Churchill Downs and a Sweet Summer Start

This May marked the beginning of our third year in Louisville. That also means it was our third Derby season here, yet we made no plans to partake in any of the derby events here. We did watch some of the weekend's races on TV, and loudly cheered Justify on as his hind legs coated the competition in mud. But even without planning on it, I managed to catch a bit of the horse racing bug.

A week after Derby, my friend offered me her extra ticket to the Sunday races at Churchill Downs. And thinking about it now, I can't believe I hesitated a few hours before responding with a mighty "YES!"

All summer long there is horse racing at the historical race track here in Louisville, mostly on weekends and Thursdays nights. Best of all, they offer a similar experience as derby weekend but for a fraction of the price and just a pinch of the traffic and crowds that clog up the place every first week of May.

The outside of the venue looked unremarkable, but once our tickets were scanned, we walked into the inner courtyard and saw the place's famous twin spires and also the paddocks where the horses are kept just prior to their race.

Our tickets were for Millionaire's Row, which takes you up a few escalators, past several uniformed employees whose polite gestures do make you feel a little more uppity each time you ascend and flash your tickets.

Millionaire's Row means you get a place at the table in what feels like a banquet hall. One wall is lined with a lunch buffet, another with bank-teller style counters for placing bets, and a third is all windows and doors leading out onto a tiered balcony overlooking the tracks.

So you sit inside munching on the herb-roasted chicken and rosemary potatoes, sipping the sweet tea, the white table cloth tickling your legs - and then you hear the bugle sound. That's your cue to drop your utensils and walk out to the balcony for the next race is about to begin. The horses do a warm up lap around the track, and within just a few minutes the race is started and through. Everyone files back inside to resume sitting and sipping and chatting.

The whole process repeats, with races staggered out about every 40 minutes. A booklet handed to us at the door had tons of details about each of the day's races (more information about horses, their histories, their jockies - even their birthdays - then we knew what to do with!) as well as a handy guide about placing bets and the associated terminology. The booklet also came in handy since I didn't wear a derby hat - keeping my face out of the bright sun and reminding me of the ridiculous name of whichever horse we arbitrarily chose to cheer for in the upcoming race.

And the basic bet for a race - where you pick the winner - is $2. It's such a small amount, making it easy to part with - no big loss if you lose, lots of excitement if you win.

It was a lot of fun. Now I think I truly start to see why horse racing is so popular here. It is technically a sport, but it's also just an enjoyable past time. An hour at the tracks means about 10 minutes of focusing on the races and 50 minutes relaxing and chatting and indulging in food and drink. This is the kind of sport all types can enjoy.

I came home gushing with enthusiasm about the event, sharing everything I just wrote here and some of the silliest horse names that slip my mind now. I hope that before summer is done, we get the chance to venture out to Churchill Downs for another day of races.

Besides that fancy outing at the tracks, the past month has been full of good times because Isaac's brother is in town. And there's nothing like company to get you out of a rut and off your butt! We went for the 40 minute drive across the river, through rural Indiana to Huber's Farms.

We picked around five pounds of strawberries - which were savored plain over the next week, and also transformed into strawberry milk, smoothies and our new favorite dessert - strawberry cobbler!

Plucking strawberries was a sweet start to our summer, and really whet my appetite to cross a few more of those "oh, I heard that was good" places off of our bucket list.

We also celebrated my last day of school/work this Monday (with generous helpings of strawberry cobbler of course) which means I should definitely be able to pick up the slack and resume posting monthly!

San Antonio

February and March featured more snow days (the last being on the second day of spring!) and a few countdowns - days of just working hard and looking ahead to upcoming days and deadlines. I'll share about one of these countdowns today - our get away to San Antonio, Texas.

Isaac had written a professional journal paper and would be presenting it at this conference in San Antonio. So we decided to make it into a vacation, arriving the weekend before. His sister and brother-in-law flew in for the conference as well, and together the four of us had a great time catching up and eating tasty food together.

I knew nothing about the city, but after our trip was a sure thing, I began asking friends and coworkers for recommendations. Again and again, I received two answers: the Alamo and the Riverwalk. In retrospect, they were two of the city's highlights, and definitely its two most distinctive features.

To my surprise, the Alamo is in the heart of the city, surrounded by tourist attractions like a wax museum and souvenir shops. There is a law that prevents any building from casting its shadow on the war memorial, which give the Alamo grounds a wonderful verdant park feeling different from anywhere else we visited in the city.

