Yale part 2

Hey guys, got some more pics to share with you today, it's a history of Yale. So here goes:



Yale students adopt the first college mascot, Handsome Dan, a ferocious and enthusiastic fan at early football games. Handsome Dan inspired Cole Porter to write Yale's famous fight song, "Bulldog, Bulldog." (see, it is real!) Dan continues to reign from the lobby of Payne Whitney Gymnasium, while Handsome Dan XV leads the cheers on the field. Yale students also adopted the first school colors (1853), fielded the first cheerleaders (1890), and developed the first school fight song (1892)



A group of "gentleman songsters" begin gathering weekly at Mory's and adopt the name Whiffenpoofs. Today, the Yale campus still rings with the sounds of the Whiffenpoofs as well as 16 other organsied a capella singing groups.



When Yale Bowl was completed, it was the largest amphitheater built since the Roman Colosseum. Capacity of the Bowl was later expanded to hold 80,000 fans before being reduced to its present day capacity of 64,000. The Yale football program continues its long and storied tradition, becoming the first college team to reach the 800-victory milestone in 2000. The Bowl was the main venue for the 1995 Special Olympics World Games and is a National Historic Landmark.



Yale students invented the Frisbee, tossing pie plates from the Frisbee Pie Company to each other and calling "Frisbee!" to warn passersby. The spelling was changed when Wham-O began mass producing the saucers.

Well I hope this has been an enlightening experience, I for one found this stuff really interesting, so I hope you did too. Tomorrow I will post a couple more pics from Yale with interesting stories behind them.

Just a quick post tonight

Sorry for not posting yesterday. Just have something small to share with you today.

OK, so you know how American's really go all out at Christmas? With big lights on the roof and reindeer on their front lawn etc etc. So while we were over there, we noticed that cos it was Easter time, a lot of houses had Happy Easter signs, and some even had bunnies in their windows. Fair enough. But this house beat them all:



Is it just me, or this that an Easter Nativity scene? We were driving past this in the car and I just had to take a picture. It thought it was truly amazing and deserved to be on here.

Anyway tomorrow I will post more Yale pics. There was a History of Yale display that you could walk round, actually had some really interesting stuff, like things Yale students have invented and whatnot. So you have that to look forward. If anyone is even still reading this anymore. Please let me know that I'm not just wasting my time adding these pics so that people in my own congregation can read it, that would be really sad (BTW, hi to Shaz, James and Dawn). Come on people, comment already!!!

Gilmore Girls!

Yes, it was inevitable I would make a Gilmore Girls post.

While we were away, we saw a few things that reminded us of Gilmore Girls. Here are the pictures:


House of Logan. How cool is that???

And we finally found out what happened to all the ubiquitous anvils that Lorelei was wondering about:





They were at the Mystic Seaport!

So anyway, now that I've got that out of my system, we will commence with normal posts again tomorrow. My next post should be pretty interesting, so don't forget to check back. And please keep leaving comments! We love 'em!

Told you I'd be back

I know I said I would try to get some pics on last night, but I lied.

Anyway, I have a ton of stuff for you now, so it was worth the wait. I'm uploading video footage as we speak so while it loads, I'll share some more photos. The first few are from the day we went to Mystic Seaport:


This is me and Robyn in one of those cut out thingys. This is the closest Robyn will ever be to being an actual mermaid.


Me and Robyn decided to try on pirate hats in the gift shop


Robyn is pretending to be Captain Jack Sparrow


This was taken in Mystic Pizza. Yum!

I also have 3 new videos to share with you, including the one where I put on 10 t-shirts.

Penguins!

Mystic Diorama

10 T-shirts

Well I think I will leave it there for today. Stay tuned over the next couple of days, we're gonna have more photos from Yale, plus 7 state capital buildings! Cool beans!

If there are any days from the holiday that you would like us to write more about, or add more photos from, then just leave a comment and let us know!

We're home! *Cue the incontrollable sobbing*

Hi, we're back now, and we're so jetlagged it's unbelievable. Wednesday and yesterday just seemed to morph into one loooooong day, cos we had a night flight. And it was late cos some baggage got lost.

Anyway, on Wednesday before we went to the airport, we got to go to the Canadian Bethel, that was amazing. The grounds were enormous, I think they said they had 180 acres of land. But the factory itself is a lot smaller than the London branch.

Our tour guide was a brother named Jeremy. He was French Canadian, but served in the Spanish congregation.

Thanks to everyone who's been following our adventures each day. Your comments made us chuckle all the time. There's so much more that we didn't get chance to write about. If you ask either of us, we will be pleased to answer any questions or ellaborate on any stories that you wondered about!!

It really surprised us how many people were regularly reading this blog without ever commenting. So that we can see how far the blog fever spread, we would like to ask please that everyone leave their name as a comment - unless you've already posted... cos then we'd already know you've been on... thanks a bunch guys.
xxx

I know this all sounds kind of final, but please trust me when I say this will not be the last post. We have tons more pictures and video clips to show you yet, so be patient, and bit by bit we will share them all with you. (Well, not all of them, we took millions) So remember to keep checking back. I'm already back into my regular routine, but I promise to do my best to add a little more every day, even if it's just a couple of pictures. Right now all the pics are still on my Dad's laptop, so I can't add any to this post, but I will try again later tonight to add some.

So thanks again to everyone who's read this thing. And remember, it won't take long just to add a little comment, just with your name if you want. We would love to find out who's been reading, otherwise we have no way of knowing. Thanks!

Sad sad weekend

Unfortunately we don't have much to report, just some bad news.

