Not much time left...

Wow. This summer has seriously flown by. I can't believe Lucy and I have less than 2 weeks left here in Seattle. I think we can both honestly say that this has been a life-changing experience for us. We have grown more independent, learned a lot about who we are, and have grown even closer than we already were after sharing this time (and a bedroom, a living room, and bathroom) together.

I just have 2 days left at my internship at Listen & Talk. It has been such a fantastic place to work. I am going to miss the staff, the kids, my supervisor, the parents...everyone involved made me look forward to going to work every day. It's a small staff, and everyone is so supportive and is always looking out for everyone else. And of course, I have grown attached to my little ones. There were certainly challenging days, but to see the amount of progress these kids have made, even in the little bit of time that i have been here, is just incredible. Children that were barely speaking are starting to put words together. Kids with limited vocabulary are able to do more complex stuff. It has been amazing to watch these kids grow over the last 12 weeks. I am going to miss everyone involved in this program, and I hope to get back out here eventually (at least to visit, if not stay a little longer... :)

Since the end of June, Lucy and I have set up a 'boarding house' in our apartment. George came and stayed for a bit, which was our first experience as tour guides. We went to almost every vintage store/used music store in Seattle I think. We also gave him a true Seattle experience on his first full day in town by bringing him to the Fremont Summer Solstice, complete with lots of free-spirited and eclectic folk (including people only wearing body paint and riding bicycles). I think he was in shock for a bit, but he came to love and appreciate Seattle and all of its quirkiness. Then Lucy's friend Joanna and my friend Tina came to visit for a long weekend over the 4th of July. We again played tour guide, including, but not limited to, a Ride the Ducks of Seattle tour, top 5 nation-wide fireworks/4th of July Festival, a Seattle Mariners game (and they won!), and a day trip to Vancouver, which ended with a game of charades 0n a Greyhound bus with 2 Canadians and a fellow American. We had a blast that weekend. The next week, our parents were in town for 8 days. During that time, we went to Victoria, BC, which is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. We rode a ferry through the San Juan Islands to Victoria, and stayed for an overnight there. The architecture, the water, the mountains...it's all incredible. The night we were there, we went to Butchart Gardens, which are simply incredible. We had a picnic supper at the gardens, then watched a Celtic band perform, and finally, saw some of the coolest fireworks I have ever seen (including the 4th of July ones from the week before). These fireworks were mainly ground level ones, but they were set to music, and they almost seemed to tell a story with the music. It was really neat. The day after we returned from Canada, we headed over to Snoqualmie Falls and Snoqualmie Pass, both of which are absolutely breathtaking. We hiked over to the falls, and then drove over to Snoqualmie Pass for some great photo ops. For the rest of the week, we did the typical touristy things of Seattle (went up in the Space Needle, went to Pike Place Market where they throw the fish, etc), as well as showed them around our neighborhood. My parents even tried Indian food for the first time-and loved it! On their last day, my supervisor at work invited my mom in to come observe one of my therapy sessions, which was pretty special. That night she had us over to her house for a delicious dinner of grilled salmon, asparagus, and cheesecake. (Are you understanding why we don't want to leave?)

This past Friday (the morning my parents left), Lucy and I got up at the crack of dawn and caught a bus to Portland for the night. We had been talking about heading to Portland while we were in Seattle since the beginning of the trip, and we found out that a concert was being played in Portland that Friday night, so we thought it would be the perfect opportunity to go. Portland is another great, and beautiful place. It's a big city, but much smaller than say New York or Chicago. Therefore, it wasn't intimidating at all. It's also one of the most walkable cities in America, which Lucy and I put to the test. I'm not sure how far we walked, but we are estimating about 5 miles on Saturday. The show was great, and our hotel was very modern (minimal decorations, all white appliances and bedding, chrome and white in the bathroom, doors made of slate with chalk provided to draw on them...) Also on Saturday, we literally happened upon a Sand Art Contest in the downtown area. There were tons of markets and street fairs going on that day, but at this particular one many sand artists had sculpted all sorts of items to raise money for different charities related to kids. It was really fun to see.

Since Saturday we have been recovering from our whirlwind July, and gearing up for the end of our trip which includes: a concert at the Woodland Park Zoo tomorrow night, a music festival Friday and Saturday, and our final visitors of the summer, two of my best friends Maggie and Sarah, who arrive on Sunday and leave when we do, next Friday. Here's to hoping I can post one more blog when I arrive home with all the final details of our trip!

