Worldways Children's Museum

Beth's most recent school field visit was to the Worldways Children's Museum in Ballwin. This is a venue where children can experience different exhibits from around the world.

Beth was able to experience everyday life in Saint-Louis, Senegal. There was a Senegalese classroom where the children could learn some French or Wolof (national language) & play mancala with beads to test their math skills. After the children climbed through the 'Great Tunnel' they arrived in a Chinese village where they could dress up in traditional clothes, use chopsticks, count on an abacus, solve tangram puzzles & play Chinese hopscotch. In the Philippine exhibit there was a Jeepney, which is a Willy's jeep that has been converted into a passenger minibus.

Beth really enjoyed the visit & actively took part in all the activities. She really enjoyed Senegal as she was dressed up by one of the event co-ordinators in an outfilt that included a headress that enabled her to carry a basket on her head.

Meet The Robinsons

We took Beth & two of her friends (Ruth & Lauren) to see the latest Disney animated film, Meet The Robinsons. This is a story about an orphaned boy who travels to the future with his son to save his family. Rather than watch the normal film, we chose to see the Disney Digital 3-D edition.

We went to our local Wehrenberg's cinema. This has 20 screens, an IMAX screen, an amusement arcade (that includes eight lanes of miniature 10-pin bowling & virtual reality roller coaster & flight simulator) & a ‘drive-in’ movie themed restaurant with 1950s vehicles.

The film was quite good, but the difference in picture & sound quality was amazing. The 3-D effects were really good & since the glasses were polarized (so we didn’t have a blue & green, or red, lens), the colour of the picture was the same as the non 3-D version.

India Palace

We have always found the food here in the US to be first class, but fancied a change. I had heard that the India Palace was meant to be really good. This is about 25 miles from our house, but as there are a limited number of Indian restaurants in St Louis we didn’t mind the relatively short drive.

The restaurant is located on the 11th (top) floor of a hotel adjacent to Lambert International which meant that we had a really good view of the airport & surrounding area as we ate our lunch (the food was really good as well).

Missouri’s First State Capitol

St Charles is the second largest city in the St Louis metropolitan area & is about half an hour from our house. It was the organization point of the Lewis & Clark Expedition in 1804 & was also Missouri’s First State Capitol (now Jefferson City).

We went to ‘Main Street’ St Charles which features over 100 historic buildings, shops (including an English shop) & restaurants. Most of the shops that we went into were similar to those in Kimmswick, i.e. historic buildings converted gift shops.

The Jefferson National Expansion Memorial

Despite having lived across from the Gateway Arch for the first three months that I was in the US, it has taken almost a year & a half to get ‘up close & personal’ with what is probably the most famous attraction in St Louis.

The Arch, or rather ‘The Jefferson National Expansion Memorial’ is a monument to westward expansion in the USA & actually consists of the Gateway Arch, the Museum of Westward Expansion (which is located under the arch), & St. Louis' Old Courthouse (which is west of 4th).

There was a nationwide competition in 1947-1948 to design a monument in St Louis honouring western pioneers. The winner was the architect Eero Saarinen who won the competition with his sleek, stainless steel, arch.

A few arch facts:

The Arch is the tallest national monument in the United States at 630 feet, & is the tallest thing in St Louis (the city will not allow anything taller to be built).

Construction began February 12, 1963 & the last section of the Arch was put into place on October 28, 1965.

The foundations for the Arch are 60 feet deep.

Nine hundred tons of stainless steel was used to build the Arch.

The shape of the Arch is an inverted catenary curve. A catenary curve is the shape that a free-hanging chain takes when held at both ends, & was named by the Dutch mathematician Christiaan Huygens from the Latin word ‘catenarius’, which means ‘related to a chain’. The span of the Arch legs at ground level is 630 feet, the same as its height.

The Arch is triangular in section. The two bases are equilateral triangles (each side is 54 feet long). At the top of the arch, the sides of the triangle are 17 feet long.

In order to ensure that the constructed legs would meet, the margin of error for failure was 1/64th of an inch. All survey work was done at night to eliminate distortion caused by the sun's rays.

Each year, approximately a million visitors ride the trams to the top of the Arch. The trams have been in operation for over 30 years, traveling a total of 250,000 miles & carrying over 25 million passengers.

There are 1076 steps in each arch leg that are for emergency use only.

The Arch was built at a cost of $13 million. The transportation system was built at a cost of $3,500,000.

The Arch sways a maximum of 18" (9" each way) in a 150 mph wind. The usual sway is 1/2".

Historic Kimmswick

Our next door neighbours, Jerry & Sandy, kindly invited us out for the day. They took us to Kimmswick which is a small town (like a UK village) about 20 miles south of St Louis & about a 25 minute drive from where we live.

As you arrive in Kimmswick, it is like being transported back in time. Most of the buildings we looked at were dated in the mid 1800's. The town was founded in 1859 when a German dry goods merchant, Theodore Kimms, purchased about 160 acres of land from the widow of Captain George Waters. Kimms laid out the small town and named it after himself. The early German community was settled by wealthy families from St. Louis and immigrant stonecutters.

The town is right on the river & also has a railroad running through it & so prospered early on due to the easy transport access. Originally, there were about 1,500 people living in Kimmswick & it had a post office, 4 schools, 2 train stations, a dentist & several doctors. It also had a bank, hotel, flouring mill, iron works foundry, lumber mill & brewery (which seems quite a lot for a village). Many of the people living in Kimmswick were stonemasons & they cut the limestone used to construct the Old Courthouse in St Louis from the quarries surrounding the town. There was also at one time 14 mineral springs in the vicinity which were the source of salt used by the early American Indians.

