A Florida Christmas

Well, it's December 31st and an amazing year is coming to an end. We've been living in our van for 6 months and loving it. I finished my last semester of college with an almost 3.0 cumulative GPA. We left New York for a long-term trip across country and we're so happy to be back on the road and out of the cold. We found a few WWOOFs (http://www.wwoofusa.org/meet)that we want to spend time at, and we can't wait to experience the country and meet some new people. Right now we're at my Grandma's house in Tampa, FL and the days are flying by.
Here are some pictures from Christmas and around Florida.

My Grandma has a tiny yet beautifully decorated Christmas tree.

A beautiful Kurta from my mom's trip to India.

Christmas Night, we made and decorated a Gingerbread House

After a quick photosession...

it was promptly devoured

No one spared the destruction...

even Celeste joined in.

After the Gingerbread Disaster of Christmas '09, Jim and I went to my Aunt Debby's house and discovered that we want to be Pet Photographers.

Paji the African Grey who can duplicate Debby's voice exactly. I thought it was a bit strange when we were talking to her in the living room and heard her say from the bedroom "Wanna take a shower?"

Calypso, AKA Little Man who, of course, thinks he owns the place.

My Grandma's dog Skipper who gives Kuzya a run for his money in the race for World's Sweetest Dog.

The beautiful Husky Cherokee who loves nose kisses. That is, your nose.

And my aunt's newest addition, a Chinchilla named Pacino. He's so soft and sparkly after his dust bath.

Jim hasn't been having too many allergic reactions to these dogs, so he got in on the fun:

Later on, I went to the beach where there was a kite surfer riding the wind.

And finally, I got a new hairstyle for the new year and our new life.

Look out for our: Snowdrift Adventure and Photographin' the moon.

New Hampshire

A few weeks ago, we went up to New Hampshire where our friend Desmond has a house. It's right on the border of a state park which has great rock climbing, hiking trails and a beautiful lake. The leaves were just turning and it was just fantastic.

This is White Horse Ledge and Echo Lake

I thought this picture looked better rotated. It looks like a painting!

Tony and I decided to go for a swim. It was cold and I got numb but I loved it.

I can't wait to go back and climb mount washington next year!

New Camera, Rubin Museum, A Night in New York

Before we left on our big trip, and partly for our two-year anniversary, Jim and I decided to buy a DSLR camera in order to become better photographers and take pictures we could possibly make a living off of in the future. We ended up getting the Canon Digital Rebel XSi along with the standard 18-55mm lens, a 50mm lens, and a 55-250mm telephoto lens.
This weekend we went into Manhattan to practice and learn more about our camera and its functions, while trying to take some nice pictures.
Here are some of our favorites:

We came across the Rubin Museum while in Manhattan, which is a whole museum of Himalayan Art.
These first three are taken by me, experimenting with depth of field and composition.

After that, we walked through the streets some more and came across a lovely puppy who looked like a dirty Snowy.

We made it to Union Square, which was already all set up for the Christmas market. Here, we experimented with long shutter speeds:

In this one, Jim was supposed to stay still for 2 seconds but a little kid ran in front of him and was posing for the camera. Jim cracked up and the camera caught him laughing.

I took this one of Jim on the subway platform. I love his expression and his crispness.

Back in Great Neck, we experimented with really long shutter speeds (30 seconds) and multiple exposure, leading to a ghost-like effect. It came out pretty well for our first try.

Now we're in love with our camera and can't wait to get more use out of it in the future.

Happy Halloween

We decided to go all out for Halloween this year-we hadn't dressed up together yet, and Jim got a brilliant idea for this year. We love the Tintin comics and the animated series, and Snowy has been our faithful companion for a year and a half. We got most of our costumes from thrift stores or our own stockpiles, and it cost about $50 (mostly my shoes.) I think we pulled it off quite well!

Here are some pictures for reference:

We had a good time dressing up, but we didn't get to see too much of the parade. We ended up hanging out around astor place/union square from about 3pm to 3am. We met up with Olya (Jim's cousin) and then had an interesting conversation with an 18 year old kid in Union Square-rather intellectual. Then, because of Daylight Savings Time, we missed the 1:19 train about 3 times. I think they just cancelled it to avoid confusion. Penn Station was filled with costumed, tired, drunk people. It was very fun for people watching. Jim even ran into an old friend from College (dressed as Aladdin), and I got a hug from someone who used to love Tintin. It was a pretty good Halloween.

Two Woodstocks and Magic Meadow

Well, we're back in New York. We're nearing the end of the 3rd week back to school and we're getting into the groove of things but desperately missing travel. So every weekend we've at least been leaving Long Island, and last weekend we decided on a whim to travel back to our past.
For me it was my childhood home of Woodstock, NY.
For Jim it was his summer home, in the bungalows of Bethel County, incidentally where the original Woodstock concert was held. We decided to visit the site of the concert, at the former Yasgur's Farm in White Lake, NY.

We were very happy to be there. You can see our van off in the corner.

This is the hill where the half-million people stood to watch the amazing performances.

This rocky area was where the stage stood.

The plaque with the iconic dove on the guitar, and a list of all the musicians.
Although it was a bit strange and sad to see it commercialized like this, we were very glad in the end that the site was preserved for people like us whose hearts are at that concert, even though we weren't.

After Bethel County, we drove into Ulster County, where the actual town of Woodstock lies. I lived here for a big part of my childhood, and came back often after I moved out of town. It was mostly as I remembered it, with a few different stores, but still with a lot of cool people and shops, and of course my favorite restaurant in the world, Gypsy Wolf.

Everything about it was the same, including the Burrito, so I was very happy. The insides has lots of wooden masks, wooden wolf scupltures, and paintings of wolves. It has a great atmosphere and it's how I learned to love Shirley Temples!

After Dinner, we walked around town and checked out the shops that were still open. We came across this tipi and hippie bus with some kind of tigger shrine.

This is another great restaurant in town, but it's more fast food mexican. The colors of the storefront are fantastic.

We found this signpost pointing to various stores in town, as well as the site of yasgur's farm.

I love it. Peace and Technology can go together!

We walked down to my favorite swimming hole, the Millstream. It was full because of the recent rains, and unfortunately too cold to swim.

Some kind of Art Instillation at the Town Square. Jim is the subject.

We spent the night in woodstock, and the next morning we drove to another of my favorite places up Mount Overlook, Magic Meadow. I used to go on walks with my mom and grandma and the dogs and had picnics and birthday parties. It's beautiful and I'm glad we found it. Somehow I managed to not get a shot of the meadow itself, but I got lots of the forest surrounding it.

This is the entrance to Magic Meadow from a little parking area on the side of the road. You have to cross a stream and climb a hill before you find the opening to the meadow.

We found a nice spot to lie down and watch the clouds, and discovered a spider trundling through. He was about two inches long and looked like a baby tarantula!

In the forest surrounding the meadow, we found a fire pit and remnants of last night's revelers. A nice wine shrine.

The meadow is near a Buddhist Monestary, and there were a lot of shrines to various Boddhisatvas in the woods.
Blue Shrine.

Red Shrine

White Shrine.

A nice big slimy slug crawling around the forest floor.

We had a fantastic time romping through the meadow and forest and watching the clouds and the bees. This is top of my list for our first Full Moon Festival!