The local Chapel Hill News published an article about the Carrboro Athletics Club that Marc runs with on Wednesday. It provides some insights into the history behind the motivation to start that club, and the personalities involved. Also check out their weblog (we have a link to the right under "Our Community")

For those aspiring runners out there, Marc found an article on the New York Times a few weeks ago about the benefits of interval training. Shuwen is trying to work that into the little bit of running she's begun to do.

A related titbit: We took Marc's resting heart rate a few days ago (while he was wide awake) and recorded an all time low of 31 beats per min -- the lowest recorded is of a Spanish cyclist, Miguel Indurain (won le Tour de France a few times) who had a resting heart rate of 28!Hmmm.... this is a little freaky but also probably a sign that Marc is getting fitter (his previous recorded low was 42 bpm while he was sitting in a boring ENVR class).

We had a great time with Marc's parents this past week. The Music of the Baroque's perfornace of King Arthur was quite entertaining as some of the liberato parts (by John Dryden) were well sung and were rather cheeky. The music by Purcell was beautifully played by the orchestra and resonated well in the neat church (in Evanston) the performance was held at. On Monday we met up with two of Marc's high school friends, Dan and Gina, for lunch as they made more plans about the upcoming class of 1997 Lincoln Park HS reunion set for July 28th. We also managed to get two FREE boxes of Frangos from Macy's (previously Marshall Field's) while we were downtown. We had planned to buy a box, and asked a sales-lady whether they still sold it. She told us that we could get free Frangos if we filled out a 10-min survey. So, Marc went to the survey booth first, then Shuwen joined in 5 mins later pretending not to know Marc, and we ended up with 2 boxes! What luck! We spent the afternoon working at a cafe, and that evening we each did yoga at one of the two sessions Marc's mom was teaching before having Galettes for dinner compliments of Marc. Marc's dad promptly fell asleep 10 mins into the French news.

Yesterday through this morning, we were in Charlotte in order to get Shuwen's fingerprinting done at the USCIS office there. It was pretty straight forward and surprisingly efficient.

Anyway, since we had to drive over to Charlotte we figured we must as well check out the city a little and see what it had to offer. We walked a ton yesterday around Charlotte downtown and in the Latta Park/Dilworth neighborhoods. Some of the historic districts are quite pleasant with impressive buildings and beautiful Victorian houses. There were a huge variety of colors about in the neighborhoods. Shades of purple appear to be somewhat popular. This house (pictured) was particularly interesting because of the architecture, color, and the cool yellow chevolet truck (with Michigan state plates) in its driveway!


With all our walking (probably about 4 miles), we were hungry by dinner time! Dinner was at the Pewter Rose Bistro at the South End of Charlotte. We were impressed by the Maple-crusted seared tuna appetizer, and Marc's veal was amazingly tender. Shuwen's rack of lamb was very tasty, although the crisped spinach were way too salty. Fortunately, they gladly replaced the veggies with a new batch without any salt. What a great way to round up our day in Charlotte! This morning, after the biometrics / finger-printing appointment, we went to the Charlotte Regional Farmer's Market and picked up peaches, tomatoes, a pair of hand-knitted bedroom slippers for Shuwen, and a nice surprise for Christine :)

That's it for now -- maybe we will have windows of opportunities to blog about our upcoming roadtrip through the Northeast!