パラボラアンテナ

Hello Everyone!

This is Ann Marie, Karen's special friend, reporting on what Karen and I did did on December 23! Mostly we spent the day driving to Snowshoe ski resort in West Virginia. Ann Marie had to go to the Japanese Embassy yesterday, so we had to make the long trip from Lynchburg to DC on Dececmber 22. Poor Karen, she is having to spend many long long hours in the car. It took 3 hours to drive to DC on the 22nd, and then 5 (!) long hours driving from DC to Snowshoe. Fortunately, Karen has jet lag, so she takes lots of naps in our car.

We started early in the morning on Dec. 23 and took a lot of breaks along the way, so that we could get food and rest. Wherever we stopped, Karen wanted to play in the snow. She was happy yesterday to finally find snow that was soft enough for her to make a petite snow man (プチ雪だるま！）!

Soon before we got to Snowshoe we passed by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia. Ann Marie is going to put up a lot of descriptions about this place on her blog annmerry.blogspot.com because it was so interesting. Unfortunately though, Ann Marie's Japanese was not so good, so she had a hard time explaining to Karen what it was that we were looking at. Finally when we got to Snowshoe, she looked on line and found out that the big satellite dish in Green Bank is called "parabola antenna" (パラボラアンテナ) in Japanese. This didn't mean much to Karen though.

Karen and Ann Marie in front of the Green Bank Telescope.

We hope you will enjoy these pictures! Oh! and one more thing, Karen got to meet Santa Clause yesterday at our hotel in DC. It just so happens that Santa was spending the night there the same night as us! Karen saw him while she was playing in the lobby and I was on the Internet. Santa was coming home from a long day of work. He was very nice, and let us take a picture of him with Karen!

Happy Holidays from Snowshoe!