Happy Valentine’s Day!

So we’re a little belated on the Valentine’s Day thing but what are ya gonna do?

Since our last post (which has been over a month – so sorry Bill and Jen – you are way better bloggers than we could ever dream of being), we’ve been doing a lot of traveling. I flew back to the States for a week to visit with my BU friends in celebration of Jen and Eric’s wedding. It was a beautiful winter wonderland wedding – just what Jen wanted! It was so great to see Jen and Eric and all the other BU kids. Everyone is leading such successful lives now– and just think, our only source of income used to be picking up change off the street on our walk to school! Anyway, the wedding was so much fun – like we never left grad school!

While I was gone, Scott and Bruno went on a long hike with our friends, JoAnn and Matt. Out of the middle of no where, they came across a fox hunt with about 50 hunting dogs, 7 riders on horseback, and one guy with a bugle to direct it all. Needless to say, Bruno went nutso - barking like a crazy man. But when Scott put him on the ground, he was able to fully appreciate the size of all the other aminals and immediately became scared to death and burrowed into the ground to hide. Very cool experience…you just don’t see that kind of thing in Charlotte, North Carolina!

When I got back to London, we spent one rockin’ Friday night at the British Museum. I know, sometimes we can get pretty wild and crazy. We had 10:30pm tickets to see the Terracotta Army exhibit which has been so popular that the museum has extended their hours until midnight to accommodate all the interest. And even at that time on a Friday night, it was absolutely packed! The Terracotta Army was built by The First Emperor of China in preparation for his death because he wanted to rule the world in the afterlife. So he built thousands of life size terracotta (clay) soldiers, horses, chariots, etc to protect him after death. Each one is unique and so intricate. About 30 pieces of the army were brought to London for the exhibit. It was such a cool thing to see and we learned that The First Emperor was a genius…but also slightly crazy…and definitely a little power hungry. So if you’re ever in Xi’an, China, we highly recommend that you see the real thing!

Scott has been traveling a lot with business – Paris, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Copenhagen – and was actually in New York over Valentine’s Day. So Bruno and I celebrated in style with a first rate meal consisting of doggie kibble and veggie burgers. Scott truly was jealous that he was not in London to partake in the festivities! However, over the weekend, we got to really celebrate Valentine’s Day and went skiing in the Alps. We flew into Munich, Germany and then rented a car to drive on the Autobahn into Bad Hofgastein. Right now you’re thinking, Bad what? It is about half way between Innsbruck and Salzburg, Austria, close to the German border. It was absolutely beautiful – straight out of “The Sound of Music.” We went to a ski area called Ski Amade which is actually made up of about 8 different ski resorts so there a million different runs from which to choose. It was an awesome trip and the skiing was amazing.

Well, to clarify, it would have been amazing if we were actually good skiers. But alas, we are not. I am the slowest skier on the face of the earth and was definitely the worst skier on the whole of the Alps. That’s right, at one point, the “kinder ski school” came racing past me and almost knocked me over. Lucky for Scott, he is exponentially better than I am. He was super sweet and stayed behind me on all the slopes. At first I thought that I had married a loving man who really cared about me enough to follow me down the mountain to make sure I didn’t get hurt. Then, he told me the truth – that he actually liked staying behind me because he was having more fun laughing at me when I fell than he was actually skiing. Why am I not surprised? At one point, I fell and my right ski hit me in the back of the head, then I slid half way down the mountain face first, then I couldn’t get up and had to just wiggle my way around for about 5 minutes until I got situated. Hilarious! I am also pretty sure that I busted a bursa on my left hip from falling so much. It didn’t matter though. We stayed on the “Easy Piste” runs the whole weekend and had a ton of fun. And after we were exhausted from skiing each day, we would head back to the hotel and enjoy all the “apres ski” spa services – they had a ton different hot tubs, saunas, steam rooms, pools, and aromatherapy rock grottos that we could use for free. It was easily the best part of the trip!