Life with or without $965 million dollars

Three weeks of this life and I am peacing out to Korea. About ten years ago we flew halfway around the world on Baby M's birthday. He ended up having two birthdays and got to pick out chocolates on our flight. Then we learned English. Then we ate too many Cheetos and began the life cycle of American-style over-consumption.

About my break home-home: I asked my dad if I could visit another neighbor country up north (you know the one) and he said "NO!". So what can I do? I could learn how to roller blade. Travel around. Learn Korean fan dance. What do you do when you have nothing to do?

This weekend my task was to come up with the answer to this question: What would I do if I had $965 million dollars? My initial answer was: pay for dental school, of course! But wait, really?

Would I still become a dentist if I had enough money to do whatever the heck I wanted? If I was set for life financially? There has to be something else I want to do. Travel and see beautiful scenery. Swim all day in my private pool. Go to auctions to bid on all my favorite Matisse pieces. But at the end of the day, I could never "just" do this. My answer remains the same: with that $965 million dollars, I would pay my dental school tuition. Actually make that my entire classmates' tuition. The rest? I'd probably give it away to everyone I care about (this includes you if you are reading this).

This realization made me unbelievably happy. No matter what my circumstances are, I would still go to dental school and pursue what I'm pursuing now. I can't imagine doing anything else for the next four years.

Philadelphia Love Letter.

A quick lunch break before heading off to the med center for our meeting.. (Did you know today is International Women's Day? A co-worker brought in cookies and flowers for all the ladies!)

I had saved this lovely clipping from a touristy magazine I picked up in Philadelphia. Turns out, this is part of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program, specifically Steve Powers' Philadelphia Love Letter series. All these murals are visible from the train.

Here are some more murals from the project website (okay, the link gave me a virus, so... google at own risk):

Definitely worth a train tour to see more murals from this series. Whimsical and so so so romantic.

philadelphia along chestnut

I am back from a wonderful weekend in Philadelphia! I stayed with my friend from our Chicago ASB three years ago, and since she is studying at Wharton, she hosted me for this long weekend (I'm gonna call her Smarty K).

The weather was uncharacteristically mild (40's and 50's). It was drizzling a bit when I flew in Thursday night, but by Friday morning the skies had cleared into a beautiful day. I attended my interview Friday where I chatted with current dental students who are so accomplished and yet down-to-earth. The dental building was nice, but in particular, the entrance to the library right outside the main clinic was breathtaking- central staircase with a chandelier hanging from a high ceiling.

There are so many churches scattered around University City. This one was right across from the International House of Philadelphia.

Since my friend Smarty K assured me that this University City neighborhood is safe, I strolled around the huge Penn campus and its surroundings. Unlike Rice, the Penn buildings are scattered in the city with streets running across buildings and quads, so it is sometimes difficult to tell if a building belongs to Penn.

There are two central streets: Walnut and Chestnut which are both one-way streets. Since the streets are numbered systematically going up from East to West, it was easy to navigate the city. I walked across the river to downtown for a little shopping and hopped on the bus where I met two Dalton guys who shared my opinion on the ramp down to the new Penn stadium (dangerous but give me some wheels!).

Greek row houses

We also spent a day exploring the historic side of Philadelphia including Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, and Carpenter's Hall. I got to walk along the very places I had read about in history class! Maybe because today was President's Day, the lines were unusually long.

Living in the pages of U.S. history

We also checked out Reading Terminal Market where we grabbed the most delicious Italian sandwich and finished the meal with apple dumplings from the Dutch House (tastes better than apple pie).

Inside Reading Terminal Market

City Hall

Schuylkill river 

My friend’s friends felt so much older, so much more grown up, sophisticated and intelligent. They were in serious relationships, hosting dinner parties, discussing classical music and hopping over to cities for weekend trips. Philadelphia is only an hour away from NYC and two from DC.

In addition, I got to check out the Philadelphia Orchestra and the swing dancing scene. Rachmaninoff's Symphony No. 2 was fun (but not overwhelming) to listen to, and I thought the pianist would fall off his seat quite a few times! Smarty K and I also went swing dancing Friday and people had traveled from Maryland and Delaware to enjoy an evening of belboa! The instructor was teaching in NYC next week, so did everyone want to gather up and take the train together?

Great weekend meeting great people, all thanks to Smarty K. My fortune cookie had predicted weeks ago that I "would be the guest to a gracious host" and the following week I was invited to interview at University of Pennsylvania.

brazos bend state park re-visited.

Picture us seven chitter-chattering girls, walking along these huge lakes and yelping every time we spot an alligator lying in the swamps.

"Because the world is round..."

View from the observation tower.

