Countdown to Korea

This Friday I will fly to Seoul for a scientific conference on type 2 diabetes and since I have been invited to give a talk there I have certainly spent hours preparing for that, but not as much preparation time, as I would have liked, to figure out what to see, eat, and do when I am not at the conference. But since the time difference is 12 hours (or is it 13 hours ahead of here?😱) I am sure I will have plenty of sleepless hours to browse the internet for what to do once I am there......I am ridiculously excited about going as I have never been to Asia before and from what I hear October is a perfect time to visit.

But before I can go I had a bunch of stuff at work I wanted to wrap up, which means I have been running around like a headless chicken (sorry can’t help posting a picture of Hei Hei)

trying to get stuff done. But I slowly feel like I might actually have everything ready by Thursday night. Phew. I spent most of Saturday - a beautiful sunny crisp Saturday - in front of the microscope, and that has really helped my mental state. Now I am only stressed out about a potential site wide fire drill this Wednesday, that might screw up half a days worth of experiments and where no one can tell me exactly what time it happens, so I can prepare for it. Sigh. Needless to say, mice and rats are not particularly excited about fire alarms either......

In my last blogpost I kind of abruptly left off with our visit to Leu Gardens in Orlando (the pictures with Hei Hei - remember?)

Sorry. I will stop now. Promise!

But we made it safely back to Michigan. Kind of late. Where we picked up the dog on the way home from the airport because home does not feel like home if bailey is not here to greet you at the door!

On Thursday Christine and I went to Detroit with Kristian, as I had booked a walking tour of cork town as a birthday present for her. It started out being super rainy and grey

But we had a nice tour of the oldest part of Detroit (where I completely forgot to take pictures even though there were many many beautiful, colorful, painted houses).Here’s a picture from the internet. I bet you didn’t think it would be this pretty, right?

And we also squeezed in a visit to Jenny’s farm stand before she left:

They seriously have the best donuts. And we seriously had a lot of fun eating them.......

We didn’t laugh quite as much when we had to take Christine to the airport, but lucky for us we always know that there will be a “next time”!

Post theme park activities

Well. After two intense days of theme park hopping we had nothing planned for Tuesday but still had almost a whole day to kill. It doesn’t take a Nobel prize to guess what 16 year old girls would love to do when Orlando is stuffed with not only theme parks but also with outlet malls. Lucky for said 16 year old her aunt was more than happy to go with her. And then there were the rest of us. We considered going on an alligator tour, but the price and the heat kind of made that less attractive. Instead we went north the the Leu Gardens. A big botanical garden with hidden fairy doors. And to the great joy of the boys I brought Hei Hei with me. He loves to find fairy doors. In fact he is quite good at it:

We even met a very nice garden volunteer working with succulents, who gave me a bag of some of the plants😍. And despite having my carryon contain plants and metal tins of tea and candy, I was not pulled aside at the airport. Teresa, Kristian, and Ulrik did though. I guess the airport staff had never seen those massive amounts of Danish sweets before...... And now we are back in Michigan, where we enjoy the cooler temperatures and some of us also enjoy the dreaded, nasty aircon cold. Yikes

Universal Studios

After spending a day in Magic Kingdom some of the Frikke family members were craving the REALLY crazy rollercoasters. And they sure did get their cravings satisfied on Monday in Universal studios. Here’s Ulrik and Teresa (I decided to just watch😬):

Lucky for the rest of us there were several crazy simulation rides where you are safely tucked away on the ground and only the movie screen moves. My favorite is by far The Simpson’s. That ride is totally crazy and kind of creepy as you really think you are actually going into a real roller coaster. Outside that ride there was a “whack a rat” stand. And since I am an undefeated whack-a-mole champion Teresa decided to sponsor a battle between us:

She won!!!!!! Stupid lousy crap game!!!! And of course she got to pick a toy and chose what is now known as “the loser hat”

It was indeed lovely to wear in the heat. And after having tried a bunch more simulation rides including the Minions and Shrek:

We took the train to Hogsmead in the other affiliated park: Adventure Island. Where you can shop Harry Potter candy:

And drink butter beer:

And test your newly purchased wand:

And then we did a bunch more rides. And I have to say that the ride inside Hogwarts was amazing! It is by far my new favorite. Enough movement to give old scared ladies like me a thrill but not so much that I felt like my stomach is left 10 feet above or behind me. After touring the park and watch the rollercoaster freaks of the family do the 30 foot drop in Jurassic Park as well as ride Hulk, we went back to universal studios, where we got to feel really stupid. It turns out the there is a giant diagonal alley setup that we did not notice last time we were in that area of the park. So we didn’t even go in. And when we finally did it was kind of too late in the day to see everything. Sigh. But I did get to see the dragon spew fire:

And as we rushed out 10 minutes before closing time we were hijacked into one more ride by some enthusiastic staff. The Jimmy Fallon ride through NYC (and the moon). If any of you wonder what a Jimmy Fallon ride feels like, I can only say - go try it for yourself. It is not really like anything else out there!

With love (and photobombing chickens) from Disneyworld

We are in sticky hot Florida to soak up some theme park adventure. More specifically the worlds best sister (and aunt and sister in law) decided she wanted to treat the 5 of us to Magic Kingdom and Universal studios galore. Who would not yell “yes please” and take their kids out of school and hop on a flight going south for this? We have certainly looked forward to this for ages. And since Christine paid - it was her rules! And one of the rules are ears for everyone:

But first we had to prepare. Such as getting the hair rollercoaster ready:

And getting through the magic parking and the magic tram ride to the magic ferryboat where we were immediately met by the magic bag search and the magic metal detector (this has cracked me up at both my visits).

And once inside the magic kingdom there were parades to watch

And bags to hold

And souvenirs to buy. I often do not buy any souvenirs but then I met Hei Hei. It was not love at first sight

And Hei Hei does have an ugly tendency to photobomb pictures:

But we made sure to restrain him for the Goofy and Donald photo session. Where we learned that both characters are quite egoistic (on the verge on being racist.....) as they prefer any visitors to look like them and them only - and they will not refrain from stealing hats from poor kids making the wrong hat choice:

Or trying to kiss pretty teenage girls:

LOL! Who thought it could be that much fun for a photo session?

We didn’t stay for fireworks as the park closed at 6PM for regular guests as they were preparing for Halloween special events. But that was OK as we were quite tired - despite an afternoon caffeine intake:

And we also needed to rest before....... a visit to universal studios the following day. Stay tuned