You're not allowed to take pictures within the building itself, but I think it is well worth a drop in. I walked through on a quiet morning - especially touching to me were the flags which lined the inner walls, each tagged with a number representing the victims of the Alamo and their home states or countries. From what I saw, Tennessee and then Kentucky had the largest number of people there, but I was surprised to see flags from Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Scotland and England too.

Most of the city's landscaping featured arid plants like the cacti and palm trees above, so I was surprised to see mature stretching oaks shading the Alamo's gardens. I wish Isaac would have been with me, the park bench below is just begging for a happy couple to sit on it!

The Riverwalk is the San Antonio river with a series of canals built off of it. In some parts it provides scenic alternative through the business district and in others it lends a festive atmosphere to (and at times treacherously narrow walkways through) the restaurants and bars that squeeze up against it. Everywhere it provides depth and much needed green contrast to the surrounding city.

Over our handful of days there, we walked many miles along the calm waters, as it more or less cuts through much of the city and is a much more relaxing stroll than the streets.

I was excited to spy the USAA building perched along the edge of the river. After seeing San Antonio listed in the footers of so many of the bank's documents and websites, it made me happy to see the building in person. Isaac first spied USAA ATMs too, another first for us.

The city has a pretty rich military history, being home to an air force base and to a medical training center for all branches as well. Sadly, I can't remember anymore than these fuzzy details from our taxi driver's informative introduction as we rode into the city.















Another highlight we found for ourselves was the Pearl district. An almost defunct brewery and its surrounding neighborhood have been revitalized and turned into millennial central (our cabbie's assessment, perfectly accurate).

We walked up the riverwalk for 45 minutes, stopping to eat lunch at The Luxury, an outdoor restaurant made up of train boxcars and tin roofing.

Then we emerged onto the streets of Pearl, our eyes greeted by astro turf littered with a menagerie of dogs, children and a couples' yoga class.

I'm joking a bit with my description (which is totally accurate but kind of snobby sounding). The area was much more inviting than the touristy parts of downtown San Antonio, with more interesting restaurants, independent shops and consumer friendly prices too.

Another favorite we happened to walk by after lunch one day was the San Fernando Cathedral.

It is one of the oldest active cathedrals in the U.S. and is beautifully situated on the calmer side of the San Antonio river. It's here that the Alamo heroes were laid to rest with this beautiful and simple memorial.

I want to share just a few more favorites from our trip:

Seeing Isaac's name in the conference booklet (halfway down the page, T40.7).

Observing grackles. These birds are about the size of a crow, but can make a broader range of sounds like a mockingbird. They are clever and rude and very entertaining to watch.

A bakery called La Panaderia serving European style pastries but with a uniquely Spanish style dough which they long-culture for 48 hours. You walk through with a tray and tongs picking your own breads just like so many Asian bakeries, but the atmosphere is much more modern and warm.

This fun cocktail Isaac tried - a prickly pear cactus margarita.

The charming small Italian restaurant where we ate dinner the night before I flew back to Louisville. It was delightfully fancy (our waiter had an accent, there was a tray of fruit slices for our water, a rolling cart carried an entire wheel of parmesan cheese, anchovies were mixed in with the olive oil) and the meal was slow paced and perfect.

The restaurant is within the historic Fairmount Hotel which is over 100 years old. It was actually moved several blocks down the street after the Marriott bought it and and wanted to build a high rise hotel on its land (where we happened to stay for the conference's duration).

The weather was wonderfully warm while we were there, a welcomed break from our many snowy and icy days back home. It rained a bit, but for the most part was in the upper 60s and sunny. I still had to tote around sweaters though, in part because of a cool breeze, but mostly because Texans love to blast cold air conditioning!

Below is our hotel view looking west over the city. We had a wonderful time catching up with family, exploring a new city and just getting out of our end-of-winter working rut. I remember sitting on our bed looking out the tall windows at the cityscape, trying to enjoy the view but already thinking ahead to our next countdown back home. That one will have to wait for next month's blog!

Snow and home cooking

When I think back to last January, sunless grey days and low energy cloud my mind. It was miserably cold yet without enough snow to play in. The days blended one into another, and on weekends I had no desire to see what was going on around town because mustering the mental motivation to get out of our place was just too difficult. The first month of 2018 was so much better!

For one thing, it did snow. Several times, and there was quite enough to play in and have fun. It happened enough that I even stopped taking pictures every time it snowed. Jefferson County had a six week holiday because of the snow and icy roads and I made a snow bunny.

Isaac had to clean the snow off his car five days in a row.

We drove around the not bad roads and enjoyed the glowing scenery.

