The Children's Museum

One of our favorite places to go in the winter is the Children's Museum. During the summer however, it takes a lot of effort to drive there when it's so easy just to walk outside and let Lucas play at one of the five playgrounds that we live so close to. Either way, Lucas has been asking to go for a few weeks now, and Matias is getting more to the age where he can enjoy it too, so this past Thursday we went with our friends Jill, Anthony and Audrey.

Matias playing in the water

Anthony and Lucas surfing

Audrey and Matias hanging out

Matias loved playing in the sand at the Rooftop Park

Prince Anthony and Prince Lucas

Our Vacation to Cape Cod and Boston

We went and spent a week in Cape Cod back in June with Emma, Josh, Vera and their kids. We had such a great time at the beach! After Cape Cod, we were able to spend a few days in Boston with them before returning home to Minneapolis via Danbury, CT, Binghamton, NY and Palmyra, NY. Enjoy the pictures!

Congratulations to Zeke!

Hey Everyone,

I just found out that I passed my preliminary exams (aka comprehensive exams)! Now let me translate for those who don't know what I'm talking about:

Preliminary exam: a very long, mean test that covers the two years of course work that I've been taking since I started my PhD program at Minnesota. Nothing really "preliminary" about it. The term "comprehensive" seems more appropriate, but here in the Midwest people like to be subtle. It lasted three days, with intense writing and (hopefully) thinking involved.

Why does it matter? If I don't pass, I can't stay in the PhD program. Luckily I passed, which means that the school believes I am good enough to stay and write a dissertation. The school is confident that my dissertation will be worthy of calling me Dr. Hernandez one day--and hopefully making some kind of positive contribution to the world. It typically takes 2-3 years after passing the preliminary exam to graduate.

I wanted to share the good news with all of you. It feels really good to be at this stage. Of course there's lots of work ahead to write a dissertation. So I have to stop writing this email and get back to work!

Seriously, thanks to all of you for your friendship, love, and support. You are all in some way part of this accomplishment.

Closer to Dr. Hernandez than ever,
Zeke

Bulgogi and Cold Noodles

Today we went to Youngeun's house for an absolutely amazing lunch. Youngeun shares an office with Zeke at school and is from South Korea. Jin, another student in their program that is from China, also came. So Youngeun prepared three courses. First, she made Bulgogi. I'm not sure if this is how it's always eaten, but Youngeun had put out Romaine lettuce leaves and the way she taught us to eat it was to put some sticky rice on the lettuce, then the Bulgogi meat and then some Korean Red Bean Paste and wrap it all up and shove it in our mouths! It reminded a lot of the lettuce wraps that are very popular at Chinese restaurants. Some variations to this are to also add cucumber or carrot or kimchi along with the bulgogi and rice. You can also just eat the bulgogi with the rice without wrapping it up in lettuce. I could have definitely stuffed myself eating the bulgogi but she had told us there was more to come. The second course was cold noodles (I think the Korean word for it literally means cold noodles). It's a cold soup that has thin, glass looking wheat noodles that are served in a cold broth along with tiny slices of cucumber, some egg and pickled radish. Youngeun told us that the reason the egg is served with it is they used to think that the noodles were poisonous (or something like that) and the egg would offset the harm of the noodles. She assured us though that the soup was safe! She said that eating cold noodles are very popular during the summer when it's hot outside. Finally, the third course was dessert. Dessert was pretty Americanized which I think Youngeun might have partly done for Lucas. We had chocolate cake and vanilla ice cream, which by the way is all Lucas ate for lunch along with some other Korean treats. Youngeun is so sweet to Lucas and is always giving him different Korean treats. She even bought some mini Snickers ice cream bars this time and gave Lucas a box to take home. Both Youngeun and Jin are so great with Lucas and Matias. Jin wanted to hold Matias the whole time he was awake and Youngeun wanted to keep giving Lucas more and more treats.

Overall, we had a great afternoon sharing delicious food and getting to know Youngeun and Jin better as well as their cultures. This was also Jin's first time having this type of Korean food and it was interesting to hear them share their similarities and differences in culture.

Kendra, Matias & Jin

Lucas & Youngeun

Now I need to go to a Korean market and buy the ingredients to make more Bulgogi and cold noodles!