Hi there little muddy one.

I love this place. I want excursions like this throughout my dental years... which makes me almost sure of my decision.

Christmas on Enchanted Rock.

Little Bro & I made our way to San Antonio on Christmas eve to climb Enchanted Rock. I couldn't find any information on it closing on Christmas day and felt like driving along long stretches of road, so I convinced my reluctant brother to come with me to Fredericksburg, population 10,530. After spending Christmas Eve watching random shows on the Discovery Channel in San Antonio, we woke up early to head over to Enchanted Rock.

As we pulled in closer to the park, we could see the pink granite dome in the distance!

It really is pink.

Welcome, visitors

On the website, I'd read that the park can reach full capacity around 10AM (it opens at 8AM), and visitors are often turned away to return after 5PM. On this Christmas day, there were few other visitors and we were able to get in around lazy ten o'clock. 

We made our way past the gravel trails and the huge boulders.

Someone's too cool for the camera

Crossing the streams and the huge jagged boulders, we reached the pink dome. It is a steep climb but relatively easy, there were even families with little kids walking up. The tricky part was that it had rained yesterday and with the overcast sky that morning, the rocks were wet and icy.

Look at the incline

Trekking up

I finally reached the highest plateau and walked around! It was freezing (the weather forecast told me low 30's plus the altitude? My phone froze, literally).

Five layers and still red eyes/nose

Here's a close-up of the 1-billion-years-old pink granite, with huge crystals... although you can't tell without a reference scale.

granite close-up

Trees, cacti and algae growing on top, elevation 1825 feet

Okay, so after Little Brother made his way down, I spent quite a bit of time up here because... I forgot which way I'd come up. After you climb up the boulders, there is no set trail to follow on, you walk up the dome any way you like, and I hadn't taken notice of my path up. Also because the dome is so steep, it is hard to look down for the path you came up. I made a few rounds until I saw another family come up, and I made my way down. No repeat of 127 Hours there.

scenic route back down

The best thing about taking a road trip in 30-40F weather is that your car becomes an instant fridge. We threw our food in the trunk and the food kept cold during the entire trip. Now we're back in Houston, spent and tired, but we stopped by Buc-Ee's on our way back! I thought we'd passed by the Luling location until I turned the corner and saw the familiar Beaver sign.

Typical Buc-Ee's.

Zzzzz.

my Phoenix break.

Flew in from Phoenix yesterday evening! Maybe because Lo and I went to bed late last night (midnight after watching Like Crazy) I dozed the entire day Wednesday- waiting to board the plane, throughout the 2-hour flight, shuttling to my car...

"So... what city are we in?" Picture

We tore up the valley, driving through Glendale, Scottsdale, Phoenix, Tempe, Mesa during the almost-three days I was in Arizona. Laurs played chauffeur to me, despite the fact that she is a busy-bee law student who should have been studying (thank you!!!).

In addition to walking around Old Town Scottsdale, yesterday morning we visited the Desert Botanical Garden. I learned about the different cacti species (barrel, saguaro, prickly pears) in this 140-acre botanical garden. For example, woodpeckers will dig holes in saguaros which "scabs" in on the inside, forming a home for the bird to nest in.

Spending time with Lo was surreal and heartwarming. I finally got to see her daily life I'd only heard about, and in addition to squeezing in an interview here, it was a great mini-vacation for me to visit & hang out with her, eating delicious food and exploring new places. And as per tradition, we got "finals" manicures, with bright colors to cheer us up during finals week.

It is finally December, which means- according to my whimsical friend- we only need to keep up with our 2011 resolutions for one more month. I'm looking forward to finishing up my ESCI class with a bang & my dear brother spending his precious winter break with me here in Houston. I am honored he's visiting me down here in Texas. Whoop.

back from L.A. with new/old friends.

I had the best time in Los Angeles this week! I flew into LAX at 8PM on a Wednesday and it took almost two hours to get out of the airport, to USC about 15 miles away. This is L.A.

Hello, LA!

My high school friend who I hadn't spoken to in years agreed to let me stay at his place which was unbelievably one block away from campus. We took a mini-tour around campus as he finished up errands before he himself had to fly out for an interview the next morning. Beautiful 50's weather, we woke up at 7:30AM and went onto to our prospective grown-up events for the day.

After day's events, I walked around USC and its beautiful campus. There are a ton of bikes and skateboards, and I even heard USC's band with platinum records practicing out on the fields. The Trojan statue was wrapped in duct tape to keep it from its rival UCLA's attacks for the upcoming USC-UCLA football game. In the past, UCLA has had a helicopter drop manure on the statue. I spotted the coolest-looking people in boots, cardigans and funky messenger bags.

