Why Lobsters?

As we're sure most of you are wondering, where did "Wandering Lobsters" come from? To put it simply, it's a reference to an episode from the sitcom, Friends, where the character Phoebe explains her lobster theory to show how she knows Ross and Rachel were meant to be. She states, "It's a known fact that lobsters fall it love and mate for life. You can actually see old lobster couples walking around there tank holding claws." We picked up the nickname ourselves when we first started dating in college, and for whatever reason it has stuck with us since then.

Sunday, September 23, 2012

Boston and Stuff

With only 5 weeks left until we leave, I figured we should give an update on our planning and our recent visit to Boston for a long weekend.

Boston

This summer, had decided we were going to take advantage of knowing two of Erin's friends that live Boston. They moved there a while back from Indy when he started Law School at Harvard. Since we have worked on saving our vacation days, we figured it was best to only go for a long weekend. We each took Friday off and flew out to Boston on Thursday night.

Enjoying some pastries from Mike's.

With the amazing amount of history and sites to see in Boston, we new it would be a jam-packed weekend. Luckily, Katie and Justin were experienced enough to show us the best of Boston. Friday was a long day, with the Freedom Trail and downtown Boston taking most of the day. We swung by MIT for a tour and then past Harvard on our way back to meet Justin for dinner.

Samuel Adams' Grave.
Paul Revere's House.


The weather was looking good for Saturday so we thought we would gamble and do some whale watching. Everyone loaded on this boat in Boston Harbor and we relaxed for a 45 minute ride to where they had last seen the whales. When we got to the whales, there were several other large boats in the area so we knew we were in the right spot. The first whale we saw, a Minke whale, was far away and hard to see, but excitement didn't take long because two Humpback whales surfaced within 50-100 feet of our boat several times over a period of 30 minutes. There was always a scurry to the best view when they first surface but I was able to get some decent pictures. After this, we relaxed again inside the boat and made our way back to Boston Harbor for dinner at the Salty Dog. It wasn't too hot out so we ate outside, and a good thing because the inside of the Salty Dog was packed. After a couple drinks at a rooftop bar downtown and at a local Harvard bar, we crashed feeling very tired but satisfied.

On our way back to Boston Harbor on the whale watching cruise.


On Sunday, the boys and girls split up so they could do some shopping and we could hit up the local Harpoon Brewery. I would highly recommend it since it's only $5 and you get plenty of free beer and the end of the tour. These guys are seriously passionate about their beer and those who drink it. We stopped for a quick drink before saying our goodbyes and heading for the airport. There wasn't anything exciting about the trip home, which I guess is a good thing. Great trip and a special thanks to our hosts Katie and Justin!


-Update-

Now that we are close to the 11th hour, everything in our lives is trip, work, test, house, and domino-related. We have made a "To Do List" with everything we can think of, hoping that this gives these last couple weeks a glimpse of sanity. One of the items on the list to get this blog under control so we'll hopefully be posting a bit more often in the coming month.

We have almost all of our gear purchased and gathered, with the few remaining items coming in the mail this week. What we have packed so far is giving us a total of around 72 lbs with another 3 lbs or so to go. I plan to carry about 10 lbs more than Erin so this puts us around a 43 lb pack for me and 32 lb pack for Erin. This will probably change as Erin gets her "axe" out and starts cutting things out (Our goals were 30 lbs and 40 lbs).

Erin's big exam is in a couple weeks so almost all of her time is devoted to studying at this point. I have gotten lazy the last couple weeks, but I'll start hitting the books hard again soon.

The visas and other documentation we need have given us some trouble, mainly the Brazil visa, but we have our Uganda and Kenya visas already. We'll get our Tanzania visa while volunteering in Kenya the month before and we'll hopefully get the Brazil visa in Argentina the day before at Iguazu Falls.

We have each gotten the first bits of nervousness about the trip, but we are each SO excited. We hope we'll have everything ready in time, but there's a certain point when we'll just have to roll with the punches!

Sam (and Erin)


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