British Columbia Parliament


Snoqualmie Falls


Sand Art in Portland

The Last Few Weeks

So apparently keeping up with this a little more difficult than I originally imagined! The past few weeks have certainly kept us busy. I have settled into my internship nicely. I have taken over several of the sessions, and will continue to take over more and more until I am eventually planning and leading all of the sessions. There are two weeks left in the preschool's year, then I get one week off before our summer therapy starts. This is when only the speech therapists are around doing therapy while the preschool classes are on break. We only work 3 days a week, and as it turns out several of our kids will not be attending summer therapy for various reasons, so even the days we are working are essentially half days. We will do most of the planning for the sessions at home, giving us more flexibility with our schedule. That will be really nice for me, as our visitors start rolling in very soon, beginning with George's visit during my week off, and continuing until after I finish my internship. It will be busy, but we are looking forward to sharing our experience with our friends and family!
Other than work, Lucy and I have kept ourselves pretty busy on the weekends as well. We first met up with a connection through my grandmother. She and her family have already been extremely helpful. They took us out to lunch and grocery shopping at the U-Village, which is just a few blocks from where Lucy and I live. They also took us to another festival in Seattle, the Folklife Festival, on Memorial Day. It was a lot of fun. Folklife is a big music festival that celebrates all kinds of musical acts from around the area. We are talking everything from Traditional Scottish music to Bollywood dancing to indie. All kinds of people are there, and even aside from the registered acts are loads of people set up on the sidewalks playing homemade instruments, performing magic, etc. And again, food vendors are set up along the way as well. Lucy and I really enjoyed the different music we were able to listen to, and people watching was pretty fantastic as well.
The past two weekends we have taken it somewhat easier. After Memorial Day I got sick and was extremely tired the whole week. Lucy and I went to a movie that Saturday. The Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF) has been going on, so we saw a Scottish movie starring Jamie Bell and Claire Forlani. We then explored the area where the theater was (Queen Anne neighborhood), had coffee and went to a huge record store, Easy Street Records. I think we could have spent hours in there were if we had the chance. Then this past Thursday we went to the Burke Museum of Natural History at UW. It is free the first Thursday of every month. It was very interesting, and they had an exhibit on the Hoh River and the Native Americans in the area. It also showcased a lot of the different cultures of the Pacific Northwest, which was really neat. We ate Indian food one night (Lucy's first time trying it) and had Bubble Tea. Yesterday we shopped a little more on the Ave. The weather here has been extremely rainy and cold-the complete opposite of the heat wave going on in SC right now! It has literally been in the 50s in and out over the past few weeks. Needless to say, neither of us brought many winter clothes with us, so we were looking for some long sleeved shirts to carry us through the next couple of weeks until hopefully it starts to feel at least like spring. Today it was chilly and overcast so we headed downtown to check out the aquarium. We grabbed a late lunch downtown and as we were leaving, the sun finally came out and was had some beautiful blue skies.
I think that pretty much sums up the past few weeks! I will try to post a little more regularly here on out!

Summer in Seattle-Week 1

Well Lucy and I have been in Seattle for a little over a week. We are starting to settle in here, get into our routines. Our apartment is great-much better than we had imagined. It's a cute little one bedroom basement set-up, furnished. The couple who rents it lives upstairs-they are very nice and have been extremely accommodating so far. The house in in the University District (aka U-District), near the University of Washington. It's in the historic district, so it's in a safe neighborhood but near several conveniences and "The Ave" (the road that runs through the university, full of restaurants, shops, coffee houses, etc). There are several vintage/consignment shops that Lucy and I have checked out, as well as a few used music and bookstores that are on our ever-growing list of things to see while we are here. My dad flew out to Seattle with us last Saturday-I am so thankful he was here to help us get everything settled. He was such a help, and I am fairly positive Lucy and I would have flown home after about 2 days had he not been here to help out! He left on Thursday-we were sad to have him leave, but I know my mom was glad to not be home alone anymore!

our backyard,the house, and a little of our apartment

I started my internship last Wednesday at Listen and Talk. It's a pre-school for children with hearing impairments, and it uses the auditory-verbal (AVT) approach to listening and speaking. I completed the specialization track in AVT while at USC, which is why my intership had to be focused on this type of therapy. I am loving it so far. The children are precious, and my supervisor is great. All the staff has been very welcoming to the southern girl! I am really looking forward to working there this summer. It's a very laid-back atmosphere, but I'm already learning alot. For my speech girls (especially the AVT girls), I have found it interesting how many of the children here have bilateral implants. It seems that more of my kids do than do not, and based on where their speech and language is, I would say that second implant can make a huge difference! So far, I have mainly been observing (I am still meeting all of the children), but I think tomorrow I may take over a few of the sessions, so we'll see how that goes! If you are interested, here is their website: www.listentalk.org

This past weekend, Lucy and I were quite busy. Friday night, we went to dinner in Capitol Hill, a neighborhood close to downtown. It is a really cool neighborhood, full of a mix of people-lots of college kids (Seattle University is located here), young professionals, hipsters, some families, and so on. Getting to Capitol Hill was quite an adventure-that's a story to be told over the phone/in person. When we got there, we ate at a great pizza place, and had the best dessert ever-Nutella Calzone. It was sinful. Saturday we went to the U-District Street Fair. It was kind of like a cross between a much larger Charleston Market and the state fair. Tons of vendors were set up with art, photography, jewelry, candles etc, combined with 'food courts' on the side streets, complete with elephant ears, corn dogs, strawberry shortcake, and so forth. It was fun, but unseasonably warm (a record-breaking 90 degrees), so we ended up hanging out in the shade and shopping in the consignment shops. Then on Sunday, we headed downtown to Pike's Place Market for another festival-the Seattle Cheese Festival. Oh yeah. Literally hundreds of vendors were set up along Pike Street selling their many kinds of cheese. For $1 you could sample any or all of the cheeses. Needless to say, it was delicious. And, since the weather was gorgeous, it was fun to check out downtown, see the market, all that good stuff. That about covers it so far. Lucy is job searching, going to interviews and turning in applications. I am adjusting to my early wake-up hours and learning the buses. I will try to update again soon!

downtown