Vienna, West Virginia, USA - 25th January 2008
By: MissMelissa
I woke up this morning and was shocked to find yet another little alien hanging out at my house.
Don't look now, Davey, but there's one right behind you!
This little alien introduced himselfAuggie'scousin, Weasley. Apparently, Harry Potter fever has struck his home planet as Netflix has finally started shipping there. This struck me as a little odd, but believable. After reading the entire dictionary in 22 minutes, he told me he was ready to set out on his journey in excellent English.
He is to live with Zachary, 13, after gaining all the worldly knowledge that he could. Then he said he was sleepy and was going to nap in the Regeneration Pod. I didn't have the heart to tell him it was a colander.
ON MY WAY TO MICHIGAN!
Here is my travel itinerary so far:
masucci- Michigan (ARRIVED, LEFT, HAD A GREAT TIME!)
Yumi-Japan(WILL BE VISITING LATER)
Moshua-India (ARRIVED!)
Annbear-Switzerland
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Posted Jan 25, 2008, 5:06 pm Last edited Jun 7, 2008, 5:01 pm by MissMelissa
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Hancock, MI, USA - 31st January 2008
By: masucci
There is this small little tea room in Houghton (Hancock's "sister town") that Melissa goes to at least once a week and writes postcards and letters. Everyone there knows her, knows what she orders, and they're all very nice.
You can order an endless pot of tea, soup and sandwiches, cookies, and cake. There are also lots of older/silly hats to wear while you're there. Look at us!
Peekaboo!
We had a lot of fun and it was nice to have something warm to drink to get rid of the chills. The weather has been -way- below zero for several days now. Brr!
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Posted Feb 5, 2008, 9:11 pm
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Hancock, MI, USA - 2nd February 2008
By: masucci
Just a small update to show you the town Melissa lives in.
It's a small, homey little town, and there's lots of snow. There has been snowfall of over 170 inches since the beginning of the winter.
This is the Portage Lake Lift Bridge. It's pretty famous - there aren't too many bridges that open the way this one does. It gets featured on a lot of videos about bridge designing. Melissa says we'll get a better photo of it later this week.
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Posted Feb 5, 2008, 9:12 pm
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Hancock, MI, USA - 7th February 2008
By: masucci
We got another new visitor today! Just in time to go see the snow statues this afternoon.
That's Little Teddy, me, Sully Monster, and our new friend Winnie the Pooh!
We're all getting ready to go look at the big ice and snow statues. The deadline to be done was this morning at 8am, so we're all excited!
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Posted Feb 11, 2008, 6:18 pm
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Hancock, MI, USA - 7th February 2008
By: masucci
Wow!
The snow statues we went to go see are part of the larger celebration at Michigan Technological University called "Winter Carnival". This is the history about it, from the Winter Carnival website:
Michigan Tech often registers more than 200 inches of snow in a season. Not content to let this abundant natural resource go to waste, students band together in an annual celebration of our beautiful, tough, exhilarating, and character-building climate.
Winter Carnival began in 1922, with a one-day Ice Carnival. It was so popular that students made it an annual event, and Winter Carnival as we know it began to take shape.
It was suspended in 1930, in the aftermath of the stock market crash, but in 1934, Blue Key Honor Fraternity resurrected the event. Then, 1936 brought the biggest change, one that would become Carnival's best known tradition: snow statues.
Since then, the statues have become famous for their size, detail, and design as building methods (and secrets) have been passed from year to year.
During World War II, Winter Carnival was again suspended. It took off again in 1946, when the Stage Revue was added, with fraternities, sororities, and other campus organizations presenting skits for the enjoyment of the crowd and the performers alike.
Winter Carnival events start at the beginning of the Spring term, with the construction of the month-long statues (the bigger ones I'll show you in a minute!). Then two or three weeks before the actual event, there are a lot of competitions, like broomball, skiing, human dogsled races, snowboarding, etc.
Then there's a big ta-da at the end on a Wednesday night. On that night a lot of other groups get together and while the people making month-long statues are finishing theirs, they make one-nighter statues that are a lot smaller. There is activity on campus all night until the wee hours of the morning, and the deadline to be finished is 8am on Thursday. Then Thursday morning everyone walks around the area taking photos of them all before they melt/fall apart. All the minute details usually don't last more than a couple days (it warms up and melts, or it'll snow more on top of them, etc.) but the big structures will be up most of the rest of the winter until they melt.
There are so many people around that it was too hard to get a photo with me in it, but I hope you like them anyway! They look so awesome in person, the detail on some of them is amazing.
First the big month-long ones:
King Kong fighting a monster!
Oh yeah, the theme was Frightful Creatures with Chilling Features...
The Abominable Snowman!
The Ghostbusters fighting the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man!
More coming in the next post!
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Posted Feb 11, 2008, 7:44 pm
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Hancock, MI, USA - 14th February 2008
By: masucci
Happy Valentine's Day, mommy!
I hope you had a wonderful day back home!
Miss you,
Weasley
PS. We're going camping! Photos coming soon!
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Posted Feb 16, 2008, 1:40 am
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Hancock, MI, USA - 17th February 2008
By: masucci
The town of Hancock, MI has a very strong Finnish Heritage.
We found a little information about it on Hancock's website, if you would like to see it, here: http://www.cityofhancock.com/cityinfo.html
Hancock has an official "sister city" relationship with a town in Finland, called Porvoo. Melissa doesn't know much about it, and had a hard time finding much information (beyond the fact that the relationship exists).
There's a small park on the waterfront called "Porvoo Park" in honor of this sister city relationship. It overlooks the city of Houghton, across the Portage Canal, and gives a good place to take a photo of the Portage Lake Lift Bridge.
You can't see much due to the snow, but in the summer there's a boardwalk along the water, lots of picnic tables, and there's a set of condos to the right.
To the left is the bridge:
This is a pretty unique bridge. It opens to let water traffic through by lifting up the middle part. There are lots of videos about bridges that talk about this unique design. Melissa said she watched one while she was in high school and the people pronounced the name "Houghton" wrong, for Houghton, MI.
There's a little information about it, if you're interested, here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portage_Lake_Lift_Bridge
Melissa loves giving us these "history lessons" about the area. More coming soon. Hope you like it!
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Posted Feb 21, 2008, 2:08 pm
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