4 Days Back From the City of Hippie Love

I have taken a little more time to get on the blog since I got home, so I am sorry for all of our millions of eager readers. I read a little of Lauren's blog, so I'll try to not repeat too much.

Friday Sept 21
When we arrived in San Francisco we had a little time to kill before activities started so we hung out with my aunt and uncle.

We took the trolly up and down a few hills, which was not as scary as I thought it might be. It turns out he trollies go pretty darn slow, but I guess that is a good thing with all of the people hanging off them. Fisherman's Warf was a busy and fun place to visit. Highlights are: the video-taping of pirate jokes by the pirate statue with my uncle playing along like a champ, trying to video tape Alcatraz and being unable to tell which building it was even though it was only giant yellow building that looked like a prison, being attacked with tree branches by a man who we all saw, but still scared us with his loud "boo" and tree branch waving, eating yummy chocolate at Ghiradelli, and walking the thousands of blocks back to the hotel.

Friday evening we checked into the conference, had a meet and greet Episcopal wine hour (which did not offer "an equally attractive alternative to alchohol" because there was only sparkling water and no Coke of any kind- I wasn't in Atlanta anymore clearly :-), but it was a good time. Dinner was as entertaing as anything I have seen in a while. Well maybe I should back up and set the stage. You think you are a decent dresser and moderately, well modern or at least not a grandma dresser, until you are in California and you realize you are not nearly as hip as most people around you. So surrounded by many hipper dressed people, and under the archways which served as a shelter from the sprinkling rain, we had a lovely dinner and of course coaxed our table into introducing themselves and sharing something funny. We made everyone say their name, where they are from (sound familiar DAYA people?), and then tell us what super power they would have if they could choose any. Running fast was popular as was the ability to manipulate others. Lauren Woody apparently wants to be able to make chicken salad out any ingredients presented to her, so that was an interesting insight into her world... I want to be able to breath underwater, like Aquaman, not Kevin Costner in Water World. We also had amazing entertainment during dinner, also known as the man with the awesome bike. The bike had a speaker systemt that only ran with someone riding it, which the entertainment man used to sing us magical rap songs about riding bikes, saving the environment, t-shirts, and Barak O'Bama. It was pretty sweet and hopefully my camera picked up some of the great songs.

After dinner we participated in "the stations of the MDGs" in beautiful Grace Cathedral, which Lauren explain in her blog so I won't reiterate, but it was an interesting time with some painting, sandwhich-making, and pretty good learning on the MDGs. Afterwords we had compline in the Cathedral and that was the end of the day (except for watching the waffle iron that can make anything infomercial on TV in the hotel room...)

More to come on the rest of the time in San Fran...

Sarah