In the early 20th Century, the town was bypassed & almost forgotten about. Many of the historic buildings fell into decay & were torn down. The vast reduction in boat & train traffic, & the building of nearby Highway 55 almost killed off the town, but the Kimmswick Historical Society managed to save some of the settlement & continues the effort of restoring Kimmswick.

One of the more famous Kimmswick attractions is the 'The Blue Owl Restaurant & Bakery'. We had a really nice meal there & they have a large range of desserts including apple pie that was about a foot thick!

Suson Park

During Spring Break, Cheryl, Beth, Sherri, Jordan, & Emily went to Suson Park (I was working & so was unable to go with them). This is one of the many close-by parks run by St Louis County Parks & Recreation, but is different to other parks because it has an animal farm display. There are a variety of animals including: goats, pigs, chickens, cows, & horses. As with all the St Louis parks, admission is free & there are restrooms, shelters, barbecue pits, & play areas. The park also has a fishing lake that is regularly stocked by the Missouri Department of Conservation.

Princesses On Ice

Beth loves the Disney princesses, so when we found out that ‘Disney on Ice - Princess Wishes’ was coming to the Scottrade Center it was almost a given that we would go & see it. Although there was the possibility that tickets may be available for the work’s box, we chose to go with Sherri, her children & her mum to make sure that we saw the show.

The showing that we went to watch was on the same day as St Patrick’s Day & so we left quite early to make sure that the delays likely to be caused by the downtown parade didn’t make us late for the show. We needn’t have worried & ended up waiting about 45 minutes before we were let in. However, this gave us plenty of time to comment on the exorbitant prices that were being charged for the Disney Princess Merchandise (which was followed by being charged $6 for a bottle of Diet Pepsi – yikes!).

Sherri got us really good seats that were close to the edge of the ice. This was the nearest that I had sat for an event at the Scottrade, & the view was really good. The show was made up of seven different routines with each one effectively a shortened version of the appropriate Disney film. We saw Ariel, Cinderella, Snow White, Belle, Jasmine, Aurora & Mulan. The different princess stories were linked by Tinker Bell (from Peter Pan).

Girl Scout Cookies

Girl Scout cookies are an long-time American tradition. Originally, there was just one variety but there are now about 10 or so. Our favourites are Mint Thins (which are thin mint flavoured cookies covered in chocolate) & Samoas (which are moist coconut cookies that are drizzeld with chocolate & also have a chocolate base).

Every girl in Beth's scout troop was set a target number of boxes to sell. Thanks to our friends & my co-workers, Beth was able to achieve her goal. She also helped at a couple of 'cookie booths' at local supermarkets, & it was only when we collected the cookies that we realised just how many boxes Beth had sold.


The money that the troops earn from selling cookies helps them to achieve the goals that they set for the year (e.g. field trips, etc), & also provides the girls with the opportunity to practice useful life skills like planning, decision-making, & customer service. This was especially noticeable at the cookie booths as the girls had to try & sell the cookies to passers-by, calculate how much each person had to pay & the change that they needed.

Let's Go Ride A Bike!

Beth likes to ride her bike & last year we often went to Fenton City Park as this provided a safe environment with a good smooth surface for Beth to ride on. However, Beth had really outgrown her old bike so it was time for her to get a new one & learn to ride without stabilizers.

Completely by chance we looked in a local shop only to find that they hardly had any bikes on display (no doubt due to the first warm weather of the year). We thought that there was no harm in asking if there were any other bikes in stock, but I wasn't hopeful as most stock is usually on display. It must have been our lucky day as they had a bike that Beth liked that was on clearance at $17.64! It needed a new tyre & inner tube, but as I used to fix my own bike when I was younger this didn't pose a problem & we couldn't miss out on this bargain! As if it couldn't get any better, as we went to pay the shop manager reduced it further to $10 - result!!

As soon as Beth's bike was ready, we took her over to her school so that she could ride in the playground area. It wasn't long before she managed to ride unnassisted - well done Beth! With a bit more practice there will be no stopping her!

Talent Time!

Beth's school recently held a talent show. There were about 30 acts, all made up from pupils from the school. These included comedy sketches, singing, weasel wacking !?! (luckily only a soft toy), rapping, dancing, gargling, & playing musical instruments.

Beth & her friends did a dance act. There were eight of them in total & they split into two sets of four & 'danced off' to each other. Each group had matching clothes & their names were airbrushed onto the back of their tops. At the end of the dance routine, the two groups lined up together facing the back of the stage with just their heads turned so that everyone in the audience could see their names (this looked cool). There had been lots of practicing going on in the previous weeks & this paid off on the night as their performance was excellent (definitely the best of the night).

PBR

We were lucky enough to to get tickets for the work's box to watch the final of the 'Built Ford Tough' PBR (Professional Bull Riding) at the Scottrade Center.

The PBR started in 1992 when Professional Bull Riders, Inc., was founded by 20 bull riders who joined together to try to make bull riding a stand alone sport rather than being one of the more popular events in a traditional rodeo. PBR is a worldwide organization, which was evident from the riders that we watched. There were the usual 'local', i.e. US riders (the event was won by a rider from Missouri) but there were also participants from Brazil & Australia.

The action was continuous with the riders having to last at least 8 seconds on the bull for the ride to count. There was a dodgy moment when a rider who had broke his back previously by hitting the dirt head-first managed to do it again, but luckily this time his back was OK (looked like a painful landing though).

There were plenty of pyrotechnics, loud music, & sponsorship announcements, as you would expect for a 29-city, $10 million tour that has an estimated 100 million viewers watching the televised PBR events. We watched some of the event the next day on TV & you could see where we were in the background on some of the shots of the riders as they returned from their ride.