My last post on American soil ;-)

As per Katie's request... ;-)

In 24 hours I'll be sitting on a plane already completing my first 3 1/2 hours of travel... and I haven't packed up my clothes yet. I hate packing, thus the procrastination (I know Mom and Dad are rolling their eyes now!).

Libor and I have been in Maryland for the past 2 weeks now almost... we went to NYC last week for 3 days. We decided not to go to Boston because I had been sick with a cold (finally on the tail end of it now, but now Libor's got the bug :-/), and my leg hurt. When we got to NYC, my leg hurt worse so I ended up on a tour of one of NYC's hospitals, the Roosevelt Hospital on 59th and 10th. It's part of Columbia University and if you are ever in NYC and need to go to the ER, I recommend that one. Turns out I had an abcess from an ingrown hair on the back of my leg and they had to cut it open to get the infection out. Afterwards my leg looked much worse (read = GROSS), but felt 100 times better. :-) It's still healing.

NYC was a blast - so much to do, so little time. We stayed at this "cheap" hotel (for NYC) on the Upper West Side that was basically a sparsely furnished room with a shared bathroom in the hall. I would recommend that place for someone who didn't want to stay in expensive hotels or in the communal atmosphere of a hostel. Let's see... what did we see? Tuesday we saw Empire State Building, Chrysler Building, Grand Central Station (exactly like I remember it from Ghostbusters ;-)), and dinner at The Silk Road, a Chinese restaurant on Amsterdam and 72nd (I think) that served free wine and refills with the meal.

Wednesday was the lovely Roosevelt Hospital for 3 hours, then we zipped all over the city while the painkillers were still in effect - actually I forget where we went that day. Perhaps the painkillers worked on my memory as well.

On Thursday we went to the Statue of Liberty (VERY cool) - if you ever go, go early in the day so that you can get a ticket to go to the top. I wanted to go to Ellis Island too, but we had a list of things we wanted to do anyway, so another time I'll go. We also hung around Battery Park where we saw a neat group of breakdancing kids. WTC memorial site was also on our agenda that day, and we followed the crowd around the site and ended up in this huge financial building that had a bunch of bank headquarters, shops, and restaurants, plus a stellar view of the city around it. We walked to Wall Street where we saw the Stock Exchange and One Wall Street - the Bank of New York, where Amy first got a job in NYC. I wanted to check out Pearl and Wall Street, which is about where we suspect that Mom's Dutch ancestors had a farm. It was all high-rise buildings that were currently under reconstruction. It was hard to believe that at any point in time there were farms in that area. ;-) I got a picture anyway. When I get settled in Czech and can get everything downloaded, I'll post the pictures. We ate dinner at this place in Little Italy called ... urgh. It'll come to me later - it was the oldest pizzeria in the US. Very good pizza. :-) That night I went back to Roosevelt to get my leg checked up again - a total of 15 minutes in and out, including billing. Fastest dr's appointment I've ever had. ;-)

Being in Maryland has been pretty mellow - mostly resting from NYC and just being lazy. We babysat Fae and Devon on Monday afternoon while Chris and Tracy had some down time together. It was alot of fun - those kids are great! :-) Fae really knows how to entertain Devon. She just cracks him up! Devon smiles alot and I think he'll be a charmer when he's older with that smile of his. ;-) Fae is dramatic - she knows lines from movies and can act out things as well. I hope she goes into theater, she'd like it alot!

At the same time, we spent 3 different days in DC which was pretty fun. Libor and I had a chance to go to the Museum of the American Indian purely by accident. We'd just arrived back in DC from NYC and wanted to kill time by going to the Natural History Museum, but it was raining so hard (thanks to Ernesto) that we couldn't see where we were going. We walked and walked, and finally decided to go into the closest museum, which was the American Indian Museum. It was pretty neat, has alot of potential to be a stellar museum, but I think they were still in the process of adding exhibits that you could walk through. Sunday all of us went into the city to the Zoo which was PACKED... we didn't stay too long but did see the pandas which was cool always. Libor and I then went and saw all the memorials while Chris, Tracy and the kiddos went back home. Seeing the memorials were kind of cool, but they had alot of quotes that spouted idealistic messages that are hardly followed in American government today (you know my views, no need to repeat here). The Roosevelt Memorial is also a memorial that is worth checking out if you ever go to DC and have time. It's between the Jefferson and Lincoln Memorials. Mostly it's waterfalls and statues, but it's soothing and worth spending some time there.

Today Chris took me and Libor into the city with a stop to a microbrewery (not a big surprise ;-)), then to the International Spy Museum. VERY cool. :-) When we went into the museum we had to assume an identity from the list of people they had - I was Hakime Mbeme (?), a 26 year old woman banker from Kenya who was traveling to Munich to visit family. ;-) When we went into the museum itself we had to answer questions as if we were at the border, and when we left we had to answer questions there as well - very neat. ;-) We also went to the Natural History Museum which I wish I had more time to explore because I tend to read everything so by the time the museum had closed 2 hours later, I'd only really explored 2 exhibits and whizzed through 3 others. :-( No dinosaurs for me today. :-( Although I have to say the 2 coolest things were the Hope Diamond of course, and I saw Black Widow spiderlings in the "nursery" where the museum raises insects/spiders to replace the ones on exhibit when they die. I am scared to death of spiders but they fascinate me nonetheless. :-)

Tomorrow afternoon we head to the airport. Our flight is an overnight flight, meaning we arrive in Prague on Friday morning. Originally LIbor wanted to head straight to the music festival in Brno on Friday, but I said no. Last time I went to Europe, I was EXHAUSTED because I couldn't sleep on the plane. I don't expect this time to be any different. So we'll go on all day on Saturday. Should be fun... I hope! I've never been to a music festival for obvious reasons, but this is Libor's world and I want to experience what he likes to do.

I won't be able to post for a while, I'll do my best. Please email me, everyone... keep in touch with me. I might not be able to respond right away but I do like to hear from you and know how you are doing.