Shuwen and her friend, Amy, ran the Carrboro Four on the 4th last Wednesday and were happy to finish in ~ 35:30. A bunch of the Carrboro Athletics Club folks raced too and not surprisingly, they swept the prizes. Marc came in 1st overall (surprise, surprise) in 20:07. See Results.

After our run, we spent part of the afternoon checking out the local Carrboro 4th of July festivities, which included a parade of mostly children with their patriotically decorated bicyles, tricyles and wagons, lots of music, games for kids like a watermelon seed spitting contest and a water ballon toss, among others. We stopped by a stall manned by some folks who want to impeach Bush and Cheney. -- Ah... but they forget that Cheney isn't part of the Executive branch-- errr... or is he ?? well, you know, whatever stance works in his favor the best.

We cat-sat this weekend for a couple who just got married last Saturday and are off on a short trip to Topsail Island. Their two kitties, Tito (photo) and Kisa are a pair of silly cats who like to hide and go crazy meowing to be fed everytime anyone goes near their dishes. Near their place is a restaurant, Jujube, we had been meaning to try out, so we went there for dinner Sat evening. The steamed mussels in Sichuan bean sauce and scallions had a lovely broth that Marc drank up because he needed to make up for his lost sodium after his 2-hr long run at Umstead Park in the morning. Shuwen had the five-spice duck confit with greens and wonton. She wasn't a fan of the wonton -- the skin was too thick and hence the wontons were too starchy, but otherwise everything else was great. Marc ordered the Jujube 'Bolognese' as his entree, which was very much like what Shuwen would call Kueh-Tiao (i.e., flat rice noodles) in Singapore. That was very tasty too. All in all however, Shuwen concluded that given her bias on Asian (esp SE Asian) cuisines, she will often judge any restaurants with those tendencies much more harshly. Consequently, Jujube (and Lantern for that matter) still ranks below our all time favorite Asian place in town -- Oiishi.

Sunday morning, we headed towards Charlotte for Shuwen's immigration interview via Seagrove and the Uwharrie National Forest. Since it was a Sunday, everything in Seagrove was closed and we were even unable to find a place to get lunch! So we continued driving and ended up at a family diner near Briscoe where we each had a cheeseburger and onion rings -- all for less than $7! The food was way better than a McDonalds and we got to support a local eatery.

Our car got caked in dirt just 5 minutes into the Uwharrie National Forest as most of the roads were gravel (but it's now happy and clean). We drove towards the top of Lake Bidan and hiked for about 2 hours before hitting the road again. On our way out of the national forest we drove past two turtles by the road (they were about 0.5 miles down the road from each other), and then a mile later, we came across another one hiding in its shell, so Shuwen stopped the car & Marc went out to move it to the edge to prevent it from being run over. Those turtles were funny!

We are now back in Carrboro following a very smooth appointment with immigration this morning. We arrived at the Homeland Security building at 7:35am for our 8am interview and were out of there by 8:01am! Wow! We were pleasantly surprised at the efficiency. During the interview, our interviewer asked a few standard questions, some of which were really strange (i.e. does Shuwen intend to engage in polygamy while in the US, or does she plan to carry out terrorist acts). Shuwen wanted to ask him if anyone ever said "yes", and we both wondered about how those who did not know English well could even understand what they were responding to given the complex and bombastic legal language used in those questions. Anyway, he approved the residency application, and Shuwen should be getting a card in the mail at some point showing she's a permanent resident. Since we have only been married less than a year, it's still conditional (until two years), at which point we have to resubmit some forms and follow other directions, but at least the basic hurdle has been jumped, and Shuwen can freely work here now if she wants to. Yay!