We are now home in Carrboro, NC after over 2 weeks on the road.

On Friday, we went to the National Building Museum to check out the green house exhibit, and found it rather ironic that it was in a building that was clearly not energy nor space efficient! Shuwen particularly liked the bamboo finishings & furniture as well as the tiles made of recycled aluminum. Some of the houses they featured were also pretty neat. We were amazed by the counter-tops made of recycled paper.

We then met up with Ambrose and Yana and had dinner in Bethasda at a Tapas place called Guardado's, which is cheaper than the usual Tapas places and is more family friendly, without compromising on quality. The sangrias were great too!

Yesterday, we had a lovely and very filling breakfast, compliments of Ambrose and Yana. We need to get their recipe for their Banana pancakes! Today while grocery shopping we got a bottle of Tabasco sauce after being inspired by their addition of Tabasco on their eggs. Yum!

In the afternoon, we headed south to attend Temple & Dameon's wedding in Hanover, VA on our way home to NC. It was a lovely affair and everyone had a great time. Marc got to catch up with many of this Peace Corp friends and Shuwen got to meet many of them for the first time as well. Congrats to Temple & Dameon!

We are working on uploading photos from our summer road-trip, but for now we've put up a select few in the prior blogs where appropriate. As you can tell, we had quite a bit of fun.

Plant update (with thanks to our neighbors and Amy for checking up on them while we were out of town):

Our tomatoes produced some fruit, but some nasty birds have apparently been attacking them. Our neighbor managed to save two which they ate and today when we got back from Amy's housewarming party, we found two mangled green tomatoes that had been on the vine! We need to get a net for the plants otherwise we will never get to taste the fruits of our labor....

The orchid on the other hand is in bloom! It is gorgeous! We also have a lily in the garden that has flowered. the color is amazing!