Update

So yeah, I was doing pretty well at blogging regularly for a while there, but then we weren't doing anything interesting, other than watching a lot of Bones, so I didn't have anything to say! And then we did so much fun stuff that I didn't have time for blogging. And I keep forgetting to take photos. So here's a (hopefully) brief update of what's been going on in these parts recently. Enjoy!

Anniversary

Early in February N & I quietly celebrated a whole four years together with some sushi :)

Chinese New Year

I made spring rolls, and N made the most amazing sweet & sour pork! Nom nom nom!

Bara brith

I made bara brith for the first time for a lab meeting and it went down sooooooo well. It tasted so good and was incredibly easy to make, definitely making that one again!

Roller derby

Got tickets for the final match of the Baltimore league's tournament (Charm City Roller Girls). Lots of fun! Man those girls can skate!

Craft council show

Spent the following day wandering around the Convention Centre all day at the American Craft Council show which was awesome! I didn't realise how massive it was going to be, but we were there for four hours! I bought a mug and some chopsticks, ever practical...

Welsh day

We celebrated St David's Day a day late this year. We wandered over to Whole Foods and picked up some lamb, leek and daffodils, and even managed to find some Welsh cheese and "dragon" sushi for lunch! N made Welsh cakes, always amazing.

Fancy food box

We decided to treat ourselves by subscribing to a box of Fancy foods! The first one was an awesome assortment of tea, ginger ale, chocolate and, best of all for us, chorizo (among other things)! Amazing!

St Patrick's Day Parade

For some reason the St Patrick's Day parade was held on the 10th of March.... Anyway, it passed right outside the front of our apartment building, so we spent a happy hour in the sunshine (the one warm weekend so far, very lucky!) watching all the bands and flags go by. They still weren't done after an hour though, I have no idea how long it took!

Baby nephew!!!

N's nephew was born ten days ago. I'm an aunty! Or tante, seeing as the baby is Dutch. So exciting!

Zipcar, Girl Scouts, Six Nations

And finally, last Saturday was pretty fun, if a bit busier than I would have liked! I finally put my Zipcard to use and booked a car for a couple of hours to go in search of a Girl Scout cookie sale! I had a nice chat with one of their leaders about how it works out here, and came home with five boxes of cookies to my name! Hopefully I can find a troop to work with soon, I'm starting to get Guiding withdrawal symptoms! Oh, and the driving was fine, passed without incident, despite missing an exit :)

I followed that triumph with a brisk walk over to the Irish pub in Fells Point to watch the deciding match of the Six Nations. What a funny sport! Has anyone else ever thought how much it looks like a bird laying an egg when the ball pops out of the scrum? hehe :) I don't think I've ever actually watched a match before, but it was a lot of fun. And being in that pub I could easily forget I was in the US for an hour or so! I have to admit, I went down there expecting to not care who won, but as soon as the Welsh started thrashing the English with some amazing tries, I couldn't help cheering for the Welsh. To be fair, rugby wasn't even on my radar until I went to Wales, not that I paid much attention to it even then. But it just felt right to support them for some reason. I guess despite being English I have lived the majority of my adult life in Wales, so maybe that's why!

So that brings us up to date I think! If you want me to go into more detail about any of the happenings above just leave me a comment and I'll write a longer post!

What have you been up to lately?

Baltimore Part 8: Pirates in Fells Point, arrrrr

Our Friday nights became fun Fridays pretty quickly after N went back to work, first an evening of fun and games and Chinese food, then the following week I went and met N and his colleagues for a drink after work in Fells Point. Fun times and my first turkey burger with sweet potato fries (yummy!) was followed by a beautiful evening walk home all along the water's edge. We even spotted a Welsh flag!

And we had our first taste of Pitango Gelato, sooooo good! This was spicy chocolate and passionfruit:

The next day saw us head back to Fells Point for Privateer Day. This was a fun pirate-themed day with lots of dressing up and boats and pirate bands!

Me with some pirates, enjoying the band:

Proper pirate costumes:

Lady pirates:

Even the animals made the effort!

