New Apartment

We moved into our new apartment in North Beach, also known as San Francisco's Little Italy, last week. I will take some pictures of the neighborhood soon, but for now, here is our place. Excuse the mess, we are still unpacking and getting situated.

Our building. Our apartment does not face the street, but an inner courtyard on the back side of the building:


Hi! Come on in...


Here is my office nook in the bedroom:


More of the bedroom:


And a little more:


Here is the as of yet unfinished living room:


And our bright, inviting kitchen:


I am writing this sitting in this chair right now:


And the rest of our kitchen, right after a large lunch:


Hope you enjoyed the tour...

Glen Canyon

One of the coolest things about San Francisco is that you don't even have to leave the city to visit the great outdoors. There are tons of little parks throughout the city that resemble standard city parks, of course, but there are also a handful of parks that are very wild places. One of these parks is Glen Canyon. This park is in the middle of the city, but is huge and as it's name implies, it's a canyon. It's a nice place for a weekend hike, or even a place to go rock climbing!

You enter the canyon from the bottom, where a little creek flows through a forest:


The majority of the canyon is alternately grassy and rocky, so you get many scenes like this. It is hard to give a good idea of the scale of this picture, but to give you an idea, the large rock on the bottom left of the picture is about 40 feet tall and was being used by rock climbers for a little exercise:


Here is another view of the rock-climber's rock from high above the canyon where we climbed:


At the end of the hike, everyone needs a little relaxation:

Pride Weekend

This weekend was San Francisco's Gay Pride festival, and I have never seen San Francisco so crazy. Every street was alive with people dancing and singing and eating and drinking and partying. The city converts the entire Civic Center neighborhood into one big block party, and since I live a few blocks from Civic Center, I couldn't help but wander through all the craziness and observe.

At the end of the event, the parade passed me and I got this shot of some of the hundreds of motorcycles:

On a rooftop, a DJ had set up music and people were dancing to his records:

The Opera House lit its lights that night in a rainbow in celebration:

Haight-Ashbury Street Festival

I went to the 31st Annual Haight-Ashbury Street Fair today, which takes place near where I lived when I first moved to San Francisco. There were so many people that it was overwhelming at times, but fun anyway. The festival is pretty much an excuse to eat, drink, and be loud in the middle of the street, which they close down for the whole day.

Here is a view down Haight Street. As you can see, the party stretches as far as the eye can see:


Every building along the street becomes home to a party as people play music out the window:


The headlining band at one end of the street was some band called Jetboy, which was actually pretty good:

Virgin Islands, Part 3: Yes, I Actually Have to Work

Yesterday, we started working on the website for the school here on St. Thomas-- technically the reason we are here. It has been a pretty pleasant experience so far, just working for about 6 hours, then back to the beach and piña coladas. The view from my room is so beautiful, so here are a few shots for your viewing pleasure.

Virgin Islands, Part 2: St. John

Today I slept in until 11:30 or so. It was really nice to get some good sleep after the long, long, plane ride. After eating brunch, my coworkers and I took the ferry to St. John, one of the other islands in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Here is St. Thomas from the ferry leaving the island:


St. John is the capital of the U.S. Virgin Islands. Here is the legislature building, pretty laid back:


And St. John from high above the city:


One of the gorgeous views from St. John:

Virgin Islands, Part 1: The Hotel

So I arrived in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands with my company today after a grueling ten and a half hour overnight flight. I spent the day at the beach sipping piña coladas, playing water frisbee, and reading. St. Thomas is a beautiful tropical paradise and my hotel is amazing. The hotel is literally on the beach, and my huge luxurious hotel room overlooks the bay. I am really excited about spending the next week here.

Here is the view of the bay and the beach from my hotel room's balcony:


And my hotel room, with flat screen TV and huge bathroom out of the picture:

Swedish

Over the last few months I have been learning Swedish because I love learning new things, and languages in particular. Also, a good friend of mine speaks Swedish fluently, so I have a great resource to help out my learning. There is a school in San Francisco (the Scandinavian School) that offers beginner to advanced classes in Swedish, so I have been taking classes there for the last month.

Two of my best friends in Tampa are moving to Armenia in a few months, so maybe with my Swedish skills and friends in Armenia, I can go on a multi-country tour of Europe next year.

Swedish-American Hall in San Francisco, a legacy of the formerly large Swedish population here:

Milk and Sean Penn

I was walking through the Civic Center last weekend and happened to catch the filming of a new motion picture called "Milk," which tells the story of a murdered city councilman in the 1970s. Sean Penn is playing the title character, and he was there at the filming as well. For the scene, they were recreating a famous rally that occurred at San Francisco's City Hall.

Here is a 1970s-era bus:


And here is Sean Penn in the middle of filming a scene:


An City Hall all draped out (complete with 1970s cars) during the filming:

New Apartment

I have been living in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood with two roommates, but I decided it was time to get a place of my own closer to work. So this weekend I moved across town into my new apartment in the Hayes Valley neighborhood. The differences between the two neighborhoods are very apparent. Haight was filled with hippies, hippie-wannabes, and vagabonds of every race and socio-economic group. Hayes Valley's streets, on the other hand, are walked by the well-dressed and upper-middle class.

My new neighborhood has a very active street life. Here is a little storefront across the street from me where people where sitting out front watching a basketball game on TV:


Here is the inside of my new apartment, now complete with furniture:






Here is a little cafe on the corner next to my new place: