A "Wicked" Good Birthday

For my 28th birthday, Eric and I went to see Wicked in San Francisco. Ever since we moved here, I have been wanting to go see the musical. I love musicals and plays, and I was very excited to see Wicked because I've heard so many good reviews of the show. The reviews were correct. I loved every minute of the play! Eric even liked it. We had orchestra seats so I was able to see everything in the play. As we were leaving, I bought a poster with signatures from the cast- it didn't hurt that it was tax deductible. I couldn't get the songs from the show out of my head- "Popular! I know about popular!" and "I'm defying gravity." Also, here is a little known San Francisco fact- Wicked started out in San Francisco before moving to Broadway in 2003. Eric took me to dinner near Union Square at First Crush. We had a delicious meal and talked about the play. My 28th birthday turned out to be a "wickedly" good one.

San Francisco Civic Center- near our parking spot

WICKED!

Outside the Orpheum Theater in San Francisco with Elphaba & Glinda

Me & the witches

My handsome husband patiently waiting for dinner after the play

Rancho San Antonio

The weather has been great here in California, and on Sunday, it was really great. So we went hiking in Palo Alto with some of our friends and Eric's co-residents. The views from Rancho San Antonio were amazing. You can see Palo Alto and a lot of the Bay area. It was a great hike and good times with new friends.

View of Palo Alto

Eric & me with a beautiful background

Eric & me with another view of the city

We could also see San Francisco from this view.

Ariel, Achal, Do, & Eric enjoying the hike

By the way, there were a lot of people hiking that day, and we couldn't find parking. So we parked in a neighborhood near the park and stopped in for an open house at a home for sale. It was too funny that we were crashing the open house just for parking because we certainly cannot afford a $2 million dollar house. :)

Hogs beat the Bears!

The Arkansas Razorback Baseball team played a 3-game series against Cal this past weekend. Eric and I met up with Scott and Kristen Walnofer to go the game on Saturday. It was a beautiful and sunny California day at the ball park. There were lots of Hog fans there and most were members of the San Francisco Alumni Association. We enjoyed "calling the Hogs." It was my first time to do so since moving to CA (or at least in public). The Razorbacks won 9-5 and hit 3 home runs over the fence. Go Hogs! After the game, we toured the UC Berkeley campus. It was pretty but not as pretty as Stanford's campus. For dinner, Scott (the soon-to-be graduate of the Culinary Institute of America) picked the restaurant- Vic's Chaat. It was an authentic (very authentic) Indian restaurant. No one really understood the menu except for Scott so he did all of the ordering for us. The food was very different than Indian-fusion food I've had before, but it was very good. There were a lot of surprising tastes in the dishes. However, I would not recommend Indian desserts. I did not like them at all. One even tasted like roses- maybe prepared with rose water?? Don't waste your time on that. It was a great day hanging out with the Razorbacks and our friends.

Go Hogs!

Razorback Baseball Team

Scott, Kristen and Eric at Berkeley

Sather Tower- UC Berkeley's Campanile

It is the 3rd largest bell and clock tower in the world.

View of the bay and the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance from the Campanile

Eric took a picture of our receipt so we could ask some of our friends what we ate.