Seattle!

Hi Guys!

So, I am in Seattle for my 6 day break! Pretty unexpected. At westwind, beside the 6 children camps, we also have 2 mother-child camp and one camp for gay couples. You can have a break during one of these camps. I requested the 2nd mother-child camp, because it would be a nice balance, right in the middle of the sessions. But then one of my co-workers wanted to swop with me and during the first break a couple of my friends were going to seattle. So I decided to switch and join them! So I am here with Nathalie from Australia, Roelof from The Netherlands / Belgium and Kayleigh from England.

We went to portland at the 11th and stayed with Kari, one of the Ranch counsellors. It was nice to finally sleep in! We made reservations in a hostel, and then Nathalie got an email that the hostel was full for the first 3 days! SH*T! All the other hotels on the internet were already full...luckely Nat's sister was also in Seattle with her boyfriend and a friend and we could stay in their room.

We took the train in Portland at 4:15 pm but it was delayed until 5.30. The weather was very nice so we bought some snacks and chilled outside in the grass. The train appeared very luxurous, with a lot of leg space and the chairs would bend back a little to sleep on with a pillow. So the ride was nice, also a nice view along a lot of lakes and mountains. But we had to stand for a broken bridge for over an hour, so the delay was even longer. Ah well, we got there and that was what we wanted. We took a cab and I was so excited to see a big American city that I just screemed : Hello Seattle!! out of the window :)

We got to the hotel and then the man at the front desk made a problem about us wanting to stay in the other girls room, he said that only 2 were alowed and more then 2 was against the law. It really pissed me off because it took us a long time that morning to find a place but I decided to stay calm. The man did ring another motel and they had room so we decided to go for it. It turned out to be pretty nice. It looks kind of poor on the outside but the beds and the shower are really good and we have a frigde, a microwave, a coffee machine and a tv and it is cheap and right downtown.

The next day we went to the Experience Music Project, which is an awsome museum about music. The building is really freaky modern architecture which I really love and inside they have all kinds of exhibitions about diffrent kinds of music and musicians. But the coolest part is an area where you can play the instruments yourself. It is fully computer operated and you can choose your level, so you can choose just to learn the basics of an instrument, or jam on it or learn a whole song. There is also a stage where you can perform as a band and it gets videotaped. We called ourselves The Cougs and played Hey Ya. It was really fun. In the museum we kind of lost Nathalie and her sister & co so we decided to move on. We went to the little fair outside and into the space needle. The space needle is the most famous building of Seattle, it looks like a UFO on very tall legs. It has a GREAT 360* view! It was so good to see! The weather was like 85* and we could see the bay and parks and scycrapers and mountains. Really lovely, I think Seattle is a beautifull city. From the top, we could see a fountain with people running and we decided to go there. It was a huge bole with all sorts of watersprays and it was a fun game trying to run around it without getting wet, but ofcourse we all got soked.

At night we chilled a bit at the motel and changed to get out to dinner. Almost everything was already closed, we thought it was weird on a saturday night in a big city. We found a nice restaurant in a mall finally. Around 11.30 we went to the other hotel to go out with Nathalie & co. The were already pretty drunk. We stayed for a bit and then Roelof and Janner went back to the hotel. I wanted to go out, but I was a little afraid it wouldn't work out because the others were so drunk. But it was a saturdaynight and I wanted to see it anyway. We went to a club called toi, they played a lot of hiphop & r&b. I thought it was pretty nice, we were the only white people and because the others were so waisted it made me a bit uncomfortable because I just wanted to dance but they totally pulled attention to us. So by the time they wanted to go to another club they walked me home first. It was a good time to call to the Netherlands so I tried to call my friend Esmee but she wasn't there. My mom was home so we had a nice conversation.

The next day we went to the big market, pike's place. Many little stuff and very crowded, I always love to just sniff around and check it out. The did sell a lot of weird stuff and also a lot of home made jams etc but you can't import that so no souvenir shopping.

Then we walked for a long time towards chinatown, which gave us a good impression of the whole city center. In china town there was an Asian Festival with a lot of performances and a market. We saw a Japanese drum crew an shaolin lion dancing, pretty cool! We stayed there a while, it was lovely and sunny and then we walked to the piers! Nice to see the bay and all the boats. We went to an arcade and had a little fun. We ate at a thai place, oooh I love thai food The food was really good, the service was bad tough. And we were so tired haha, it was only 7 pm and we were all quiet and sleepy. Back at the hotel we went for a little nap, but it was already midnight when I woke up. And I wasn't sleepy anymore so I had trouble to sleep all the way trough the night.

Woke up at 9 and took a nice long shower and had breakfast with doughnuts :) The others met us at noon at our hotel but instead of making a nice plan they were just wondering around and lazy. (They went to bed at 4) It pissed me off a little bit because this is my only time in Seattle and I didn't want to waste any time. But I was the only one who didn't just wanna chill so I went along. But then after an hour me, Roelof and Kayleigh went shopping :)

Right now it is almost 5 in the afternoon, we're going out for dinner in about an hour and then see a movie!

Love