Jammin' With the Marleys!

We just got back from one of the greatest concerts ever!!

We were at the House of Blues in Hollywood tonight to see Stephen Marley - he came out with his first C.D. March 20th. He was such a good performer!!! Somehow we got ourselves right up front and center by the stage, so we had the best standing room in the packed house! The band that opened for him was from Somalia and had African drumming mixed with hip hop - I enjoyed the drums, but the lyrics were a little depressing since most of them were about growing up in impovershed, war-torn Somalia. Hearing about Somalia really enforced the need I have to get over to East or South Africa and do some volunteer work ... someday I'll figure out how to get over there...

Anyway, back to the concert! Mos Def came out to sing his part with Stephen in the song "Hey Baby" which was cool... then Damian "Jr. Gong" Marley came out to throw his beats and sing half the concert with his brother... then, when it couldn't get any better, Stevie Wonder showed up and they pulled him up on stage. Stevie Wonder was singing with Stephen and Damian, then who comes out on stage? Ben Harper! Then the four of them sang the Bob Marley hit "Could you be loved" together-- too awesome for words!!!!


Damian, Stevie Wonder, Stephen, and Ben Harper singing together

Stephen even seemed star-struck and said to the crowd, "This is not a normal concert for me!" Since I was right in front, Stephen made eye-contact a lot with us which always makes you feel special... plus I'm pretty easy to spot since I dance the entire time and jump around a lot. It was just too fun!! I know I'll be sore tomorrow (my throat already hurts), but it was such a great night!! They gave me a free "ghetto youths" shirt (one you can't buy in stores) and the set list. Just an irie concert, man!


Stephen Marley rockin' the stage


Stevie Wonder and Ben Harper singing "Could you be loved"


Set list from the show


One happy reggae fan!

I can't wait for my next Marley concert in May- this time with my favorite, Ziggy Marley, who I haven't seen since January! I hope it's just as good!!

East Coast Part II: Cavorting in Connecticut

The four-hour, $20 bus ride took us from the cherry tree-lined streets of D.C., past the smoke-puffing factories along the New Jersey turnpike, through the Lincoln Tunnel, spitting us out on the streets of New York. 34th street to be exact! While on the bus, we sat next to a couple of teenage girls from Brooklyn who were enamored with the idea that we were from California, and proceeded to ask us a million questions about the beaches, weather, and celebrities- they really got a kick out of my encounters with stars in Malibu. The two girls then decided that they were going to move to California for college if they could.

Once in New York City, we had to walk a mile or two with our bags over to Grand Central Station to catch the train to Connecticut to visit our friend, Amina, at Yale. (We'd return to NYC later).


Looking up the Empire State Building

On our way, we ended up walking right under the Empire State Building, past Harold Square, and up Park Avenue where many tall, skinny women in high heels were busily walking to their destinations. With all the walking in N.Y., I don't know how they do it in such high heels! I was wearing my comfortable merrell mocs! Grand Central Station was beautiful and historic- as I took a picture of the schedules, a stereotypical couple embraced.


Grand Central Station

We bought our tickets to New Haven, and got onboard the train for the two-hour ride up the coast. The train conductor came through to collect our tickets and was dressed just like I'd imagined a conductor to look- with the little hat and everything!


Tickets, please!

After arriving in New Haven, we walked a couple miles to Amina's house through beautiful, elm-lined streets- although, since it was still a little chilly in Connecticut, the trees were still void of leaves and blossoms. While walking through a crosswalk, a car hit me! Not hard or anything, but it bumped me! It was a guy turning right without looking in the crosswalk- he was stopped, and just started edging out all of a sudden and hit me. Bryan and I were astonished! The guy apologized profusely, and since I wasn't hurt, we continued on our way.

Once we met up with Amina, the one thing that was new about her and shocked me was that she had her nose pierced! It looked worldly and exotic, but also out-of-character for my totally straight-edge friend! After greetings and embraces, Amina immediately took us on a quick tour of some of the more historic buildings on the Yale campus.


College buddies

Everything seemed to have such a history! From the Beinecke Rare Book Library which houses a large collection of rare books and manuscripts- including the Gutenberg Bible, to the secret society of Skull & Bones …


Amina in front of the Skull and Bones Secret Society

Most of the architecture is in the Gothic style- you could spend days just looking at the details around campus!







