Despite the distance Wilmington was easy to get to, there is a four-lane highway the whole way. You don’t get to see much scenery though. It was a pleasant touristy town with an attractive waterfront and business district. We think it would make a nice holiday spot.
The plants were also interesting. As you can see in the pictures, there were buttressed trees growing in the swamps next to the river and also a strange lichen-epiphyte-thing hanging from all the trees.
We were happy to finally get all our stuff. We were especially happy to finally get the Chimes Estate wine and the beanies that Gran knitted for us!
Okay, and now for some old rivalries that have followed us across the world. The picture below is of student dorms at Duke. If you look closely at the windows you will see, lo and behold, an Aussie flag and a Kiwi flag! Weird. We don't know who these people are.
Last night we had dinner with our friends Zuzana and Gil. Gil is Israeli and Zuzana is Czech so they treated us to to an Israeli feast. The picture shows Zuzana and her daughter Shira (I think that is how it is spelled). Shira is 7 months old. Zuzana and Gil are running the project I am currently working on.
The following picture is looking down the road from our front doorstep. You can see the winter-trees. One thing to note is how clear the sky is, most of the winter days are bright and sunny. 
Our new furniture was dropped off yesterday. We are now the proud owners of a nice old table and chairs, coffee table and sideboard. All make the house more liveable. The table can also extend to beome nearly a meter longer, which will be good when every one comes to visit.
The party at Lucas and Jamie's
The following day I roped Tim into helping me collect pine cones as part of the work I am doing at Duke. The work was straightforward but it was cold, it even SNOWED on us! It was very light snow but it was a novelty all the same. You can see in the pictures that we are both wearing two jackets.
After finishing the field work and ‘borrowing’ a load of fire wood from the forest we took ourselves along to the Personal Defense and Handgun Safety Center Inc. in Raleigh. This story will give you some insight into the gun culture here - We went in and told the bloke at the counter we would like to try firing a gun. We made it clear that we had never fired a hand gun before. He made us fill out a form and then proceeded to ask us what sort of gun we wanted to fire. We asked him to recommend one. He placed two 9 mm pistols on the table, along with ammo, and pointed to the door leading to the range. Hesitating we asked if some one could please show us what to do. He sighed and without moving from the counter explained the gun to us and then pointed to the range again. So Tim and I were set loose in a shooting range with two 9 mm pistols and 100 rounds, having never fired a gun before and with no supervision.
Having fired a hand gun now I can confidently say I am even more scared of guns. Considering the amount of trouble I was having hitting a stationary human-sized paper target 10 meters away I don’t trust any average American citizen to ‘defend their loved ones' from a criminal, from a distance, possibly in the dark, whilst nervous, and expect to shoot accurately.
You can see the shooting fun by clicking the link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FXpoCfh7LM.
Nic
One of the gardens at Seeds.
Just to prove it happened, here is Sal in hospital. The other person is our wonderful Mexican neighbor Fernando who drove us there. 
Tuesday morning, at about 9 AM, it began to rain. Then it continued to rain. Then it rained some more. I think by Wednesday morning our area had had just over 3.5 inches which, for people who don’t live 50 years ago, is about 90 mm. You can see the weather map below. What surprised me was how persistent it was. It rained CONSTANTLY for about ten hours! So everything is wet and humid right now. It is cool, basically jumper weather, but the second you exert yourself (i.e. ride a bike or walk to university) you get hot and sweaty.
The Duke campus.
This morning Sal and I were speculating about how much of Durham county we could cover if Sal spent her entire doctoral scholarship on croissants. It isn’t important why we were wondering this. What is important is that after a night spent drinking I often feel compelled to calculate stupid things. This isn’t helped by the fact that I suck at maths, which I assume leads to many of my calculations being wildly inaccurate. But here goes:
The price was reasonable and it had done comparatively few miles. In North Carolina they have a thing called CarFax, which is a police record of vehicles, which said the car was not reported to have been involved in any serious accidents and had been well maintained. So yesterday we hired a car and drove down to Raleigh to look at it.
Considering the trouble I am having even crossing the road I had been anxious about driving here. It is about a 20 minute drive down the freewayto Raleigh. Both Sal and I took turns driving and I think we did surprisingly well. We didn’t turn into on-coming traffic or do anything else life threatening or stupid. We're both feeling vastly more confident about getting around now.
