Spring Tour~Day 1

Tour Day 1

Time: Early afternoon
I love New England. Being one of the FIVE people at my school from NE, I must say I'm kinda proud of it. It's a beautiful little place. But having only seen the east and part of the Midwest, I didn't have much to compare it to. But now that I live in Chicago and have seen more of the country, I know even more why I love New England. But as far as stunning views, evergreens, beautiful coastlines, and mountains go...Washington is...WOW. I've been taking plenty of pictures, but none of them captures the view adequately. I've almost given up on taking any more.

We're currently in the Cascades a couple of hours out of Seattle on our way to the Moody Spokane campus. We spent the morning in Seattle, and our bus driver gave us a tour before dropping us off to explore Pike's Place and find lunch. (Our driver's name is Gene and we found out when he arrived this morning that he's a Christian! God is cool like that.)
Pike's Place was an adorable, ramshackle collection of shops selling flowers, fresh seafood, trinkets, handmade crafts, clothes, and jewelry. It was a typical Seattle day--rainy. For lunch, I had smoked salmon chowder and then some girls and I went to Seattle's Best Coffee for a pick me up. For $1.71, I had a "level 4" (medium dark roast) coffee. We had fun exploring the shops and making our mark in the famous gum wall in an alley beneath Pike's Place. 

As I'm writing this, Gene is telling us about the high plains we're driving through. We just crossed the Columbia River and you can see for miles. There are layers and layers of hills in the distance. Everything is a greyish brown and the vegetation is scrubby, but it's still beautiful.

Time: 11:03 PM
I'm in bed now, exhausted from some jet lag and lots of laughter with our hosts. Two of the host families, both young married couples, are good friends so we had dinner together. It was nice because we got to meet even more new people and have two more WCCers there too. We played some intense rounds of pictionary and had tiramisu for dessert. Well, we have a Sunday church service concert in the morning and another concert tomorrow night. Call time is 8am, so I need to get some sleep before my 6:40am alarm goes off. 

And daylight savings HAD to be tonight. xP

P.S. If I can get on a computer at someone's house, I'll try to add pictures to the blog. If not, they'll all be on Facebook when I get back. :)