The last few days we've been doing day trips in DC from Nick's place and have checked out a lot of the National Mall and the Smithsonian Museums. When we arrived on Tuesday we walked from the beautiful Union Station to the Capitol Building and walked all around it before continuing down through the start of the National Mall seeing the Grant Memorial and the Washington Monument. From here we headed up to the Whitehouse, unfortunately we didn't see Obama! After a ...

Updating from Baltimore! We've been staying with my cousin, Nick, who is at Johns Hopkin's University. Had a good few days experiencing the student life here. Nick is in a fraternity, so gives a bit of a different experience from uni life in NZ. We've done a bit of exploring around the town as well and checked out the campus. On Friday evening we went to the National Aquarium, which is fantastic! There were lots of amazing exhibitions, but the sharks and rays we...

We've had lots of snow in Philly, but it's been a really great time catching up with my Grandparents here. We have stayed at their place not far outside the city in Bryn Mawr. On Monday Miki and I headed off into the city where we spent most of the day absorbed at the National Constitution Center. It was a great interactive museum that taught us lots both about the Constitution and American history and really put the culture we are encountering into context. It w...

We arrived in New York on Thursday and have had four full on days, loving every minute of it! We have being staying with a friend of my sisters, Catherine, on the Lower East Side. This was a great area to stay with loads of great food places around. It was lunchtime when we arrived so we head to Katz's Delicatessen, a New York institution a block away. It's the setting for the famous scene from Harry met Sally and the walls are full of celebrity pictures. We had ...

We've made it to America! Have just spent the past 5 days in Providence staying with my Uncle getting over jet lag and checking out a few sites. We've walked around the neighborhood we are staying where Brown University is situated, lovely old buildings. On Saturday we went to a Brown-Yale basketball game, Yale won, but it was a tight game. On Sunday, Uncle Michael flew us out to Nantucket in his four seater plane, which was really neat. We could see all over Rh...