Uncle Jim and Auntie Marilyn

I can't remember what date this was, but this particular day was extraordinary. I still didn't have a car, and an old friend of my dad and my uncle was Uncle Jim. Now, my dad used to go to symposiums for the International Fraud something something, and uncle Jim used to be the Head of the organization. Uncle Jim has a really strong New York accent, and it was difficult for me to understand him most of the time, but I really enjoyed our phone conversations.

Uncle Jim and his wife, Auntie Marilyn picked me up on this Saturday, and we had breakfast at the Hibernian Pub. I just looked it up, and it is situated at 311 Glenwood Avenue, Raleigh, NC 27603. We had buffet breakfast and then we joked around with my camera. I actually have quite a few photos of this day, but I won't show all of them. Anyway, the Hibernian is is filled with the cutest pictures and stuff, and I really enjoyed it...

Then we went to the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in downtown Raleigh to go and see the exhibition of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the BugFest 2008. The Dead Sea Scrolls were extremely interesting because I was still very religious back then.

"The Dead Sea Scrolls date from 250 BCE to 68 CE and are our bridge to a period that laid the foundation of western traditions, beliefs and practices throughout the past two millennia. Among the Scrolls are some 207 biblical manuscripts that represent nearly every book in the Hebrew Bible (Christian Old Testament) and that predate any previously known copies by more than 1,000 years."

I liked the exhibition so much that I bought the book. I still haven't read it, but I've looked at the photos. The exhibition was so informative, I didn't have to read the book. But its a nice souvenir...

After the Dead Sea Scrolls, we went to see the rest of the museum. As much as I love insects, I've seen so many already, I was over it... I still loves spending time with Auntie Marilyn and Uncle Jim.

My arachnophobia started acting up with this:

This might seem boring to most people, but we don't really have that much dinosaur stuff in South Africa, so, walking around in a whole exhibition filled with real dinosaur bones was amazing. The size of a dinosaur actually scares the crap out of me, but I really loved this.

I know this really isn't that interesting, and I thought it was boring at the timer as well, but now, I like it. Probably because I only realized how much that Saturday really meant to me. There is a small exhibit with the whole dinosaurs thing where they show you how one dinosaur killed another one. They have the footprints, and then an animated video to show what happened.

THE COIN CRUSHER!!! The first time I saw this device was in the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, and after that I got addicted to collecting rolled coins. I still have my dinosaur coin...

Then we went outside, and because Uncle Jim is a veteran and a republican, we had to go see this:

Little did he know that I love history and in particular World War II...

Probably one of the best days I spent in the USA!!!