philadelphia...

our trip was very enjoyable. being that i am a person who enjoys road trips, i thought we got there rather quickly and enjoyed the ride, except for the hour or so we were stuck in traffic right outside philly, and the confusion of being somwhat lost looking for the theater of the living arts. but after that things went pretty smoothly. the only other issue we had was parking. at one point we drove around for 45 minutes looking for a spot anywhere remotely near where we were supposed to meet my friend for dinner. but that aside, i loved philadephia and look forward to going back sometime soon.

the concert was absolutely amazing. first of, it actually started right on time; at exactly 8:00 laura veirs came on the stage and started playing. no waiting around for 30-45 minutes waiting for everything to get soundchecked, which has almost always been the case at every show i have ever been to. she was very good, it was just her and her guitar. she did awesome things with looping her voice and making all these layers of sound so it sounded like she had a whole group of vocalists accompanying her. i think she looped her different guitar parts as well.
then, colin meloy played. wow...so incredible! he sounds even better live than he did on any of the decemberists' albums. i could have watched him play for hours.

we stayed with my childhood friend kristin, who i haven't spoken to in years. suprisingly, this wasn't awkward at all. she had two other friends staying with her from new york city which i think made it more comfortable since they were both very outgoing and chatty.

on saturday we went to the reading terminal, chinatown (probably the nicest chinatown i have been to, topping san francisco's easily-not as tacky), the mutters museum (small, but so densely packed with fascinating medical specimens that i could have spent hours looking and reading.) , and the body worlds exihibit at the franklin institute. both were awe-inspiring and also pretty creepy. after awhile, i couldn't take much in (and jason can attest, it takes a lot for me to get overloaded visually!) i would love to see either one again, when it is less crowded and i am not as tired or overloaded sensorially. the mutters museum is sort of like a mad scientist's laboratory combined with a traveling freakshow. they have wax representaions of of dozens of medical deformities and what different diseases can do to various body parts, plus hundreds of photographs and actual specimens. most disturbing was the massive collection of fetuses preserved in jars of fluid. they also have cases of skulls, a huge display about siamese twins, and the body of a woman who's fat preserved her and turned her body into soap. while i was completely fascinated by the mutters, it was a sobering look at human suffering and how cruel nature can be.

body worlds did not creep me out as much as the mutters did, even though averything on display was actual body parts, or slices of bodies, or actual whole bodies showcasing the various bodily systems. if it hadn't been so crowded and my feet hadn't been throbbing, i would have enjoyed (i'm not sure that is exactly the right word) it so much more. the human body is so unbelievable. it is so finely crafted and so beautiful and downright miraculous, that it makes it hard for me to think that there isn't something devine behind it all, while at the same time, the displays of the deformities at the mutters makes it more difficult to believe in a god that could allow such, to put it mildly, mishaps, as a baby with two heads. it is a lot to ponder.

my only real disappointment of the trip was not going to the aquarium. we actually drove across the ben franklin bridge and into camden, but once we got there, the line to get in was very long and probably would have amounted to us waiting in line for 30-45 minutes, leaving us with only an hour or so to see everything. but this means we have to go back, hopefully, within the next year!