For the month of January, I decided to make a sizable effort to cook more on the weekends. Usually Isaac and I enjoy going out once or twice on the weekends and getting whatever foods we've been craving all week that I don't make at home. Fried chicken, sushi, Vietnamese noodle soup and barbecue are a few of our favorite choices. But just to save money and maybe be a little more healthy, this past month I made sure to include weekends in my weekly grocery list/meal planning. Another incentive for cooking more was the fact that I really wanted to use my Christmas present.

I made green smoothies every weekday morning for breakfast in my fancy new Vitamix blender. My favorite mix is avocado, kale and green grapes. I just plop these on top of vanilla protein powder and water and then dance a little jig while it blends away.

Cooking at home on the weekends also meant that I felt less guilty spending more at the grocery store on things Isaac and I love like steak and avocados (respectively). We indulged a bit, having fancy bacon for Sunday brunch and buying samgyeopsal and all the fixings to have a pretty legitimate Korean barbecue after the snow melted away.

Yes, this January had many great moments and I love this feeling I have that we made them great ourselves. Falling snow and cooking at home are common and insignificant things (even despised by some!) but savoring them made this oft-sluggish month wonderful.

Holiday Wrap Up

We stayed in Louisville for both Thanksgiving and Christmas. While this meant missing out on seeing family, it also meant some much needed recharging time. In fact, not just the holidays themselves, but the months of November and December were basically all about rest and restoration. I guess that's why they passed by without any thoughts of posting here. So here is a quick catch up.

This picture of Cookie summarizes the past two months for us. We bundled up against the cold (and life outside our 2BR/1B apartment) and just kicked back.

My friend Rachel drove up here to visit. The three of us gobbled up delicious meals and enjoyed catching up as we piddled around at various places - examining knick knacks in antique malls and picking through rocks and fossils at the Falls of the Ohio.

Sifting through the stones reminded me of the countless rock cairns we saw at parks and temples in South Korea. I imagined that if this place was in over there, it would be covered with tiny towers and unspoken wishes. I made a little cairn of my own, topped off with a fossil like a star on a Christmas tree, carefully stacking a wish between the teetering stones.

The past two months have of course involved working too. This is the first time in my short education career that I've worked with such young children, being in a Kindergarten classroom. One of the perks of working with this age is the adorable drawings students make. My phone's picture gallery is speckled with their creations, one of my favorites being the stick dinosaurs below.

Autumn passed without much appreciation. The trees seemed out of sync, changing their leaves at different times. We didn't get the chance to escape for a mountain hike. Some of the prettiest fall colors we saw were in the mall parking lot (directly below).

One of the most adventurous things we did was try Starbucks' Zombie Frappuccino. It was pretty tasty - caramel candy apple with raspberry frosting.

Despite extremely chilly weather, we ended up using the grill for both Thanksgiving and Christmas. I cooked traditional dishes like sweet potato casserole, roasted vegetables and sticky date pudding, but for our entrees we chose our favorite proteins - steak and salmon. These were grilled to perfection by Isaac, our resident master griller.

I couldn't talk Isaac into a picture with Santa at this Christmas party, but thankfully my friend obliged. This may be the skinniest Santa Claus I've ever seen.

Staying home for Christmas meant gifts arriving via post. We loved this detailed packing list, I hope you can see it all right in the picture. In the end we had an admirable pile beneath our minimalist (apartment friendly) tree.

Christmas Eve there was sleet in the evening and then snow in the night, which I thought totally qualified as a white Christmas, especially since it remained on the ground for a few days afterwards.

The amount was negligible, even a snow-loving Southerner like me must admit. But it was still enough to make me feel very excited about it. We went for a drive on Christmas Eve in the snow, looking for nice Christmas lights but also just enjoying the festive flakes float by.

There's an Icelandic tradition called Jólabókaflóð (Jule Book Flood) that involves books and chocolates on Christmas Eve. We thought that it may be a nice tradition to start, so we both picked out a book and I made some fancy hot chocolate. Then we got comfortable in our pajamas and read, the silence punctuated by the occasional sip of the richest hot cocoa ever.

So we chose to end our year without much fanfare or much of anything really. Sometimes it's just better than way. I feel incredibly grateful and blessed to have spent it with Isaac, who grows even more amazing in my eyes everyday. We have big hopes for 2018, and a few plans already in the making. I'll do my best in the new year to keep this blog posted, about once a month like I've been doing. I think I'll try harder to take some pictures of Isaac and myself too, because I'm still not very good at that, am I?