This dude was the coolest:

Boats:

The next day we hopped on the bus up to the Johns Hopkins Homewood campus for their spring fair, but it was tipping it down with rain and unfortunately by the time we got there it was a washout and everyone was packing up, so no pictures from there I'm afraid. But we still managed a nice little outing by heading to a Barnes & Noble and browsing the books for a while, before grabbing some lunch in the Starbucks and catching the next bus home. Hopefully we'll make it to the fair next year, sounded like fun!

Baltimore Part 7: Exploring Baltimore

My second full week in Baltimore was probably defined by exploring and finding my feet in the city. We took a walk to see City Hall, which amazingly I hadn't managed to find by myself. On the way we came across this unusual door:

And had a pretty good view of the Shot Tower:

Reminds me of Cardiff City Hall for some reason, maybe the dome?

War Memorial:

Funky horse:

Another day I took myself back up to Mount Vernon for some more exploring. Love this view of the Washington Monument through the trees:

And treeless:

Also in this week N took me up to Johns Hopkins Hospital to see where he works. Not many pictures because it was raining, but this is the view of downtown from the top:

Come back next time to read about ice cream and pirates!

Baltimore Part 9: Birdwatching, flowers and shopping

The weekend after Privateer Day was also full of fun, but it seems I forgot to take any photos! On the Friday N's boss' wife took me shopping (thank you!) and I picked up some Levis jeans for $11!!! Bargainous or what?! Still amazed by this. I ate a giant salad-filled wrap for lunch, and then in the evening we all had Chinese together again. So maybe I should have bought those jeans in a size up...

Saturday saw a visit from one of N's friends from Washington DC, who he knows from their year in Japan. Coincidentally one of their other friends from that year lives in the same apartment complex as us, so we all met up and spent a fun day together. Starting in Barnes + Noble, as you do, we had sushi for lunch, then a walk up Federal Hill (although I missed this as I had to run home to change my shoes as my new ones didn't fit! :( ). Then we walked up to Mount Vernon and were very kindly treated to tea and dessert at a gorgeous bistro. We finished the day off in Brewers Art where the boys enjoyed some beer, before we walked N's friend back to the station. So it's a shame I failed to take photos that day, maybe I was distracted by my stupid shoes!

The following week N was off to Australia for a conference! But not before we'd arisen crazily early (ie. pre-6am) to go on a little pre-work birdwatching trip at Milford Mill, a little pocket of nature about a half hour walk from a Metro station.

You may ask why I was getting up so early to go birdwatching, but I think by the end of April I was already at the point of wanting to experience some nature whenever I could get it! And it was worth  it, I had fun :)

Look some trees what some birds were in!

They could see them anyway...

Pretty nature:

Time to go home. Wait for me!

A couple of days after N left I had my first interview. It went well, so I decided to treat myself to lunch at Mount Vernon's annual Flower Mart:

I picked up this tasty vegetable fried rice with chicken teriyaki which was extremely tasty, but needless to say it was huge I took some home!

Enjoyed while watching this high school band, who were very good, but unfortunately I can't remember their name.

And followed up with a traditional flower mart lemon stick:

The flowers were very pretty, and I even managed to find a house plant which is still alive 5 weeks later!

The following day I was taken on another shopping outing and was introduced to Michaels, which is an amazing craft store on the scale of a shop like PC World back home! So awesome! And then a fun afternoon playing with the cutest 18-month old, being buried in toys, meeting cats and dogs, and bathtime! So the fun didn't stop even though I couldn't make it to Aus :)

Baltimore Part 6: Discovering nature

My second weekend in Baltimore kicked off with a field trip, involving Chinese food, an overnight stay and discovering nature near Baltimore! Needless to say I was pretty exciting about this. Look, no buildings!

Look at the colours of those trees!

N's boss is a bit of a birdwatcher (he has a blog about all the birds he's seen lately here. I would especially recommend checking out the birds they saw in Australia), so we got lots of pretty birds pointed out to us, including a bluebird which was pretty cool!

My favourites were the tree swallows though. I could watch them dipping over the fields all day. Difficult to catch photos in flight, but here's some once they stopped:

And here's me!

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