Saturday was great. This was supposed to be the best weekend ever. Yale on Saturday and Six Flags on Sunday. On Sunday we had torrential rain all day. It was horrible. Robyn and I were devestated. So instead we went shopping. I had left aside loads of money to blow at Six Flags, so instead I had to buy a bunch of stuff. Poor me ;)

Today we went to Mark Twain's house. That was really cool. There was a sort of museum, and then we had a tour of his house, which had been restored to exactly how he had it back in the late 1800s. And there was a cool gift shop aswell. Bought more stuff.

So tomorrow we basically just have a whole lot of driving. And then on Wednesday we visit Toronto Bethel and go home :( This isn't going to be the last post however. When I get chance I'll add some more videos, but until then, keep those comments coming.

PS - I wasn't sure if everyone had realised, but the other day, we did 3 seperate posts in one night. This was to make up for not posting in a few days. I just figured some people may not have noticed, and I didn't want you to miss out on the 3 posts. So anyone who has only read the post about Yale and not the post about Mystic Seaport and Aquarium might wanna scroll down and have a read. Hope that makes sense.

Yay! Yale!

Today has been the greatest day of my life. We went to Yale. Most people wouldn't find this very exciting. But anyone who knows me will know that I love Gilmore Girls, a lot of which is set in Yale.

So, Dad and Mum dumped us in New Haven and left us to wander round for the day. We started in the Yale vistors centre where we learned some really interesting things. Then we went to the places we wanted to see, the art galleries, the Yale Daily News, and the rare manuscript library. Then there was a guided tour by an undergrad. This was amazing, she took us inside Branford college which is the college Rory (Gilmore Girls) lives in. It looked similar in some parts to the show, but all of it was beautiful old buildings. And we saw statues of important people that attended Yale, or had stuff to do with the University.

Here are some photos:

This is Handsome Dan, the school mascot. He's dead now, so they stuffed him and stuck him in a glass box.

This is the foot of Theodore Woolsey. It's rubbed shiny cos people touch it for good luck.

I wasn't looking forward to today as much as Beth, so I was surprised when I enjoyed it so much. Dad will be proud to know that when left to wander the streets of the city on our own,we found ourselves in various museems and art galleries. I never knew learning could be so fun. We saw the Guttenburg Bible in one of the mueems. This was the first book to be printed using modern methods.

The college that we looked round was based on Oxford University. It was beautiful. The guy who designed it had O.C.D. and wanted it to look authentic and old, so went to great lengths to weather the structure, including pouring acid on it and burying and roof tiles. Crazy guy!
Wow, I think did learn something!

Some of the stories and legends surrounding the people we learnt about were amazing too. Whether it be the C.I.A flying into campus in helicopters to steal molds of the statues, or the first spy being caught out by eating steak wrongly!

The highlight of my day however, happened when we got back into the car. Beth was so overcome with emotion at having finally ventured into Yale, and was excitedly recounting various Yale anecdotes to Sally when the cup of boiling hot coffee that was balancing precariously between her legs suddenly found itself in her crotch!!
I couldn't do anything to help because I was too busy trying not to wet myself!! I'm laughing now just thinking about it!! She had to get changed in the car, while I was still laughing!

Anyway, I'm afraid we don't have that on video, so we'll talk to you soon!

Yeah I'd love to talk longer but I'm so tired and we have a long day ahead of us. Six Flags baby! See ya tomorrow.

Mystic Aquarium

Next came Friday. We went to Mystic Aquarium. That was amazing. We took about 6,000 pictures betwen us. They have Beluga whales and penguins. There was also a pool where you could stroke Sting Rays. They were more slimey than I thought they would be.

We tried to time it to catch the feeding times of all the animals.

Yeah, the Beluga whales were cool. They were white and looked more like dolphins. And there were seals and sea lions which were cute. The guy feeding them was cute also.

There was also a 3D ride that was fun, and there were other exibits, but the place wasn't that huge. After we'd finished, we went into Olde Mystic village, where there were some really random shops. And even more random people. Robyn pointed out a guy who she thought was cute and I had to point out to her that it was actually a woman.

Anywho here are some photos from yesterday:




Later on in the day, we were joking about how many t-shirts me and Robyn have bought this holiday, and my Dad said I would have to wear them all home on the plane. Everyone challenged me to put them all on, and I never back down from a challenge. To cut a long story short, I did it. I'll upload the video later. Just remember I am always right. Robyn and my parents learned that the hard way.

OK anyway I wanna get on to talking about today!

Sorry it's been such a long time!

Hi guys, we honestly meant to write sooner, but we've been so busy, plus the Internet at our last hotel was a bit pants. So let's backtrack first of all to Thursday. We've done a lot these past 3 days so we're gonna do 3 seperate entries.

So, on Thursday we went to Mystic Seaport. This was kind of interesting in a weird sort of way. It was like an outdoor museum wth old boats and whatnot. There were people telling us stuff about sailors and fishing and stuff. We saw a lady gut a fish, and a guy sing sea shantys. Here are a couple of pictures:


This was the lady who gutted the fish. I have a video of her ripping its head off, removing the spine, and cutting out the eye balls.


This is one of the ships you could go aboard.

After the seaport we went to Mystic Pizza, but I'll let Robyn tell you more about that.

Well I was gonna tell you about the fish, cos that was my favourite part of the day, but Beth already enlightened you on that. It was awesome. We learnt all about whaling too. They showed us how rope was made and there was a Planetarium that we went in. I'd never been in one before. It was cool. I am now able to navigate a ship at sea, using nothing but the stars and a compass, so should I ever find myself in a situation where I am on board a ship, all alone and the engine stops working - I'll be fine. Don't worry!

Mystic Pizza is the place where the Julia Roberts film is based. The pizza there is dang good.