A Seattle Experience

Woo hoo!!! I finally made it to the city after nearly a month of living in the mountains! :)

Thank God for the new employee who arrived in time to replace me for a day so I could travel about Seattle with my friends/roommates. The excitement of leaving a place filled with snow-capped pine trees to the hustle and bustle of the city was too good to be true. We spent 8 hours walking about, with a mangly map as our guide... and the experience was awesome!

Ralph (our supervisor and the person who drove us) stopped outside the famous Seattlite monument - the Space Needle. But none of us wanted to go up the tower because it didn't seem special enough; just another touristy money-sucking place.

But anyway, we were brave enough to take a bus down to the other end of the city, just so we could experience their Chinatown. We did good, because we had a great lunch!!! Almost like what they'd serve in Crystal Jade back in Singapore... I ordered a bowl of soup noodles with cod fish - US$4.95, and the soup tasted heavenly... full of savoury soup stock with fat pieces of tender fish meat! Oh yeah.. and the chilli was great!!! I haven't had such chilli in a long time, ever since I left Singapore, and this definitely brought back some memories of eating in Singapore.

So after that we walked around the area, went to a small Asian supermarket (something like the NTUC in HDB areas), and found out that several food stuff from Singapore were sold there as well... how interesting eh? I got a can of calamansi juice from there, oooh like what I used to do after eating spicy food.

My legs ached because of all the trotting/walking, but I was never tired from the sight-seeing. We got a couple of basic necessities, shoes for hiking (Kaman and Jia Hui got shoes from Helen Hansen, and mine from Timberland, saved quite a lot compared to the prices in Singapore). And I spent like US$150 in a day!!! Within 8 hours!! Imagine that..

I really thank God for allowing me to smell the city air, but at the same time, thanking Him for letting me stay in such a wonderful surrounding.

The trip home was pretty tiring, although all we did was to sit in the car and wait till we get home. Ralph, the driver should be even more exhausted from fetching us to and fro! Throughout the drive back, all I kept thinking was of the scenery that God created. You can never picture the beauty of the changing lights going from dusk to night, with stars twinkling in the great distance, and the half moon shining down on everything as wisps of light appear in the darkest places. Just as the van rode, I looked out of the window and saw two horses fawning over each other under the romantic moonlight. The entire countryside was perfectly meant for just their loving actions, and as I gazed at them, I just felt filled with hope that God's love is more than abundant.

And in the distance, I could see Mt. Rainier. 'Tho it make look tiny from afar, the immense anticipation of getting home filled me with eagerness and longing for the place that I am living in now. The word to describe everything is breath-taking.

I wish that all of you could see it through my eyes, because pictures or videos can never capture the emotion that I felt.

With great exhaustion,
Erica