We found the car dealer and checked out the car. It was in amazingly good condition with no obvious problems. We took it driving and other than a slight steering wobble, which we think was due to low tyre pressure, it was fine. The dealership was in a light industrial area and had its own workshop. We reported the wobble to the dealer, a lovely and amusing woman named Missy, who put the car in to be fixed for no charge. Missy was very friendly, professional, organized and above all else not pushy at all! I am still a little suspicious. So we get the car on Tuesday.
Whilst waiting for the car to get sorted out we took the opportunity to look around Raleigh. The bit of down town we saw was depressing. Imagine Forrest Chase without any of the cafes or shops, just buildings and wide empty streets. It was 2 PM on a Saturday and we saw only a handful of people after walking around for two hours! From the cars on the street we could tell there were clearly plenty of people around, just not walking. After leaving Raleigh late in the afternoon we encountered streams of traffic just on the out-skirts of town as people were leaving something. What could it be? Perhaps a sporting event. No, sadly, it was a giant mall. So that's where everyone was. To work you have a CBD, to shop and hang-out you have a mall. Even our American friends say this gives them the s--ts.
In Raleigh we need to kill time and eventually found the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences (http://www.naturalsciences.org/), which was apparently deserted from the outside but bustling with people on the inside. We were extremely impressed by the museum. The displays were excellent and very comprehensive. They even had a big display on evolution, which surprised me considering where we are.
After visiting Raleigh we spent the evening in Chapel Hill with some of Sal’s friends. Chapel Hill is another nearby town (for the record these places aren’t distinct towns any more than Midland is a town distinct from Perth). I like Chapel Hill, it is open and filled with restaurants and pubs. We had Mexican then headed to the Carolina Brewery, which is microbrewery. It was a good chance for me to get to know some of the other Duke graduate students. On the one had these guys are very intelligent, well travelled and well read, and on the other hand crazy (i.e. one was telling me he has ten guns, seriously).
Finally, we have sorted out the blog problems so here are the pictures we were promising.
This is our group of houses, ours is the one on the far left.
This is part of the Duke campus.
And this is the autumn forest that covers much of the landscape in and around Durham.
After something like 29 hours in transit and nearly missing my last plane (through no fault of my own) I arrived in Raleigh-Durham airport feeling surprisingly un-jetlagged. Sal was there to pick me up. I was extremely happy to see her face again.
The flights were fine, although I got stuck next to non-English speakers from Perth to Japan and from Japan to the USA, so the conversation wasn’t riveting. My luggage didn’t get lost, although I think the word ‘fragile’ means something different in the language of baggage handlers than it does for the rest of us. My bike bag was trashed and the bike frame was scratched has a dent in the top-tube that, although not serious, I am still hacked off about! The bike still works okay though.
What are my first impressions? They are mostly positive. It is green here! To the eyes of a West Aussie it looks something like the land around Balingup or Bridgetown. Lots of big trees – several oak species, pines, liquidambers and plane trees – with vines up their trunks. The neighbourhoods are all overgrown and leafy, nothing like the concrete jungles I experienced in California or Utah. It is also not as flat as I imagined it. It is more like Sydney in that respect.
The locals? It is a bit like being in a movie. The different ethnic mix and accents keep throwing me. The people here have generally been exceedingly friendly and helpful though.
What’s odd? Negotiating traffic on the wrong side of the road. Last time I was in the States I don’t recall it being as difficult as I am finding it now. Last time I was just walking around, this time I am trying to ride. (Who wants to start taking bets on how long it will be before I get hit by a car? Something that nearly happened quite regularly in Australia.) Other odd things? The light switches go the other way, meaning up for on and down for off. The power points don’t have switches either - to turn things off you unplug them. Toilet bowls are broad and flat, so the water it just below your bum – this is way more off-putting than it sounds. Squirrels! The little buggers are everywhere, I am trying to get a picture. We have a garbage disposal unit, although I have yet to play with it. And finally, the weather is messing with me. Fahrenheit! Begin by subtracting 32 from the Fahrenheit number, divide the answer by 9, then multiply that answer by 5. Up yours Gabriel Daniel Fahrenheit and the donkey you rode in on!
Sal has given me a list of jobs to do which I really should be doing instead of blogging.
I've been attempting to post some pictures but Sal's damn computer want let me!
