important day in (my) history

I am not sure if I have mentioned this in the blog yet, but for those of you who don’t know, part of the reason I am going to China is to participate in a martial arts program.  I really have no clue as to the intensity of this program, so figured I should at least make an attempt to get in shape before I get there.  Well, today I may be able to say I am in the best shape of my life.  Ok, that statement is a stretch, but I did run the furthest/longest I ever have!  To some of you, the three miles I ran today is not much, but it is a personal best and I am excited about that!  I am not a runner, never have been a runner, but maybe there is hope that someday I will be a runner.

preparation

In two weeks I will already be in Beijing, have had orientation, and classes will have begun.  Now that’s a crazy thought!  With the departure date quickly approaching, figured it was about time I actually start preparing for it.  What that means is that today I finally unpacked all those boxes I blogged about (what seems like) a long time ago.  And not only that, I actually went through and did a first round of “taking to China” and “not taking to China” piles.  The photo above is the “taking to China” category, so as you can tell this will be a mutli-step process.  Especially since what you can’t see is the scarves, hats, gloves, bras, panties, socks, and of course… shoes.  Regardless, I am still proud of myself.  I take joy in throwing stuff away because I strive to be a minimalist.  The older I get the harder that seems to be.  So considering this summer I have probably donated 20% of my clothes and shoes, I feel pretty good.  Of course, I have also bought about three pairs of shoes, five dresses, one skirt, three sweaters, and a hat… but who is counting?

the great northwest trip, day four

We are now up to Tuesday, August 12th which is the last full day of our trip and planned to do as much in Seattle as we could fit while still enjoying ourselves. We checked into our hotel of choice, Inn at the Market, when we arrived back from Vancouver at about midnight. This hotel is awesome simply due to its location overlooking Pike Place Market. In addition, all the staff was great throughout our stay. In the morning we woke up and did the Pike Place thing… ate some pastries from the bakery, watched the fish fly, bought some fruit, smelled the flowers, etcetera etcetera. This has always been my favorite part of Seattle and probably the only part of the day that I kinda felt like I knew my whereabouts.

Getting a move on our day we walked up to Westlake Center to catch the monorail to Seattle Center. Being the tourists we were that day, it was up to the top of the Space Needle where we took some pictures and then headed back down. Next stop was EMP (Experience Music Project) which I was really excited for because, despite it opening in 2000, I had never been. While it is the weirdest looking building I have ever seen in person, at least it is that way with a purpose as the exterior has no right angles. The inside is pretty much sensory overload and we could have probably stayed there all day but we knew there were other things we wanted to see and do around the city so we left. I highly recommend this place for anyone who lives in or visits Seattle. Especially if you are a Jimi Hendrix fan since most of the place seems to be dedicated to him.

Next destination was Gas Works Park, which we decided we could walk to. All probably would have been fine except that we didn’t exactly know how to get there. On the map we were given, Queen Anne basically looks like a big park without any streets going through it, which we knew was not the case, so we figured we would just wing it and find our way. We eventually did, though it probably was not the smartest decision we made. That is right, for all you locals who are following this, we walked from Seattle Center to Gas Works. And what was our plan after that? To walk on to the best lookout point in Seattle, Kerry Park. Again we only had a general idea of where this was. We knew it was Queen Anne Hill and we had a couple of street names it was between. I could go on about our adventures but I will just sum it up by saying that a nice girl told us how to get there, which included a specific bus number, and eventually we made it. After taking more pictures and now feeling confident in our public transportation skills, we hopped back on the bus #13 and took it back into the heart of things.

From where it dropped us off we walked past SAM (Seattle Art Museum) for a photo op and then continued on to Pioneer Square so we could partake in The Underground Tour. This is another must for any local or visitor in Seattle, over a certain age that is. I took this tour countless times as a child on various school field trips and hated it every time. Now going back as an adult, I understand why. They actually have an “adult” specific tour now, but we just went on the normal one and it is hard to tell what the difference would be other than the free cocktail. I learned a ton about the city which makes walking around afterward even more fun because of the things you notice, plus I laughed the whole time.

At this point it is dark outside so we walked back to our hotel and got ready for dinner at 94 Stewart Street (both the name of the restaurant as well as the address). I highly recommend this place as well, from the cheese and wine to the main course, everything was fantastic. And that is how we concluded our evening.

But wait, there’s more. I am just going to include the next day here as well since it was only a half day. We woke up and made our way to the original Starbucks (just something you have to do) and then went to the piroshky shop nearby because it smelled so darn good. If you ever go there, order the cheese roll. After that it was off to the gum wall in Post Alley. Incredibly gross, but if you’re there you can’t not take part, so we did. From there we walked along the waterfront back toward Pioneer Square to take a picture of The Central where Nirvana got their start and then right back to Pike Place for “the world’s best mac n cheese” at Beecher’s. And then it was time to leave, with one last stop back to Kerry Park (this time in a car) because it was finally clear enough to see Mt. Rainier. See all that we go through to take pictures for you!

So here you go, 7 of the 147 pictures from Seattle. No I did not take any of these, but I did take at least a few in the full album (which can be emailed upon request as usual). They just didn’t make the cut.

pike place market

flowers inside the market

reflection of the space needle on the exterior of EMP

the underground tour

preparing to leave my mark on the gum wall

flowers at Kerry Park

us at Kerry Park

the great northwest trip, day three

Now back to stories of being a tourist.  The plan for day three (Monday, August 11th) was to cross the border into Canada to visit the beautiful city of Vancouver, British Columbia.  First order of business once we got there was lunch.  After about ten minutes trying to figure out how to work the prepay parking machine we finally got it it to accept our payment and off we went.  We found ourselves at library square where we had some awesome slices of pizza from Flying Wedge.  Because it is vacation, we then walked across the street to have some crepes for dessert.  No longer starving, it was time to get a move on being the tourists we came here to be. 