The overall feel of Yale reminded me of Hogwarts from Harry Potter! They have 12 residential colleges where incoming undergrads live and take their classes in for all 4 years; most of the residential colleges have underground tunnels that take students to the dining hall, libraries, printing presses, gyms, dark rooms, etc.- all underground! Each college has their own Dean, Master, and affiliated faculty (like Hogwarts!). The big mystery for Bryan and I was, how do they pick which incoming students go to which residential college? A sorting hat??? No, apparently it's mostly random and students can't pick where they get placed. The residential colleges looked really cool to live in, and students get their own rooms—total opposite of the 7-story dorms with 3 people stuffed into tiny rooms I lived in at UCLA!


Gate to a Residential College





The magical, gothic illusion of Yale was shattered for me, however, when I learned on the official campus tour that most the buildings were not built in the 1700's when the campus was founded- but rather, most were built from 1917-1931! Not only that, the illusion was created by the architect, who faux-aged the buildings by splashing the walls with acid, deliberately breaking their leaded glass windows and repairing them in the style of the Middle Ages, and creating niches for decorative statuary but leaving them empty to simulate loss or theft over the ages! What a façade! Totally fooled me! I wish I hadn't found out that information, though, as it ruined a little of the impressiveness of the buildings.


"Grad Students" being intellectual in the graduate student lounge, aren't they just so smart?

We finished our first day in Connecticut with DELICIOUS, brick-oven, garlic and mashed potato (yes, mashed potato) pizza and fresh-brewed beer from the restaurant BAR (a Yalie favorite). One thing to note: Connecticutan's attitudes. Gosh! I had heard of their coldness and rudeness from Amina, but I didn't understand it until I experienced it myself!! From the rude waitress at BAR who didn't smile once, to the students on campus I tried to start little conversations with! It was like I was in the twilight zone! For example, one evening I saw a guy walking with a French horn on campus… having played the instrument for 10 years myself, and not being a very common instrument, I said to him, "Yay, French horns!" He gave me a snooty look and walked the other way! Ah! How rude! Amina and Bryan joked that he probably ran back to his residential college and in his nerdy brain (yes, he was totally a nerd) thought that I liked him and would tell all his nerdy friends about the encounter and the weird girl he thought was hitting on him. A hard blow for a friendly person like myself. With my ego (slightly) bruised, the three of us headed to an evening lecture for Amina's class and went home soon after.

The next morning we woke up bright and early to head to NYC for the day, returning to New Haven late in the evening. I'll skip the NY day for now (leave it for the next blog) and summarize our last day at Yale…



Our plan was to go to Amina's American Studies lecture that morning, have lunch, and then go to the Peabody Museum of Natural History while Amina was teaching her discussion section. But, our morning didn't go exactly as planned. After grabbing chai teas, we walked a mile or so to the lecture hall and were about to go in when Bryan couldn't find his glasses in his pocket (he was wearing his sunglasses). So, we left Amina and went to search for the glasses- at the coffee shop, on the sidewalk, retracing our steps everywhere! I even went in asking all the little stores if anyone had turned glasses in… just an exhaustive, two-hour search! And, to no avail! We were seriously bumming, when a shop worker mentioned that she thought she saw a glasses case in the gutter when she parked her car earlier! Could it be? Were they ours?? Sure enough, wedged between her tires and the curb were Bryan's glasses. We were so thankful for her help that we bought some tea from her shop and gave her a hefty tip.


Bryan and I in the Yale University Library

By then Amina was out of class, so we met back up with her and headed to lunch at a little Indian restaurant with good food. Afterward, when Amina had to go back and teach her discussion, Bryan and I decided to go on an official Yale tour since the campus seemed to have so many unique buildings (this was the tour when my illusion of Yale was shattered). The tour was very interesting, with our guide telling great stories of how the Frisbee and hamburgers were invented in New Haven, and about famous graduates like Eli Whitney, Sinclair Lewis, Presidents Taft, Ford, Clinton, and the Bushes. After the tour we headed to the Peabody Natural History Museum, which is most notable for its "Great Hall of Dinosaurs" - something Bryan had been looking forward to visiting to see a famous 110-foot "Age of Reptiles" dinosaur mural (I don't know… it's a paleontologist thing…) The museum was pretty cool, and Bryan was all into the fossils and the mural.


Bryan with his precious fossils and dinosaur mural

One cool fact, the Peabody Museum is the only museum to have a brontosaurus on display… a fossil which was incorrectly identified, and later proved to be an Apatosaurus. (Remember learning about that dinosaur controversy back in elementary school?).

After the museum, we met back up with Amina to visit the beautiful main Yale library, which was designed to look like a cathedral with the card catalogues as pews, and the confessionals as phone booths.


