I just got back from a family vacation in Myrtle Beach, and here are some thoughts about it:
I discovered how utterly beautiful Virginia and West Virginia are. They're both filled with rolling hills and forest. They remind me of France or Romania. Though you gotta watch out for the deer that are everywhere at night. We saw many of them in various states of decomposition on the side of the road :(
Myrtle Beach is a lovely place - it's full of soft sand, calming waves, and beautiful dunes. And of course it's very well maintained with beautiful palm trees and hotels, restaurants, theaters, etc.
I really recommend Neutrogena 45 SPF sunblock lotion. I only put a bit on a little bit in the morning and didn't get a burn (that day) at all! Of course, I didn't get a tan either, but let's be positive here!
My beach reading material,
The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker. He is a professional linguist but also writes a lot of popular linguistics, psychology, psycholinguistics. It's very fascinating stuff, and it keeps my brain well-oiled in the absence of classes. Still haven't finished it though.
Kiwano melon was the fun new fruit I tried out. At first it looks very exotic - orange and spiky on the outside, and slimy green on the inside. Then you taste it and find it sweet but somewhat bland, and eventually it turns out that it's really just a cousin of the lowly cucumber. Considering its exorbitant price, I wouldn't go out of my way to buy it again, but it was quite yummy.
The Greek Orthodox Church in Myrtle Beach is just beautiful. It's all done with iconography on the inside, and the warm climate of South Carolina allowed it to be built more or less like a church in Greece - white, with big windows and large flat domes. And
we chatted with their priest, who is nice and very young, with a lovely family. They also have a full-time secretary! How cool is that!
While I was there there was a church tour for home-schooled kids, which I thought was a neat way of reaching out to the community . Plus they had lots of literature about Orthodoxy around the place, and of course, a really wicked bishop's chair (pictured left)!
We went on a nice river boat tour, led by Cap'n Jim in his electric boat! Very comfortable and relaxing, and we heard some amusing stories from the Cap'n.
One of the things I still don't get is, what on earth does this sign mean? Maybe, drive slowly so you don't wake the alligators?
We didn't see any gators, though there was apossibility that we would, nor did we see those short, thick black poisenous water snakes
they have there, (though there was an even bigger possibility we'd see them) but we did see sunbathing turtles, cypress trees, Canada geese, and an assortment of other ducks and geese. The tree picture shows some stalagmite-like structures
that are called Cypress knees, which are apparently part of the root system of the cypress tree, and help it to get oxygen. I thought that was pretty cool.
We also ate some seafood, which was delicious. I really need to move near an ocean somewhere to eat more fruits de mer. Though they didn't have any lobster - I guess lobster only grow in colder waters. Anyway, here I am confused about how to open this rock-hard oyster shell with the ineffective nutcracker:
Now the nice waiter gave me a flat knife-like implement, attractively called a "shucker", which I'm using the pry open the animal. I guess since the shell did not open during the cooking process, the oyster must've just cooked in its own steam. That makes it both highly nutritious and kind of sad.
It was surprisingly easy to open, and once inside I triumphantly ate the delicious invertebrate:
It was also Bike (motorcycle) Week while we were there, and all of Myrtle Beach looked a bit like the following picture (except, in focus!). I also realized just how loud bikes can be, but no matter, it was fun to see them all driving down the street. I also found it interesting to see that many people, possibly even a majority, didn't come down on their bikes, but drove a big SUV and towed their bikes in a trailer. To me that kind of defeats the purpose, but hey, what do I know about motorcycle culture anyway.
I've given up on telling people to comment, but I still like comments!