First stop was Grouse Mountain.  Thankfully I was able to talk my boyfriend out of hiking the 1.8 steep incline called “The Grind” and we took the skyride to the top instead.  Could we have successfully completed the hike?  Sure.  Would I have been happy while doing it?  Nope.  I am now determined to go back and do it one day though.  Just so you know, since I had no idea, the top of the mountain is like a little village.  There were restaurants, grizzly bears, a lumber jack show, a bird show, zip lines, helicopter tours, and I believe you can paraglide off the top as well.

Other parts of the trip included stopping at various points throughout Stanley Park and then walking around downtown.  Stanley Park is beautiful, but somewhat difficult to navigate if you ask me.  And as far as walking around downtown goes, I could have gotten whip lash from window shopping, and I’m not even much of a shopper.  So before I go to Vancouver again I need to make sure of two things… that I am in shape and that I am rich.  Riiiight.

Below are some shots from the trip.  Again, I am not the photographer and the whole album (63 photos) can be emailed if you want to see more of our adventure.

woohoo, we made it!

just in case you were wondering

a beautiful day in Stanley Park

when i see a hollow tree, i want to step inside

view of the city from Stanley Park

us at the top of Grouse Mountain

… and the other is gold

I know I’m just joining in the masses by posting about this, but I am so genuinely excited that Shawn Johnson gets to take home an olympic gold medal.  She has been the most consistent gymnast for USA throughout these games and I can only imagine how crushing it would be to walk away with all silvers.  I am not arguing any prior judging as I do think Liukin out performed Johnson in the all-around, but I also think her teammates screwed her out of a gold medal in the team competition.  Ok, that is all I have to say about that.  Congrats Shawn, you more than earned it.

limited conversation

If you have been watching the news lately or paying any attention to the Olympics then you are probably aware of the efforts China has gone through to welcome all their foreign guests.  Today I came across a list of eight questions Chinese citizens were told they should not ask these visitors.  They are:

Dont ask about…

1 ) income or expenses

2 ) age

3 ) love life or marriage

4 ) health

5 ) someone’s home or address

6 ) personal experience

7 ) religious beliefs or political views

8 ) what someone does

So looks like I can stop worrying about not being able to communicate because apparently I won’t have much to talk about with the locals anyway!  Number five I agree with of course, but number six?

This information was found at http://www.peacefulrise.org via a link on http://cupofcha.com

mystery solved

Watching the olympics this past week has been fun, but it has left me with a few questions.  The most mind boggling of which is why does Australia wear green and gold when their flag is red white and blue?  It was bothering me so much I couldn’t take it anymore and had to look it up.  From my google research I discovered that green and gold are in fact their national colors which were chosen based on their national flower, the wattle.  Don’t know if this was bugging anyone else or if was just me.

Side note, Holland is another example of the above.  They compete in orange when there is no orange in their flag, but for some reason this never bothered me.  Perhaps because it is only one color not two, or perhaps because I can’t think of another prominent country that competes in orange (I see Australia and I think it is Brazil).  The reason for their color choice?  It refers to the royal family.

I learned things today!

photo above courtesy of http://www.sydneynaturally.com.au/

the great northwest trip, day two

Day two was all about Mt. Rainier.  It is the icon of Washington according to the state license plates, so of course we had to go.  Since we had only a few days to get everything done that we wanted to, the itenerary was mapped out before hand.  This meant that even though Sunday the 10th was an overcast day and we couldn’t even see the mountain, we went anyway.

What we hadn’t planned for was biting cold weather.  We were a little unprepared which is why you see me sporting a Mt. Rainier sweatshirt that I bought before doing anything else.  Normally I am not the souvenir type.  Despite not being able to look up and see the mountain that was right in front of us, the place is still beautiful and the trip was well worth it.  Here is a sampling of our photos (which were taken by the boyfriend, not me).  Let me know if you want to see the entire album with all 91 pictures from the day and I will send you a link.

don’t know why lunch tastes better in a train car, but it does

beautiful view

it is a mountain, you go up a lot

snow bank at the edge of Reflection Lake

cool shot of an old train

Christine Falls, my favorite because of the bright blue pool

Narada Falls, his favorite because of the rainbow

finishing up with the self portrait

problem with spam blockers

I am still learning things about this blogging world and noticed about a week ago that wordpress has a built in spam blocker and had been blocking “spam” comments.  These must get permanently deleted fairly quickly because it says I have had a total of seven comments blocked.  Out of these seven I have only been able to read two before it was too late, and both of these were actaully legit comments.  The point of this post is just to apologize if any of those other five were legit as well.  As of yet I have not denied nor deleted any comments, so if you made one and were wondering why it didn’t make it on the site, now you know.

the great northwest trip, day one

Have to do a little bit of backtracking here, so sorry for the lack of details which you may have gotten had I done this same day.  Anyway, Saturday the 9th we flew out of Burbank airport to Seattle.  Before I go on about that I would like to mention that in my four years of living in LA and working in Hollywood, the amount of celebs I have seen could probably be counted on my fingers.  So I felt like it was a nice goodbye to LA to have Selma Hayek on our plane.  Finally, on my last day, I have a genuine A-List sighting.

Plans for day one consisted of boyfriend meeting my parents for the first time and then the two of us going to SafeCo Field for a Mariner’s baseball game.  It was a great game… all 4.5 hours of it.  We didn’t walk away with the win, but honestly, did anyone expect Seattle to beat Tampa Bay?  Probably not.  I leave you with a few pictures from the game.

me enjoying Seattle weather in front of a Seattle landmark

inside the stadium prior to game time, Qwest Field in the background

mandatory self portrait time