Abe made this beautiful and delicious tart for dessert this week. It tasted as good as it looks.
The Oakland Temple has been open for tours this month following extensive remodeling. We drove to the Bay area for a quick trip at the beginning of the week. We drove down highway 101 and got out at Golden Gate National Recreation Area. It was a clear, sunny day.
We walked out to the middle of the Golden Gate Bridge and back again. We saw a flock of pelicans fly under the bridge and a couple of seals floating in the bay below. Traffic was lighter than we expected, maybe because it was Memorial Day. The kids counted the fancy cars driving by, including Teslas, Ferraris and a Maserati.
Here's a photo of the bridge supports. Although the bridge looks red from a distance, up close the paint is an orangish brown color.
We drove across the Golden Gate Bridge into San Francisco and spent the rest of the afternoon exploring. Our first stop was Ghirardelli square for ice cream.
We walked through Fisherman's Wharf for the full tourist experience.
Then we went to Chinatown. Sofi and Abe read some of the signs to us. Sofi realized how fast her Chinese is fading and vowed to watch more Chinese television.
We had dinner in Chinatown.
We stayed the night in Oakland and went to the temple Tuesday morning. At the temple, we learned that a group of members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints first settled in San Francisco in 1849. The church bought a large parcel of land in the foothills above Oakland in the 1940s. The temple was built here in the 1960s. The large amount of open space, the beautiful views and the exquisite temple make the Oakland Temple a landmark for the area. Most of the people on the tour with us with lived nearby and were excited for a chance to go inside the temple.
None of us had been to the Oakland temple prior to the remodel, but it sounded like the church made updates and improvements while preserving the unique mid-century design of the temple. The interior is decorated with lots of blonde wood and gold accents. One big change was moving the temple entrance to the opposite side of the temple. The old entrance now leads to a large waiting room for wedding parties. This photo was taken outside the waiting room overlooking the city and Bay below. The tour was well worth the drive.
On Saturday, Brandan and Gibson went to a parks and rec class called "Lost in the Woods." They learned lots of useful strategies for surviving in the woods. They spent a good chunk of the day learning how to start a fire without matches. The first step is to create an ember by creating friction between a stick and another piece of wood.
Next they dropped the tiny red ember into a fluffy bed of kindling and carefully blew on the bundle to coax the ember into a flame.
They used a bow to start a fire as well and learned it's easier to use a straight stick and your hands to create enough pressure than it is to use a bow. (Do you see the tree tag on the tree above Gib's shoulder? The class was held at the arboretum where Abe placed tree tags for his Eagle project.)
On Saturday evening we went to a violin recital. Before Helen's violin teacher, Faina, moved to America, she taught at a music conservatory in Kazakhstan. Faina had a dream of her students playing a recital entirely of Kazakh music. With the help of her former colleagues who helped her find the music she needed, she put together a program ranging from folk songs to classical pieces to modern compositions. It's very likely this was the first time any of these songs had been performed in America.
An attache from the Kazakh consul in San Francisco attended the recital with his family. He presented Faina with a piece of traditional artwork and brought a certificate for each student to commemorate the cultural exchange. In the photo Faina is holding up the artwork. We didn't get the name of the Kazakh official, but he is standing next to her with his daughter. It was a beautiful evening and a testament to music being a universal language.
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