It's always sunny

The city of brotherly love. It's treating me well.

On Sunday I took the shortest flight I've taken in a long time, which was fantastic. I am tired of long flights. It was also great that it was free for me. It was really great when we checked into the hotel to hear "Ms. Sorensen, the cost of your stay has been taken care of..." How glamorous! Our hotel is nice. Not niiiiice. But nice. And I can order room service for free, which I just feel great about. Sephora pays for $45 of food a day. Which is why I'm going to gain some weight this week. Wait for it.

I discovered that there is a Rodin museum here. And it SLAYS me that I am not seeing it. There isn't a subway station near it, so I gave up that dream pretty quickly. But Sunday would have been a perfect day for it and I was so sad. I may have attempted it if I hadn't been with someone else, but I didn't want to drag Jessica with me when she didn't know or care who Rodin was. The Rodin Museum in Paris is one of my favorite museums I've ever been to.

Instead of visiting Rodin's works of art we went into Old City, and it was really lovely. I've been to Philadelphia before, but Jessica hadn't, so we ran by the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall. It was a gorgeous day. Only chilly in the shade. It felt absolutely glorious after leaving upstate New York which is still in the vices of Winter. On the train into the city I noticed all the trees budding and daffodils already blooming and I was so happy to be here.

The first thing we saw coming out of the train station? The Reading Terminal Market! I love it. Just my sort of place. It's an enclosed public market. Over 80 merchants offer fresh produce, meats, fish, groceries, flowers, baked goods, crafts, books, clothing, and specialty and ethnic foods. There was a divine organic food corner. We found a creperie and had a savory and then a sweet crepe. Tasty tasty tasty. My sweet one was nutella, strawberries, and banana on a wheat crepe. Deeeeelicious. What a great welcome to Philadelphia.

Jessica is one of those people who pretty much just goes along with everything. She never had an opinion on what to do, so we pretty much just meandered around, following my instincts, which felt great. (Though an opinion once in a while would be appreciated.) I hadn't brought my camera, because I didn't think I'd have much opportunity. And indeed, I'm pretty sure Jessica would have gotten tired of my constantly pausing to frame a picture just right. It's just as well. If I owned the film 2 Days in Paris, I would look up the quote when Julie Delpy talks about not taking pictures when on vacation, even though she's a photographer. She finds it invariably separates her from her surroundings, and she'd rather experience everything herself. Except she obviously says it much better than my paraphrasing.

Old City was charming. Tons of nooks and crannies. Tons of interesting buildings, green corners and squares and hideaway parks. I really enjoyed it, and would love to live there. There were the couple of blocks where there were tons of tourists, but the rest of it felt pretty personal. And there was the random street or garden which was just so delightfully old. My favorite part of the afternoon was visiting Washington Square. It happens to be where the tomb of the unknown soldier of the American Revolution is, and I can't imagine a nicer place to be laid to rest. This sunny sunday afternoon lured people out of their homes to relax in the park, playing frisbee with their dogs, their kids, chatting with a friend. It was my idea of a perfect sunday afternoon. I love sunday afternoons when I'm out. I could have sat there until it was dark. But I didn't think Jessica would enjoy that too much. Something else awesome about Washington Square? It's filled with corpses. It turned into a burying ground for Revolutionary War soldiers who died of wounds or sickness. It was later a place where local African Americans would gather and play music and dance. And now it's a truly lovely little park.

Jessica and I wandered over to the river and found a park/statue dedicated to Irish immigrants from the Potato Famine. Of course everywhere you turn in Old City you can read about some (sometimes random) piece of interesting history. It's kind of awesome like that. We headed into a restaurant call Marathon Grill which was a nice find. I had french toast.

The thing about our eating situation here is that it seems a shame not to use the majority of the money they provide us for dinner. Plus, when we're here at the hotel, we only have two choices for dinner. The restaurant here, and the restaurant in the Sheraton next door. The restaurant here is full of bad-for-you food. I am so glad we finally went over to the next hotel this evening. It's a little better. And for lunch they feed us a ridiculous amount of bad-for-you food. And they provide a couple of bad-for-you snacks throughout the day. And the girls here? They are STUFFING THEIR FACES. Going back for second and third plate fulls. I've never seen anything like it because a lot of these girls are Popular Girls. You know what I mean? And they're taking an oreo klondike bar AND Tasty Cakes for their snack. What? I feel bad enough taking the oreo klondike bar!

And when we get back to our room, about 6:30, I'd have to be quite motivated to get to the gym and to a restaurant before 10:00. Because I'm hungry after class, but I'm too full to go to the gym after eating. I know. PATHETIC. I am such a pushover when it comes to my food-rationalizing brain.

As for Sephora University. I am learning some great basics. But I've got to say, I feel too smart for this conference. Isn't that incredibly arrogant of me? But we're going rather slowly for my taste, we review things way more times than I need to, and I find my mind wandering way too often. I answer all the questions right because guess what? We are learning foundational knowledge, not anything in the least advanced. And am I the only one that reviews what we learn for ten minutes at night so that I will remember it the next day? Apparently so. I guess Jessica and I just come from an awesome store that has trained and prepared us well. But the conference in general has a great, fun, responsible, and proud-in-a-good-way atmosphere. I really like this company and I really wouldn't mind staying with them for a long time. And I do think I'll be coming home with some great new knowledge which will really help me with my job, and which will be really useful information in general. I really like our four trainers, and I think that it's incredible that Sephora does this, and even more, PAYS us to do this.

P.S. Thanks to my job, and what I've learned there, my skin has never been better.

We wish we could go back into the city, but it costs $14 to get there and back, so it's not likely when we'd just be there for a few hours in the dark. So we just chillax in our paid for hotel room.