Drury Plaza Hotel Chesterfield

... is it impressive inside. I absolutely loved being a tourist in what I consider my hometown. Walking around the Central West End made me see the city through a whole different lens. Literally. I have photos to post.

So the journey for me continues. For this leg of the trip I shouldn't encounter any language barriers, cultural taboos or have anybody look at me as "the stupid American." However, I am still going to ...

... shortest time. :)

sadly my luggage was not nearly as fast as i was in the Charlotte airport. it did not make it to STL until Thursday afternoon. once again, good planning on my part for giving myself a cushion day before the interviews. otherwise i would have been a hot holy mess...well, more so than usual.

i am very happy to report that i think the interviews all went well. my interviewers will meet tomorrow ...

... and met up with some friends he keeps in touch with and some of his classmates he hasn't seen since they've left school.

We spent lots of time with our 5 nephews, including the newest, baby Patrick who also had his baptism while we were in town.

We had lots of fun, ate lots of food and spent some quality time with our family before we move Down Under!

Dear Friends,
We are home after about 29 hours of travel. Our flight out of BCN was delayed for one hour because it was overweight. And NOT because I ate too many croissants! American Airlines, in it's wisdom, had changed all of it's Airbuses to smaller planes, effective Nov 15. But the cargos had already been planned. What this meant was that the weight had been calculated for a much bigger ...

... airports
5 countries & capital cities
2 new meats (llama & alpaca)
1 shooting star...

29 Nov...I celebrated Thanksgiving with my family and gave thanks =) Hope everyone enjoyed their holiday, too !!!

Dear Friends,
We are leaving this Friday for a cruise. I'm trying to use this Travelpod blog to send out our stories. If you don't want them, just delete. If you do want them, and don't receive any after Friday, email me and I will try to figure this out.
See you soon,
Cassie

Hi, Friends,
We are going on a cruise Nov 13-26. And rather than try to send each email individually, I found Travelpod. It's a blog site that lets me hit 'send' once, and it does the work for me. So watch for entries from Travelpod. If you aren't inclined to read them, feel free to delete. Let's hope it works!
Talk soon,
Cassie

... and think of all the old cars that used to drive across here.

Last but not least is the City Museum, OH MY GOODNESS! This place is amazing! At this museum they have gatherd discarded planes and cranes and anything you can think of and converted an old office building into a seven story playground that you crawl through, climb on and slide down. It is totally amazing and we have never seen anything like it ...

... and 6 state capitols. We enjoyed microbreweries, countless museums, 4 major gardens, whitewater rafting, and glaciers galore (walking on, flying over, viewing from boats, trails, and airplanes). We saw bears, caribou, wolves, lynx, musk oxen, moose, several types of bighorn sheep, mountain goats, eagles, numerous kinds of other birds, all of the varieties of salmon, puffins (and many more marine birds whose names we no longer can recall or spell ...

... last for sound check, wh**e Dr. Wilb**g took us through the program, starting and stopping to check transitions and then rehearsing us more thoroughly on specific pieces. Finally, before dismissing the Orchestra so that its memb**s could at last get into their hotel rooms before dinn**, we rehearsed our encore numb**, “This Land Is Your Land.” Starting with St. Louis, the Choir has engaged special “guest conductors” to lead this popular numb**, and for St ...