pacific highway sort of sunday

Sunday morning I woke up frozen and early to explore the Pacific Coastline in Highway 1 between San Simeon and San Francisco. I made plans to be back in Chico, California in time for supper, so I had a lose time frame to work with.

By 7:30am, I was packed up and on the road. My main objective of the morning was to find elephant seals. It is early to spot them, but I had heard a few tourist talking about them. I stopped at one particular view point along the road and was certainly not disappointed. As soon as I got out of the car, I could hear their guttural sounds from above the beach. Immediately, I saw two playing or fighting in the water and then walked a long a boardwalk where the the beach was busy with the loafing large seals and some regular seals, too.

Most of my drive I took in the scenery from the car. Highway 1 is full of twists and turns that rarely allow anyone to drive the posted 55mph. Despite the slow going toward San Francisco, I was simply delighted to take in the ocean scenes! It was a great Sunday morning for worshiping God on a sunny ocean coast road!

no words, just a walk in the park

warm washington weather

On Tuesday, I dropped of my Kiwi friends at Seattle's underground tour and took off across the lake to an interview. For lunch I was able to spend some time with my youngest sister, Sara, in Renton for Indian food. She and her boyfriend recently moved across country from Michigan to relocate in their "home" state. It will be great to have a sister around here and I thoroughly enjoyed my lunch date with her. After spending so much time with Laura in Denver, I am glad I also had some time to catch up with Sara again, too!

I headed back to Seattle in the late afternoon and the five of us had a lovely Greek supper out together before calling it an evening and heading to bed.

Wednesday brought another glorious day of sunshine and warm temperatures to Washington. The Olympic Mountain Range was out and the Cascades and the Emerald City shone brilliantly! For starters, Dave and I ran off to Cafe Racer for some morning coffee and then Kirrin, Jeremy, and I took off for a canoe ride at the University of Washington. I forget the school rents out boats for a decent price and the ride through the Arboretum is beautiful on a nice day!

We saw quite a bit of wildlife as well; ducks, dragonflies, a couple fish, turtles, and a heron. The lily pads were in bloom and the waters were quite calm as we paddled along. The water ways for canoes become tangled in the pylons for the 520 floating bridge where we were and we ducked in and out of the cement structures for part of our ride. It was somewhere along this ride that I received a call about another two jobs I am interested in. I'm sure the lovely HR woman wrote down "canoe woman" next to my name on her short list. Hopefully that makes me a memorable candidate!

We paddled for an hour, or so and cleaned up a bit at the house before catching the bus downtown for a Mariner's game. Kirrin and Jeremy wanted to take in some real American baseball, and although the Mariner's lost, we had a nice (albeit, hot) time in watching the game, eating stadium food, and such. This was my first time at Safeco field. Not all that surprising, was my iced latte from one of the vendors.

After a long and very hot bus ride back to Dave and Chelsea's house, we had a small bite to eat and settled in for the evening. At 4:30am this morning we were at SeaTac Airport and I was wishing them well on their next step of the journey; they are off to Denver and New Mexico this week. I had a fantastic time showing these two around the Pacific Northwest and will miss having them around. We'll see each other again someday. I will likely travel back to New Zealand at some point in life!

I stopped back at Sara's place for breakfast after my airport run. We chatted for a bit and I was on my way back to Bellingham. I decided to get Starbucks off my old exit at Canyon Park on the way home, and ran into my Jr. High volleyball coach, Patrice. We had a great time chatting for a few minutes while we got our coffee. It's a small world after all!

(Thanks Jeremy & Kirrin for the two pictures with all three of us in it)!

summer vacation

I am finally in a place where I am putting aside my lack of work, and really enjoying the time I have with my friends and family. The last couple weeks in Denver and the first couple weeks in Washington have been filled with memories and people and positive feelings. I have enjoyed not constantly sitting in front of the computer waiting for jobs to be posted or for someone to call me back. While I am still quite invested in the job-seeking process, I feel a bit like I am on summer break.

On Monday afternoon, I drove out to Birch Bay to pick up Kirrin and Jeremy from their long weekend in Vancouver. We took a walk with Kirrin's aunt and uncle along the beach and watched a seagull verbally attack a bald eagle.

After our walk we bought ice cream cones and enjoyed a bit more of the area before heading back to Bellingham. I had to be back in the Seattle area for an interview on Tuesday morning, and my two Kiwis were flying out on Thursday morning, so we planned two nights in Seattle with Dave and Chelsea, our Antarctic friends, again. This time around, the weather for the week looked fantastic in comparison to the cool rain in recent days!

the birds

A couple strange bird-related events caught my eye recently on my occasional walks to the grocery store.

The first involves a red-winged blackbird. I remember learning about this bird in elementary school, becoming excited that this bird with the red wings could be located in my state of Washington, and then being disappointed, that I wasn't able to immediately find one of this species. Washington isn't particularly known for it's colorful bird selection, unless you count the goldfinch (state bird, of which only half really turn a brilliant yellow for part of the year).

