Late season skiing
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Skiing has become one of my favorite sports since I moved to the U.S. I first learned how to ski back in prep school, and this year, we planned our very first skiing trip together. We chose Chestnut Mountain in Galena, a small town in Illinois. Surprisingly, the terrain there wasn’t as flat as most of the state. That’s where Poy had her first skiing experience—taught by me, a first-time coach! (That does sound scary.)
As shown in the picture above, we didn’t head straight to Chestnut but made a stop in Aurora, another city in Illinois, to watch one of the most famous musicals, Waitress. We’ve been regular visitors to the Paramount Theatre in Aurora since last year, after purchasing a season pass. The pass costs around $130–$140 and allows us to watch four plays throughout the year. This was our third play of the season, and we thoroughly enjoyed it—the performance was so moving that we almost teared up during the main actress’s heartfelt scenes!
The next day, we drove to Galena and started our ski lesson. I hadn’t skied in almost a year, so I was really excited to get back on the slopes. For Poy, however, this was his very first time skiing! We spent about two hours on the bunny hill to make sure he felt comfortable and wouldn’t risk injury on the actual green trail. He did fall a few times—well, quite a number of times to be honest—but thankfully none of the falls were serious. And despite that, he seemed to be having a lot of fun (at least, I hope so!).
After trying the Old Main Road trail, we discovered there was actually an easier one—long and gentle without too many curves. We ended up spending the rest of the day on that trail, which really helped boost his confidence! The food at the ski resort turned out to be surprisingly good, though we didn’t think to take any pictures of it.
For dinner, we headed to downtown Galena and dined at Vinny Vanucchi’s, a well-known Italian restaurant in the area. We don’t usually eat out at places that look this fancy, but since it was Poy’s birthday, we decided to go all out for the occasion! (Though, to be fair, the prices were actually quite reasonable.)
We ordered a lasagna and a fettuccine dish, and both were wonderfully comforting and delicious. But the highlight of the meal was their homemade tiramisu—it was incredibly light, custardy, and absolutely perfect. We savored every single bite!
And with that memorable meal, we wrapped up our weekend trip to Galena.
At the end of the spring semester, I attended a number theory conference in Dallas for a week. After the conference, my fiancé flew in to pick me up, and we took a trip to Hot Springs National Park in Arkansas! We hadn’t originally planned it, but once we realized how close Dallas was to the park, we decided to go for it. Without the conference, we probably would never have considered visiting Arkansas, given its distance and how far it is from other national parks. We really enjoyed the thermal baths there and hope to return someday!
Although the University of Illinois has some cherry blossoms near the Japan House, we thought it would be fun to visit Washington, D.C. to see more blooms around the Tidal Basin. However, catching these delicate flowers turned out to be more challenging than we expected. We booked our flights based on historical peak bloom data, but still missed the peak—wind and rain had swept through just a few days before we arrived. Despite the timing, we thoroughly enjoyed other aspects of D.C., especially the art galleries, museums, and the (long-awaited return of) giant pandas!
We’ve been to Florida together before, but last time we stayed in Orlando and visited Disney World. Now that we’ve started exploring more national parks, we decided to return to Florida with the goal of visiting all three national parks in the stat, namely, Everglades, Biscayne, and Dry Tortugas. Except for Everglades, the other two are only accessible by ferry or speedboat, which gave us some unique experiences we hadn’t had anywhere else in the U.S.
We started this year by traveling to Seattle as part of the JMM conference. Although we have been to Seattle before, but we only visited national parks here not the city itself (despite the fact that we flew to SEA-TAC airport). For this reason, while I was attending the conference, we then also spent a little bit of our free time exploring this lovely city together. To our surprise, we could fit so many attractions in this business trip. The city was so charming and, more importantly, walkable!