Carrying Amina's books (she has to read one book a day!)

We left early the next morning to allow Amina study for her PhD oral examinations, and headed to the big apple for our last few days on the East Coast.

Help Preserve & Conserve Our Earth!

Hi Friends!
I know most of you try to take care of our planet through the little things you do each day, and the choices you make as conscious consumers ... so let's all celebrate our environment this weekend and get involved in local Earth Day activities!

"You must be the change you wish to see in the world."
— Mahatma Gandhi

Whether it's planting a tree, cleaning a beach, volunteering with an environmental non-profit, or attending an Earth Day event, make a positive impact on the world we share!

Part of my job with TreePeople and CREEC is creating a monthly environmental education newsletter. With so many Earth Day events happening this month, this would be a good resource if you're looking for an event to attend or an environmental activity to help out with! Please take the time to read April's CREEC-LA Newsletter, found here: www.creec.org/region11/eenews

Some of the events listed in the newsletter have passed, but many are this week! Please get involved and feel free to contact me if you want more information on any local volunteer groups!

Here are a few more ideas and activities you can participate in this weekend, or all year:

Want to plant trees? www.treepeople.org

Clean a beach? www.cabrilloaq.org & www.healthebay.org

Volunteer with local organizations? www.reefcheck.org & www.californiawildlifecenter.org

"When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world."
- John Muir, Naturalist, Preservationist and Founder of the Sierra Club (1838-1914)

"The ultimate test of man's conscience may be his willingness to sacrifice something today for future generations whose words of thanks will not be heard."
- Gaylord Nelson, former Governor of Wisconsin, Co-founder of Earth Day

"A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself. Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people."
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt

East Coast Part I: Discovering D.C.

This spring, we decided to head out to the East Coast and visit some of our best friends and see the sights. It was Bryan's first time out to Washington DC and NYC, and my second time. The first time being when I was in 8th grade on a whirl-wind road trip- back then my impression of NYC was that it smelled bad, seemed to have trash everywhere, and was freezing. Granted, it was January and I was 13, so I knew I needed to give NYC a second chance and see what the hubbub about the big apple was all about…

Planning our 9-day trip wasn't easy…this was our first industrialized-country urban travel experience by ourselves (our travel usually involves backpacking or camping). With Bryan in grad school and me working at a non-profit, we're not exactly 'rolling in it'… so the fact that our friends, Andrea and Amina, let us crash in their abodes was vital! (Thanks, girls!!) Andrea helped us find the cheapest tickets we could, and we took off on our flight to our country's capital.

Washington D.C. is a great city in my book! First of all, almost everything's free! Want to go to the Zoo? Free! Aquarium? Free! All National Museums? Free! The Capitol, monuments, library of congress, Supreme Court? Tour them all for free! This was my kind of city… Not to mention the blossoming cherry trees, marble architecture, efficient public transportation system, and the fact that our friend Andrea lives there!

It was our first time seeing Andrea since Peace Corps - almost 3 years ago! It was very different to see her without a deep tan (staple of living in the tropics), wearing wool coats (instead of Jamaica's perpetual spring/summer-clothing style), and especially to see her not-so-little-anymore Jamaican dog, Beenie! It was like Andrea was a totally different person, living a totally different life! So strange to see a friend from one walk of life in a different element …



Andrea was in the midst of moving into her new apartment, so we were visiting at a very hectic time for her. Yet, she was a gracious hostess, taking time from her unpacking to humor us and see some of the sights in D.C.! Apartments in D.C. are so different then the little characterless shoe-boxes we've lived in around L.A.! She lives on the bottom floor of a row house (kind-of like San Francisco homes), but they're all made of brick. The building's floors are old, beautiful, creaking wood floors; her neighborhood streets are tree-lined and filled with people walking their dogs, with the air was crisp and cool on the verge of spring.



Our first night, we all went out for dinner at a Mexican-Salvadorian restaurant… people aren't kidding when they say California really does have the best Mexican food!! The food didn't taste bad, but it was basically just melted cheese for every meal we ordered- but the margaritas were good. After the cheesy dinner, we headed to a house party Andrea's friend was hosting to see how East Coasters really roll … This party involved a strobe light, a keg, loud music, and lots of people… but that's where the similarities to West Coast parties ended. First off, all the guys were wearing tucked-in polo shirts and khakis, like they were ready to hit the golf course or something. Not just a few of the guys, all of them! (save the crazy Frenchman with the blue hair.) Andrea gave me a look and said, 'Well now you see what I have to choose from here." It was probably pretty hard for her to adjust to after the laid-back lady killers in Jamaica. ;-) The girls all seemed pretty normal, not as hoochified as the parties are usually out here (which I think is a good thing), but I just assumed it was due to the weather. Andrea's dad was also in town visiting, and he came to the party with us, which I thought was pretty cool for a dad!



