Philadelphia

 This past weekend (and for Columbus Day so our friends would have an extra day off) we went to New Jersey. We got to see Josh and Anna. :) We originally had planned to go to their wedding in July, but decided to go and see them instead. We are super glad that we did that to celebrate them getting married. As most pastors will tell you, a wedding is a day while a marriage lasts a lifetime.  While we were there we went to Philly for one day, and Princeton for another. We also managed to watch the OU/TX game at an Irish pub since the game started shortly after we arrived.

While in Philly we went to the Franklin Institute. It was pretty neat to see everything explained in relation to "Dr. Franklin" or how he would have done something. It was also cool to see some of his original designs of things. The Institute was housing the "Mummies of the World" exhibit. The exhibit was very cool since it had mummies from all over the world. We got to see mummies from South America, Asia, and Europe as well as a few from Egypt. The exhibit started by discussing the way mummification happens -- either intentionally or unintentionally. It then went on to describe how scientists are able to use modern techniques to un-invasively see what was under mummy wrappings. The exhibit also discussed using clues from the mummies to determine how the people lived and what their lives were like. The most interesting in this regard was a Hungarian family that had died of TB in the late 1700s. The mom, dad, and baby were all almost perfectly preserved from a drying mummification process. 

After we were done with the mummies we went through the Earth, Electricity, and Heart exhibits at the Franklin Institute. They have a HUGE walk through heart. You walk through the ventricles, lungs, aorta, etc. and it was neat to be "blood" for a few minutes.

After we were done with the Franklin Institute we walked to the Pennsylvania State House. There were groups of people demonstrating. While Anna thought hard about joining them, we really didn't get close enough to see what they were protesting. The state police had barricades around the building so we couldn't get super close. We did manage to play in a "park" of game pieces across the street from the state house. There were chess pieces, sorry pieces, monopoly pieces, etc.

As we rested our legs on the game pieces we continued our walking tour of Philly and went to the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall. There was a really long line for the bell, so we walked up behind the museum and got to see it that way. Independence Hall was also closed for renovations.

On Monday we walked around Princeton University and a square in town. Overall it was an interesting college, especially seeing as the buildings were older than the country.