Exploring Exploris!

During January, we hired a car (they call it car hire rather than rental car here) and went to Bob and Kath's Sat, enjoyed a lovely evening with them (as always - great food and great company!), stayed over, and then drive south of them to Strangford on Sunday to check out "seal rock," took the short ferry across Strangford Lough to Portaferry where there is a small aquarium, and then drove back to Belfast along the eastern side of the Lough. Map here: http://goo.gl/maps/OKQr6

Yep, the boys love it at Bob and Kath's - all sorts of fun!

Unfortunately, the tide was in, so we didn't see any seals in their natural environment before getting on the ferry, but the ferry ride was delightful, if short (only 10 min), especially since the weather was great (sunny).

View of Portaferry from the ferry.

The aquarium, called Exploris, was also very fun. For those of you thinking about the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, stop now - this is a small building run by naturalists, takes 2-3 hours tops to do and see everything. But, it is charming. Website here: http://www.exploris.org.uk/. And, they have some lovely displays, including a few pools with rays and starfish and small sharks that the kids can touch. Course, before touching the animals, the kids have to show amazing patience by listening for a LONG time to a naturalist tell them all about the "beasties" - ha! He was an amazing font of knowledge, but didn't seem to recognize that his audience has an attention span of 10 min (if lucky)! Anyway... the best part? They take in wounded and sick seals and nurse them back to health and then release them. We saw a handful of these seals in little quarantine rooms being cared for, as well as another handful out playing in their outdoor enclosure/pool. VERY fun! They also had activities for the kids like crayon rubbings, coloring, dress-up play, etc...

Yep, that is a pic of Jamie FREAKING out about a scary statue! Mean parents...

Then, the drive back to Belfast along the eastern side of the Lough was absolutely stunning. SO beautiful. We have only hired a car a handful of times so far, but we are realizing that now that we are already half-way through our time in N IRE, we better start being tourists! Here are some more pix of the day!

Weird tree for N Ireland, right?

Got buffer?

I am just back from a lunchtime run, and am HAPPY. My run was lovely...It is a beautiful sunny day here in Belfast (truth be told, we've had a week straight of each day having at least a couple of hours of blue skies and direct sun - everyone reading this, please touch wood!). There were lots of people out on the tow path - seniors sitting on benches with eyes closed soaking in the sun (mind you, it is only 45 degrees out), babies asleep in prams being pushed by moms, dads, and grandparents, dogs playing in the Lagan, and then of course people out running and biking and walking. Just gorgeous. However, I also observed something that I thought was quite funny. As I turned the corner at the weir to look for seals, instead I saw the grazing cows I've written about previously. Apparently, they were moved again and were happily munching grass right along the Lagan. Buffer? Nah!

Cows are hiding behind the brown fringing reeds, one dark and two light. Weir is in the background.

I finally got 'em!!!

Today when I went for my lunchtime run, the seals were out of the water at the weir right by our house. I promptly cut my run short, went back to the house to grab my camera, jumped on my bike and went back to the weir. Check out these cuties!!!

This shows the weir that is at the end of Lockview Rd right in our neighborhood
(less than 1/5 miles from our house) and the seals are lounging to the right.

 

Just to the right of the seals in this pic is where the cows were a couple of days ago (post called 'Got buffer?')!

Kendra's toe...

You might recall that a while back I said that I wouldn't blog ONLY about good and fun things...but, again, I find myself not reporting about the annoying or upsetting things! So, here is a quick report - I broke my left pinky toe the weekend I returned from FL (mid-Jan) and it is STILL sore (March). I could hardly walk for a few days, and had to take 3 weeks off running. I'm back to normal activity, but the toe is still not happy. You might be asking how I did such a thing? Not a glamorous or action-packed story. I was getting in the shower... I know, ridiculous! Ha!

FL wrap up - Misc fun and pix

This post is just about ordinary days in FL - the times we spent together as family, mainly at the house. Below are pix of the activities with captions for posterity.

Jamie's little cage - he certainly likes a challenge!

Watson had a lot of fun with the yoga ball Santa brought him. We shipped it to Lansing, so it'll be
there when we return. This pic also shows the butterfly tattoos from Aunt Korinne, as well as Jamie
sporting his baby legs on the cold, hard tile floors. Notice the boys having fun together?

Just a bit of tablet and computer play going on in FL...above and below!

Cards too - Blink from Aunt Korinne was a hit. Watson also played his first game of Upwords.

And of course, reading...Jamieson LOVES books.

Jamieson really developed his walking while we were in FL.
We got him this walker and we walked all over the place with it!
He also walked with Grandma's cane and he walked
 carrying a variety of random things around the house.

And cuddling, too! Aaaawwwweeee....

We are all so glad that we got to spend time together in FL - thanks for helping to make it happen Mom and Dad!

FL part 4 - Disney!

While in FL, Jubin and I took Watson to Disney's Magic Kingdom for a day. The 4 of us went there for the 1st time for 1 day back in March 2013, and Watson LOVED it. Jubin and I had sort of delayed going, thinking that it was SO expensive and SO overdone and SO commercial. But then when Jamieson was born, we decided that we better bring Watson soon, before Jamie was walking and it would be really difficult to go. Then, for a while Jamie would be too young, and the next opportunity might be when Watson was too old for Magic Kingdom!