Our second day in D.C., Andrea took us on a behind-the-scenes tour at the National Zoo, where she's been volunteering in the Small Mammal House for over a year. We went behind all the exhibits and could actually see visitors through the glass, and Andrea took out a cute little hedgehog! My two favorite animals there were the Fennec Fox and the hedgehog.


After spending the morning at the zoo, we grabbed Slurpees (I don't think I've had one since I was 10!) because apparently they're all the rage over there.



We then headed on the Metro (subway) to downtown, where we visited Andrea's work at the non-profit, First Book, and continued walking over to the White House.



Apparently you have to make reservations about 6 months in advance to tour the place, which is not good for spontaneous travelers like Bryan and I. The White House was looking particularly picturesque, framed by cherry blossoms and green lawns.



From the White House, we walked near Washington Monument, goofed around, and decided to return a little later…




Then, we strolled over to the new World War II memorial (built in 2004), which has huge spouting fountains and pillars recognizing both fronts of the war, in the Pacific and Atlantic.



The one thing that seemed strange to Bryan and I was that the current US President, George W. Bush, has his name on the memorial (it was the biggest and most prominent name, too) which confused us, since obviously he wasn't involved in WWII… so we thought, well, maybe all the monuments and memorials have the current presidents names on them… no… none of them did. So, we are still perplexed. Anyone else have an idea?



We continued our long walk along the reflection pool to the Lincoln Memorial.



Then on to the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial, and the newer Korean War Memorial (built in '95, the year after I first visited D.C.), which had faces inscribed rather than names…



Then on to the hidden and less-visited FDR Memorial which was built in 1997(it turned out to be my favorite and most inspiring memorial). The walk to the FDR Memorial is along Cherry Tree Walk on the Western edge of the Tidal Basin. A very beautiful area! The memorial is a long, meandering path, bordered by walls made of red South Dakota granite, tracing twelve years of American History through four outdoor rooms-each one devoted to one of FDR's terms of office.



It's a very unusual memorial, yet the most moving with heart-felt quotes peppering the rock- a memorial that really makes you think…



We rounded out our long walk with a stop at the picturesque Jefferson Memorial.





Some cherry trees were in full bloom where others were just budding- unfortunately we were 1 week early for the Annual Cherry Blossom Festival.



Our last visit was to Washington Monument. It was just before sunset, with the sun just beginning to duck behind the ring of American flags surrounding the behemoth marble tower.





Bryan and I lay on our backs on the large marble benches, and looked up to the top of the pinnacle, where the crescent moon was just beginning to show.





We capped the day off with a delicious dinner with Andrea and her dad in Chinatown.
The next day Bryan and I tried to hit some Smithsonian museums (Natural History and Air & Space), the National Archives, and the Capitol.





With Andrea, we explored the fragrant National Botanical Gardens, the Supreme Court, and the Library of Congress. We ended the night in our nation's capital with a home-made stir fry a la Andrea's cooking skills! The next morning we went out to a local bakery and bade adieu to our dear friend, Andrea, and her sweet doggie, Beenie, and boarded a bus for $20 and headed off to New York City for the next leg of our trip…
(New York and Yale blog to come soon…)

Sea Lions Make Great Dive Buddies

On Bryan's birthday, last Friday the 7th, I was able to take the day off, so we headed to the dive boat "Spectre" in Ventura Harbor, and set out for the Channel Islands to celebrate his 26th year in our favorite way: diving. Destination: Anacapa Island. Once on board, we met up with Robert (a fellow volunteer diver with Reef Check), so we all dove together during our 3 dives. Although the strong swell was beginning to roll in (which led to huge surf this week!), we were able to get in some great diving- especially when the sea lions would swim around us, begging to play! After helping rescue these intelligent marine mammals for 2 years at the wildlife center, I was awed to finally see CA Sea Lions in their element: swimming in the ocean. (rather than sick or injured on the beach )

2 "Divers" doing a buddy check



Immersed in a school of Blacksmith


Sea Fans in the Goldfish Bowl


Sea Lions chasing in circles


Hello little Spanish Shawl!


Huge Sheephead (species of fish) abound at Cathedral Cove!


Always love diving!!


Hope you enjoyed your birthday dives, Bryan!