Second Christmas in America
04 January 2003
Merry Christmas and apologies to those we didn't send a card to. We have had a very low-key Christmas, largely due to our uncertainty about when we might be moving back to Australia.
A friend, David, who looks after the lemurs at the San Francisco Zoo invited us to bring some friends to see the zoo with him, so we could see the animals up close from behind the enclosures. We made a party of ten and spent the afternoon there. David introduced us to the keepers at a number of the exhibits and we had the opportunity to touch or feed the koalas, rhinos, giraffes and warthogs. We also were allowed up close to the lemurs, polar bears, tigers and otters. I made a movie of the visit.
In the bear house we were interested to see they had jars of glitter in different colours. The keeper explained that sometimes the polar bears got diarrhoea and needed treatment. By putting different coloured glitter (which goes "straight through") in each bear's food they could easily figure out who needed treatment.
At the end of November we had Thanksgiving. I sat the STEP 1 exam at the start of the break. This is the exam American medical students sit at the end of their basic science training, so equivalent to what I should have known in 1990. Twelve years later it was a bit of a struggle doing an eight-hour exam on this material but fortunately I remembered enough to pass.
For the remainder of Thanksgiving we had a friend, Chris, visiting from Los Angeles. We went to see Cirque du Soleil's new show "Varekai" but otherwise had a pretty quiet break. Immediately after Thanksgiving Americans put up Christmas decorations on the outside of their houses. This is taken to an extreme in some cases: one house on 21st Street was quite extraordinary:
In mid-December Ross Carne came to visit on his way back to Australia from a neurology conference in Seattle. Unfortunately he left two days too early to join in our "tree trimming" party the following Saturday. It seems to be common here to invite people over for drinks and to help decorate a Christmas tree. With the assistance of plenty of "holiday nog", our guests generated plenty of enthusiasm for decorating the tree. When we surveyed the result the following morning, it was more than a little uneven, and some of the nibbles seemed to have made their way onto the tree.
The tree and fire on Christmas morning.
Christmas was quiet without family. We opened our presents with friends, Chris and Kurt, who also have no family in San Francisco and the following day we went away for a week's holiday in Las Vegas and Los Angeles.
Christmas breakfast.
Las Vegas was fascinating for the excesses of its casinos, with their extraordinary pastiche of architectural features from other places and times. Since we don't gamble, smoke or even drink much there were limited opportunities for entertainment. We saw the Cirque du Soleil show "O" which everyone we knew had raved about. It was certainly spectacular with very elaborate staging. We also spent a morning flying to the Grand Canyon, since we may well not have another opportunity to see it.
James not in Paris.
In Los Angeles we saw a number of friends who were either living there or visiting for New Year's Eve. We went to a big party on the 30th of December and got home late enough to see the fireworks in Sydney on TV. We went to a dinner party with friends on New Year's Eve, but we were so tired we were at the hotel and asleep before midnight.
Our plans for the rest of the year are at present uncertain. We will come back to Melbourne either early in the year or else at the end of Summer here.
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A friend, David, who looks after the lemurs at the San Francisco Zoo invited us to bring some friends to see the zoo with him, so we could see the animals up close from behind the enclosures. We made a party of ten and spent the afternoon there. David introduced us to the keepers at a number of the exhibits and we had the opportunity to touch or feed the koalas, rhinos, giraffes and warthogs. We also were allowed up close to the lemurs, polar bears, tigers and otters. I made a movie of the visit.
In the bear house we were interested to see they had jars of glitter in different colours. The keeper explained that sometimes the polar bears got diarrhoea and needed treatment. By putting different coloured glitter (which goes "straight through") in each bear's food they could easily figure out who needed treatment.
At the end of November we had Thanksgiving. I sat the STEP 1 exam at the start of the break. This is the exam American medical students sit at the end of their basic science training, so equivalent to what I should have known in 1990. Twelve years later it was a bit of a struggle doing an eight-hour exam on this material but fortunately I remembered enough to pass.
For the remainder of Thanksgiving we had a friend, Chris, visiting from Los Angeles. We went to see Cirque du Soleil's new show "Varekai" but otherwise had a pretty quiet break. Immediately after Thanksgiving Americans put up Christmas decorations on the outside of their houses. This is taken to an extreme in some cases: one house on 21st Street was quite extraordinary:
In mid-December Ross Carne came to visit on his way back to Australia from a neurology conference in Seattle. Unfortunately he left two days too early to join in our "tree trimming" party the following Saturday. It seems to be common here to invite people over for drinks and to help decorate a Christmas tree. With the assistance of plenty of "holiday nog", our guests generated plenty of enthusiasm for decorating the tree. When we surveyed the result the following morning, it was more than a little uneven, and some of the nibbles seemed to have made their way onto the tree.
The tree and fire on Christmas morning.
Christmas was quiet without family. We opened our presents with friends, Chris and Kurt, who also have no family in San Francisco and the following day we went away for a week's holiday in Las Vegas and Los Angeles.
Christmas breakfast.
Las Vegas was fascinating for the excesses of its casinos, with their extraordinary pastiche of architectural features from other places and times. Since we don't gamble, smoke or even drink much there were limited opportunities for entertainment. We saw the Cirque du Soleil show "O" which everyone we knew had raved about. It was certainly spectacular with very elaborate staging. We also spent a morning flying to the Grand Canyon, since we may well not have another opportunity to see it.
James not in Paris.
In Los Angeles we saw a number of friends who were either living there or visiting for New Year's Eve. We went to a big party on the 30th of December and got home late enough to see the fireworks in Sydney on TV. We went to a dinner party with friends on New Year's Eve, but we were so tired we were at the hotel and asleep before midnight.
Our plans for the rest of the year are at present uncertain. We will come back to Melbourne either early in the year or else at the end of Summer here.
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