half Marathon Grand Prix that takes place every year in New York. They have one half marathon in each borough. The first one was in January in Manhattan and Taylor and I ran it together. We didn't really train much, so it was actually my slowest half marathon at 2:07:20 (9:43/mile).

Well, the Brooklyn Half was very different! Unfortunately, the race was very popular this year and actually sold out before I registered so I had to buy an entry from another girl who had registered but was unable to run the race. Taylor has a minor injury in his knee so since he would have had to buy a bootleg entry too, he decided not to do the race and instead to be my cheerleader extraordinaire.

The race started at 7am in Prospect Park Brooklyn. We left our apartment at 5:15 in order to make it in time. Boy was it EARLY! We made it just in time, too, since the subways are always screwed up on the weekends and it took quite a while to get there.

When we got there, I had to use the bathroom and there were really long lines, so I had Taylor take my bag to the bag check for me. Unfortunately, I forgot to take out the PowerGels that I usually take about halfway through the race. A slight kink in my plan for this to be my Personal Best half marathon! Of course, I didn't realize this until the race started.

The first 7 miles of the race took place in Prospect Park. We ran 2 loops of the park before heading south through Brooklyn to Coney Island. Taylor planned to see me at miles 1 and 3 on the first loop and then to catch the subway down to meet me at mile 10 and run the last 3 miles with me.

Since I had bought someone else's number, I was placed in a corral based on her pace, which was a little slower than mine. As a result, my first mile was spent basically getting out of the pack of slower runners. I felt good, but a little bit weak as the race started. This is pretty normal for long races, it's kind of like having jitters. Typically they work out by about mile 3, which was the case for me. When I saw Taylor at Mile 1, I asked him to see if he could find a PowerGel for me by asking the medical tent or something. Miles 2 and 3 had me feeling better with each step, so that was nice. When I saw Taylor at Mile 3, he let me know that he hadn't been able to find a PowerGel and gave me a granola bar in case I really needed some sugar. I compensated for the lack of the Gel by drinking the Gatorade Endurance Formula that they had at each water stop, which I typically don't do so I was breaking one of the cardinal rules of endurance races: NOTHING NEW ON RACE DAY. Oh well.

Here's a picture of me at mile 3, looking happy but a little delirious:


Mile 4 was pretty flat and was my fastest mile of the race (8:09), but as a result, Mile 5 and 6, which are mostly uphill, were pretty slow and painful. Not to mention I didn't have my cheerleader any more.

We left the park at the end of Mile 6 and began a long straightaway to the finish line in Coney Island. I felt okay for Miles 7 and 8, but around Mile 9 I started to feel pretty fatigued from the lack of Gel and my pace, which was a lot faster than I'm used to! I took a bite of the granola bar at the Mile 9 water stop and it helped a little bit. But the thought of being joined by Taylor at Mile 10 was definitely the most helpful :)

I got to Mile 10 and Taylor was waiting. He updated me that I had 29 minutes to run 3.1 miles if I wanted to beat my Personal Best time. My best before this was a few years ago and my time was 1:55:48. I had a loose goal of 1:55:00 or better for this race. News that I was on track definitely helped but I of course did the inevitable math and figured that I could run almost 10 minute miles and still make it, which is not a very good idea :)

Taylor had been kind enough to buy me a little bag of energy shots on his way to meet me at Mile 10. They were basically the consistency of gummy bears and tasted okay at first. I took them with some water at the water stop. Unfortunately, though, it wasn't until about 10 seconds later that the after taste kicked in and it was GROSS. So now I'm running my 11th mile with disgusting energy shot taste in my mouth. It's the thought that counts right? :)

Taylor was a great running coach. He told me that I was doing well and looked strong and also kept encouraging me to keep my pace up to break my best time. He'd say things like. "pay attention to your form," "stay focused you're doing great" or my personal favorite, "we're going to kick it up for the last mile." He was so chipper I wanted to smack him :)

But I was able to maintain a decent pace and speed up a little each of the last three miles, so that was good. After Taylor had run with me for 2 miles, we made a right turn to run the last mile along the Coney Island boardwalk. It was a beautiful day, there were lots of people cheering, and I felt really good for the last mile, despite my VERY tired legs. They aren't used to going so fast for 13 miles.

Our last mile was pretty fast (8:30) and we pushed it out to complete the 13.1 mile race much faster than I thought possible in 1:52:47, a full 3 minutes faster than my fastest half to date! The average pace per mile was 8:36. I'm very proud of this time and was VERY happy to be done. Here's a char of how my pace per mile changed throughout the race:

DISGUSTING SIDE NOTE: The girl right in front of me as we were crossing the finish line IMMEDIATELY started throwing up as she crossed the finish line. It was gross, but I obviously felt bad for her. I'm also impressed that she was able to hold it in until she crossed the finish line. That's dedication. But yes, distance running is gross for this and so many other reasons.

Taylor and I spent a little while stretching, changing clothes and enjoying the breeze on Coney Island before heading home. Here are some photos:

Taylor and I after the race
The Ferris Wheel and Cyclone in the background

The Boardwalk and unknown Parachute-like contraption

We got the subway home which seemed to take forever, especially when I was started to doze off and heard the distinct sound of nails being clipped and looked up to see this:
SERIOUSLY, who clips their nails on the subway?! GROSS!

All-in-all a very good day and I'm very proud. A special thanks to Kim B. for helping me get in the race and Taylor for being the best cheerleader/coach/husband/paparazzi I could ask for!

5 years ago today...

I graduated from Vanderbilt University. I have SO many fond memories of my time at Vanderbilt that I literally tear up when I think about it. I am so thankful for all the great friends I made at Vanderbilt, each and every one of which I cherish to this day, even if we don't keep in touch like I wish we did!

Sadly, facebook became the life-documenting powerhouse that it is during my last year of college and as a result I don't have very many photos from those fantastic years on facebook. Also, because of the aforementioned 5 years that have elapsed, my computer from college along with many of the photos I had is long gone.

Here are the few I was able to grab off of facebook, mostly group shots. I'll try to put them in chronological order.




RIP Thomas

MISS YOU ALL!