Rachel...the Pig

So, my first full day in Seattle Dr. Day took a group of us on a tour of Seattle. It was great fun - full of driving up and down scary hills with narrow roads, weaving in and out of cars, and even a whorehouse with a sign advertising their "show" Chronicles of Nudia. We stopped at a beach with gray sand, and cold, clear water (VERY different than what I'm used to in the Gulf). We saw a great view of the Seattle Skyline, Space Needle included at a very cute park. The highlight, however, was going to Pikes Place Market and getting a picture with Rachel the Pig. For some reason there is this golden pig in the middle of the market, named Rachel, that you have to touch or kiss, or something (I only touched it - ain't no way I'm putting my lips on a gold statue that millions of hands of questionable sanitation have touched!!). So, here is Rachel and Rachel the Pig!

Thai food at the park

Hooray! After two weeks and an hour and a half of extreme frustration due to a loss of internet connectivity, I have internet access in my apartment!! This is very exciting seeing as I was dying from having to walk to the office to do something as simple as get on facebook. Literally dying. But all is well and I can now get on whenever the heck I want to. What a beautiful thing. An even more beautiful thing is that I was able to catch up on the NCIS episodes I missed the past few weeks. It made my week!

So tonight, a big group of us went about half an hour north to Bothell, WA (where the one single guy in our group is from) and went to a Thai restaurant. I already can't remember the name - crud! But there were 10 girls and 1 guy. Kimber jokingly said that Bryan should introduce himself and say he's from Texas. At first I got a little defensive because I thought she was just raggin' on Texas like people always do, but then I realized she was referencing the polygamist colony scandal from a few weeks ago. So, no bad-mouthing of Texas occurred - just the polygamists who happen to reside in that great state. Anyway, we decided to get the food to go so we could get to the park before the sun set. They took forever getting our food to us, and then we realized when we had driven 20 minutes to the park that they didn't give us any rice! And seeing as I got curry, there was no way I was going to eat it without rice. No way. So, two people went back and got the rice and life was good. But back to the restaurant. One of the hostesses had a shirt with something written in Thai and Kimber and I were trying to decide what it said. She thought it just said Welcome, but I decided it said: Kiss Me I'm Thai. Not nearly as catchy as Kiss Me I'm Irish, but I figure they had to work with what they had. When we were leaving Bryan was being very impatient with us because we stopped for some pictures and someone told him to be patient, to which he replied, "No. The sun's not going to be patient!" (we wanted to see the sunset at the park) It was pretty funny.

So, we went to this great park. When we got there, there was this huge willow tree and a very cute proposal setting under it. Some guy had put down some sleeping bags or something and covered them with rose petals and lit candles right under the willow tree. It was so cute! I wanted to sit at the bench right behind it and watch the proposal play out, but no one else thought it would be a good idea. I told Bryan to take notes for his future wife cause it was so cute. That was when we got to a table and realized our lack of rice. So while we waited for it to arrive, we went walking on the cute little boardwalk that went out over the lake. It was really pretty and peaceful. There were supposed to be turtles, but all we saw were three mallards. At one point I heard the water against the shore and I automatically thought of alligators. It is weird to me that there aren't alligators in the water up here. Cause definitely there are at home. Brittany, who is from Houston, thought the same thing. Anyway, the park was really relaxing and beautiful and it was a very nice way to spend the evening.

Tulip Fest!

On Saturday, a lot of the girls drove an hour north of Seattle to go to the Tulip Fest. It was basically just fields and fields of tulips - very Netherlands and Holland - esque. It was absolutely gorgeous! I think they had about 40 different varieties of tulips. We went the second to last day that they were open, so a lot of the flowers had already had their heads cut off and were re-plowed or something, cause I'm sure there would usually have been a lot more than there were. But there were still a lot and I loved it! Unfortunately, it was raining and cold. I had my little jacket, but my hands were definitely completely numb by the time I went inside (and by inside I mean a big shack/barn kind of a thing with tarps spread over the top and sides). Also, because it was raining all day - I mean, it is Seattle - the ground was SO muddy. Luckily, my shoes had fantastic traction, so I only slipped once and it wasn't bad at all. But pretty much all the girls I was with had cute shoes on that had absolutely no traction and they were sliding all over the place. Two of them, Danielle and Rhea, decided to just take off their shoes and walk barefoot in the mud. It was pretty messy. They got bags from one of the shops to wrap around their feet for the drive home. Again - I was VERY glad to have good shoes. It was really sad though, cause I definitely saw a couple of older people completely fall down in the mud.

Anyway, here are some of my favorites of the pictures I took that day:

SEATTLE!

So, here I am in Seattle. Finally. I've been ansy to go since, I don't know, September. It's pretty exciting. The city is beautiful - SO green. I just got here yesterday though, so I haven't done much other than unpack. The penthouse is huge and I will be putting up pictures soon. But great day! I am here and I will write more when I have more time. I have to hurry and go eat lunch so I can go on a tour of the city. Woohoo!