Prepared for the USC vs. UCLA game

 

While packing, I even caught some Korean television before heading across town to UCLA.

Korean television? Oh, I missed you.

Someone I met at the interview agreed to drive me to UCLA since he was heading back to San Francisco that night. The ten miles from USC to UCLA took almost 40 minutes- oh, traffic! After an utterly irresponsible waffle dinner with a friend from Rice, I retired early after an eventful day. Next morning I explored the giant UCLA campus which felt like a city with a streets running across campus, multiple parking lots, and hills/stairs all over (it is 419 acres, as big as Disneyland!)

Regency Village Theatre

Walking on Weyburn

I grabbed a latte at one of the many Coffee Bean's around tow and walked down the beautiful Weyburn St. where a small film crew was shooting a car trunk scene by the side of the road.

 Then beautiful UCLA campus with its Italian brick buildings:

The symbolic Royce Hall

ROTC at flagpole

And back to Houston Friday night. A short but fun-filled trip to the coolest city in California with new and old friends, and I learned that 50's weather is enough to have me coughing and sniffling the entire day. Loved L.A., loved the schools, hope to make my way out to California sometime real soon!

Leaving florida!

Leaving my extended business/personal trip to Florida. It is so warm and sunny here in Fort Lauderdale,  hitting high 80's in afternoons and the warm sun shining on beautiful people.

lounging by the pool

People are so relaxed and welcoming around here. I guess it's hard to be angry and rude when you are surrounded by palm trees and sunshine all year around. I had the most delicious Peruvian dinner yesterday & lounged by the pool and walked around the canals. Oh, and just finished eating chocolate chip cookies for breakfast. Waiting to fly back to Houston where work+class are waiting for me. Fingers crossed that I'll have a chance to visit here again...

Geology trip through Sierra Nevada, part 2

Okay, continuing with the account of our fantastic trip!

typical scene, climbing up steep slopes, whew

Walking along rivers created by hydraulic mining (these things will change the scenery completely), we ran into this little guy on the road. Our professor picked him up and we got to pet him (and snap fotos)- look at his orange eyes.

hello, humans.

Driving across, at one point, we paused at a stoplight with a homeless man with the sign "hungrier than Donner, will take anything". A little graphic, since he was referring to the cannibalistic Donner Party.

Beautiful Lake Tahoe

We stopped at Lake Tahoe (which formed from melted glaciers), where we saw remnants of glacier rocks dragging down, forming streaks on the rock surfaces. There were interesting eggey-cross section ring shapes as well, which we identified as hornblende rings which reacted with the hot magma flowing past these rocks.

We spent our night in Mammoth Lakes (delicious dinner at Base Camp Cafe) & continued onward West to Mono Lake and Yerington Mines.

Mono lake with tufa columns (and baby shrimps in the salty water)

Mono Lake (whose name comes from the fly larvae Native Americans used as a major food source) had tufa columns around the edges, which are solid limestones formed from emerging spring water full of carbonates. Star Wars, anyone?

We stopped at Yerington to look at Jurassic granodierites and quartz monzonites.

The ride getting here was ridiculous. This stop was almost left out of the itinerary because we needed to drive through hilly, bumpy unpaved roads. R and I sat in the back of this bumpy ride, laughing and giggling at how tumultuous this was. We left behind a huge dusty trail- Kasey would have never survived this dangerous (a.k.a. exciting) ride.

deep blue copper azurite crystals- looks like a watercolor paintng

And then, final destination, Reno, Nevada. We hit up the buffet (empty on a Monday night) and walked past the slot machines & flashy lights. Back at the hotel, we watched Death Race & chatted about the trip, school, life. Next day, we flew back to Houston via Denver.

Bruce: "who pays for these electricity bills?"

I had a wonderful time on this trip- it was definitely an eye-opener for me. I was amazed at the amount of amazement geologists felt at looking at "rocks", which are not just rocks for them anymore- they tell a story, a snapshot of the time and place they were created. I can't count how many times someone exclaimed "look at these rocks!" or "these are some beautiful outcrops!" while I tried to figure out why they were so significant.

I think I'll pay more attention to rocks in my landscape when I'm traveling around and also try to identify how & why interesting structures could have been created. To be a great geologist, you need to not only know your stuffz, but also must pay attention to details and be patient. Oh, and being in great shape & an awesome rock climber, in addition to driving over dirt hills and navigating unmarked roads with ease, wouldn't hurt either.

Oh, and passing through airport security took a bit longer than usual because we all had rock samples we were flying back to Houston. The TSA officer had to ask on repeated occasions staring at the X-ray: "are those... rocks?"