In any case, over the past couple weeks, I have had my fill of the red-winged black bird as this particular character (pictured right) seems to either think my ponytail is a suitable mate, is protecting some young, or is incredibly territorial. Every time I walk along "his" or "her" part of the sidewalk by a marshy area, it swoops my head and makes a lot of noise.

The second strange bird incident is further down the road, where an entire gaggle of geese (or maybe two gaggles of geese) appear to have lost ALL their feathers all over the road, sidewalk, and well-manicured lawn. I'm sure the explanation to this can be attributed somehow to those people responsible for the number of broken beer bottles that the resident hotel staff were sweeping up in the same area.

sunday, sunday

This morning we woke up to our last full day in Haiti. It is Sunday, another restful weekend day. I spent some time cuddling with a cooing baby this morning before we loaded up to go to church. The community GLA is involved with here meets at a Haitian radio and television missionary's home. We had a nice breakfast (including some fantastic and rare mangoes) there with a group of about 20 people and then spent the morning worshiping with them.

The house had a wonderful little veranda overlooking the cliff it is built onto and we enjoyed the flowers below us and the view beyond us.

The afternoon was fairly quiet. I helped a little girl walk for awhile and then watched her nap on my shoulder. We watched a bit of satellite television and I was able to spend some time by myself for awhile to journal and think. A storm gathered over the mountain south of GLA, but very little rain fell out of those clouds to us.

When walking between the buildings, I noticed a dark unusual shape walking toward me. I found a big hairy tarantula moseying down the stairs. It was about the size of my hand if it were all stretched out. I took a step back, and then got my camera out!

Tomorrow morning we leave here about 9:30 (central time) and I will be back in Denver with Laura about 9:00pm (mountain time).

It's been an eventful and not-all-together-easy trip for us. I am ready to come home, but will take a lot of good memories, too. I came across this verse today:

Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgements, and his paths beyond tracing out! Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? Who has ever given to God, that God should repay them? For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen.
-- Romans 11:33-36 --

It is not in my wisdom and knowledge to know why God sent me here, but trust that this is part of everything (in Haiti) is from, through, and to him.

no words and no prince either

the world we live in

Most of you probably know I'm a touch green around the edges and I have an interest in sustaining and conserving the earth's resources. I just finished watching the BBC produced, Planet Earth series and was impressed with the "astonishingly beautiful created world" that is portrayed.

This series features a multitude of episodes on different ecosystems and life cycles across the globe. Their photography is stunning and the amount of time they put into their program is simply amazing; it's a testament to the quality of their work. The object of these programs is to show the magnificence of this created world that we live in and provide a general understanding of what sort of animals and unique organisms share our world.

The last disc of the series is about the human impact on the world and goes to length in arguing what it means to be sustainable and ethical. The series addresses climate change, pollution, and other hardships faced by different parts of the earth. What I really appreciated was that, in the middle of this whole argument, many of the people said it shouldn't matter who causes what and whether we are in the middle of a natural climate change or a human-accelerated burst of global warming. What really matters is that we, as a human race, are stewards of the world we live in.

Steward: One who manages another's property, finances, or other affairs (dictionary.com). To do this well, we need to be responsible for our own actions, and we also need to act with wisdom in regards to everything we do. We are not only responsible for ourself, we have a whole community of people and ecosystems under our individual care. We are here to serve our Creator and co-inhabitants.

The bigger question then, is what can I do to make a difference? Here is a start:

one. Why do we need our cucumbers wrapped in plastic? Buy products based on their packaging; or rather, their lack of packaging.

two. Take the time to find out what you can recycle, and go out of your way every now and then to bring specialized items to appropriate recycling dealers.

three. Be aware of how many bottles of water you consume. And, understand that drinking water out of a glass bottle is healthier than drinking out of most plastics. If you require filtered water for your discriminating pallet, filter your own at home and fill up reusable bottles. They work just like the new ones you might buy at the store.

four. Reuse bags; or better yet, get reusable shopping bags for your groceries.

five. Purchase cleaning products, shampoos, and soaps that are safe and biodegradable.

six. Begin researching solar, wind, or other alternative energy for your home. We are on the cusp of being able to efficiently power our lives in an entirely different way! I even watched a feature on a group who was taking rain water from their storm drains to use for their toilets, and washing machines for an $8000 investment in collection and distribution pipes. In the meantime, watch your energy consumption and turn off the lights when you leave the room.

With the amount of clean energy projects and the green mentality in the current pop culture, the prices of environmentally sustainable and biodegradable products is going down. Sometimes, even if we have to pay a bit more, it's worth considering how we might best be a steward of our resources and environment.

One of the final quote from the Planet Earth series: "Our individual contributions can add up to something better."