From March, 2013 - taking the trolley from the parking lot to the Monorail station

The experience turned out well - Watson loved it, Jamie slept some of the time, was pretty chill in his carrier or stroller or being lugged around by me or Jubin, and the Disney baby feeding/nursing rooms were really great. Overall, Jubin and I were pleasantly surprised. Yes, it is crazy expensive, but the park wasn't as crazy busy (very few long lines actually) or overdone as we had feared it would be. Parts of it were downright amazing, actually (e.g., the Electric Light Parade). And, it was so great to see Watson's reactions to it all...so, we thought that us taking him there for a 2nd day in Dec, just the 3 of us would be the perfect Christmas gift for him. And, it was!

First ride of the day!

Still loving It's a Small World - went on it twice!
And, we were all humming it for days...

We rented a car and drove a little over an hour down to Orlando to Magic Kingdom. After getting a little lost on the way there (just a little), we had a great day. But, it was busier than in March (school break week - thank goodness we went on a week day at least!) and we got there later in the day. Both of these facts meant that the first Fast Pass we got, for Peter Pan, was for 7:30pm! Still, we never waited in line for more than 20 minutes. Then, in the afternoon it RAINED. And, I don't mean rain, I mean RAIN! We tried to wait it out in the stores for a while and finally gave in and bought Disney ponchos and kept going on the rides that we could. The good news about rain at Disney? People with multi-day tix leave! Let's see - highlights? It's a Small World, the People Mover, and the Tea Cups were probably Watson's favorite rides. He also did this really cool thing we hadn't noticed in March - Disney's Sorcerer's Apprentice.  They gave Watson a map and some cards and he went on a scavenger hunt all around the park trying to find portals where he could defeat villains. At each portal, a video plays and he had to pick a card with a special power that could defeat the villains in the video. He really liked it! He still pulls out his map and cards to look at it all...they told him that they'll be good forever and that each time he comes he'll get more/different cards and be able to defeat more/different villains. Guess that's something we'll be bringing back with us from Belfast to Michigan...

Oh, and of course the Electric Light Parade was a hit again. Interestingly, during the day we saw 3 major glitches during parades. It seems that even the big machine of Disney can be affected by the weather!

Can't help but wonder about the cost of each day of operation,
just in terms of energy consumption...

Low points? Well, in Tomorrowland, we waited for about 20 minutes to go on the Astro Orbiter. Right when we finally got to the front of the line, it started pouring again, and the ride has absolutely no shelter. So, we didn't ride it...but, the good news was we then went to the People Mover instead because it is covered, and that ended up being a cool ride (one of W's favs) that we probably wouldn't have tried otherwise. Another low point was the Tomorrowland Speedway - cars that you ride around a course. Watson was NOT a fan. I have to admit that I wasn't a huge fan either - they were very hard to steer and were pretty jerky. Interesting tidbit - Watson was fascinated by Splash Mountain and really wanted to go on it, but when we got there he was too scared to go - he was SO torn! Cutie. But, all in all we had a great day! We left for The Villages after the parade ended and Watson was asleep within a few minutes.

Kendra's seminar at QUB Biological Sciences

I was invited to give a talk to the School of Biological Sciences (http://www.qub.ac.uk/schools/SchoolofBiologicalSciences/) at Queen's this week. This seminar was part of the Ecology, Evolution, Behaviour and Environmental Economics Seminar Series (http://www.qub.ac.uk/schools/SchoolofBiologicalSciences/OurResearch/EcologyEvolutionBehaviourandEnvironmentalEconomics/), which is attended by mainly students and some faculty. During the past 6 months, I've gone to two of the other seminars in this series (Drs. Catherine McGavigan and Dmitry Kishkiniev speaking about aquatic plants and migrating birds, respectively) and it seems like a good group of people. These seminars are held in a really large lecture hall and often start a bit late, so I went over to the building early to get set up. Of course, at 5 minutes before the start, someone came and got me because the room had been changed...best laid plans!

My talk, titled "Landscape Limnology: Understanding multi-scaled cause-effect relationships between terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems" was in the Medical Biology Center, about a block from the building my office is in. My talk was sparsely attended (only ~20 people probably), probably for 3 reasons: the room change, they haven't updated the seminar schedule online for this semester, and they were having a special evening seminar that night (many people, including me, wouldn't have time to go to 2 seminars in 1 day). Oh well, the people who did attend, asked me interesting questions afterwards and seemed to enjoy my talk.

It is interesting to experience the differences in culture across schools. For example, the seminars are not preceded or followed by food and drink (like those in GAP). Instead, the group gathers every Thursday morning for coffee and cake. I think that I will probably attend one of the coffee hours soon to see about continued interactions with people from this cluster.

Special thanks to Dr. Christine Maggs for hosting me - she seems to be a very nice person, 
as well as being a productive scientist and the Head of School.