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I returned to Seattle this week as a stop-over on my way up to Alaska, in hopes of scoping out housing for the fall. It was a success! I found an apartment complex that was pre-leasing for the school year, and picked out a little one bedroom in the U-district. Mostly because it has a balcony. But I'm excited - a current tenant had good things to say about the management (lets just hope it doesn't change over the summer), it's close to campus but far enough away to be quieter and a bit more residential. Close to the bike trail, close to Trader Joe's, close to the water...I think its going to be good :)

It was fun wandering around the city this week with the notion of "man, I'm going to LIVE here!" I really like this city a lot (despite all the rain, and yes, it was cold and rainy even NOW, in MAY). I was perusing the city paper the other day and there are so many things going on! Art, music, theater, clubs...I'm betting the trick will be to actually take the time to detach myself from schoolwork and actually seek these things out once and in a while. And I can't not mention the numerous bookstores all over the U-district. 3 used, 1 new. I went a BIT overboard with book buying this week, but at least I'm all armed for chilly Alaskan nights. I cannot resist used bookstores. And the ones here are so awesome.

It hit me this afternoon, sitting in my friend's apartment, that tomorrow night I will be back in Homer! I've been so pumped this week about my Seattle future that I haven't even thought too much about the more immediate future. But I am going to jump right into the mélé there - tomorrow night my friend is playing host to a QUADRUPLE birthday, then next night is a concert...And I have an entire week before I start work. 

This year off is going pretty well, I have to say.

PSA

FYI, I'm now a contributor to my friend's blog Eat.Grow.Live - a collective of people writing about eating sustainably, growing locally, and enjoying life. I'll be blogging about sustainability in Alaska, but there are a lot of other fun tidbits from the other authors. Check it out :)

Nuevo México

My most recent jaunt was to Santa Fe, the capital of New Mexico, and the older capital city in what is now the United States, and one of the oldest surviving of cities founded by European colonists.  Before I left, all I heard was raving about how beautiful the city was. I have to admit, I wasn't particularly impressed with the city itself. It is very brown. And being an east-coast girl, it appears that I am partial to green. Now, that's not to say I do not appreciate the beauty of the high desert. There is something extremely powerful in the starkness of the landscape, the yellow earth and red rocks...But if I lived somewhere full of such muted, earthy tones, I'd want to spice it up with the colors of my house. And every single building in the entire city sprawl was brown. I actually found the city extremely hard to navigate due to this fact - because everything looked the same, I found myself getting disoriented the majority of the time.

That being said, New Mexico is a pretty fascinating place. Because it has been a settled region for quite some time (around the same time as Jamestown, my WM friends), there is a rich mix of Native, Spanish, and Anglo influence, which manifests itself in the culture, music and food of the region. 

I'll admit however, I probably didn't delve into this as much as I could have/perhaps should have. Because my reasons for coming were purely outdoor related.

I took myself on some fantastic hikes. The landscape there is so big, so vast, so loud. At first glance, it doesn't seem like much is growing, but as your eyes adjust to the nature of the place, you begin to pick out the small details - a little yellow flower growing in the shelter of a rocky outcrop. A scaly gold lizard basking in the sun on the dirt trail. The dichotomy of BIG (steep cliff faces looming upwards, huge puffy clouds in a sky that expands in all directions) and the small (beetles scuttling along the ground, aforementioned wildflowers) is so startling. You feel so small and large at the same time. You feel grounded in the universe.

I wish the world was flat like the old days and I could travel just by folding a map...

Hello all! I return from a long stint of silence with a significantly larger carbon footprint.  When I got back from the Philippines last month, I spent about two weeks recuperating and relaxing in GV (home base is starting to feel more like home, which is probably good) while waiting and recieving letters from grad schools. I ended up with 3 very nice offers, and so packed my bags again in hopes that visits to these schools would help me decide (for those of you know know how indecisive I can be, any form of assitance is a good thing). And it did - I'm going to Seattle in September to do a master's program at the School of Marine Affairs. I'm really happy with this decision, I really like my advisor, I loved Seattle the first time I came, and I think its going to be fun. Plus, the campus is pretty in the spring (though it cannot compete with UCSB in that regard, given that UCSB is on the beach, it far surpasses SFU's campus, which is all concrete and on top of a mountain). After 4 years (well technically 3) at an institution with argubly one of the prettiest campuses in the country, I think its ok for aesthetics to be a factor :P

Also, I'm happy that my summer plans have finally been sorted out. I didn't end up getting the intital job in Alaska for which I'd applied. However, another opportunity opened up and I'll be back next month to work at the Kachemak Bay Research Reserve. I'm happy about this too - SO excited to be getting back to Homer, one of my friends from last year is ALSO working at KBRR and there are a ton of marine scientists there for me to make connections with.

Now I'm back in GV again, fully out-traveled, sick of airports, and very happy to have some down time. Not for long though - headed to Santa Fe next week to visit a family friend and do some hiking and sightseeing. Yes, I'm tired of traveling, but I don't think I"ll regret these adventures, and I might as well take these opportunities when I have them :)

Juncture

In t-minus one hour, I head to the airport and then back to the States.

I'm excited.

I'm nervous. And curious. About what is going to feel different. What I forgot about. What I missed. What I'll miss from this side of the world.

It will be good to be closer to my friends. And have internet that doesn't drop the connection every 15 minutes.

I'm not even sure where I'm headed to next. I'm flying into San Francisco and I'll be with my grandparents for a few days, but then I'm going to be (in an order as yet unidentified) all up and down the west coast visiting schools and people. And then I have some time to kill in April (ideas: Mexico, Santa Fe), and then back to Alaska? Probably? I'm still waiting to hear back about the summer job for which I applied there, but I am 80% sure I'll go back there regardless of the job.

Anyways, one foot in front of the other is always a good way to get going in a new direction.

Primate Prime Ape

 

In my rush to be all controversial, I completely forgot to mention the OTHER highlight of my KL trip. Monkeys! In fairness, I partly forgot about them because they weren’t actually in KL city proper, but about a 45 minute drive away. But yes. Monkeys. We took a tour bus to Battu Caves, which is this Hindu temple inside a huuuuuge limestone cave. 

The cave itself was pretty fantastic, as was the temple, but really, its me – of course the monkeys were the highlight. I assume they are wild monkeys that have taken advantage of the tourist attraction – they look pretty well fed, and are clearly quite comfortable with sun-burnt tourists in Tevas and sunglasses pressing wide-angle lenses into their faces. I’ve always wanted to see monkeys in the wild – I think feral monkeys count enough for me to check it off my life To-Do list.

Although in all honestly, monkeys have always kind of weirded me out. Well, apes more so. But I just find their human resemblances to be a bit off setting. Whenever I visit the Great Ape house at the National Zoo (or any other zoo where there are gorillas and orangutans behind bars) I can’t help but excessively anthropomorphize them into sentient beings. I stare at these beasts through the glass, they stare back, and I can’t help but wonder how aware they are of their imprisonment and if they ever get resentful of all the leering faces who walk freely through the exhibit.

I've seen things!

A few weeks ago, I my uncle (who is a doctor) had a conference to attend in Kuala Lampur (that’s in Malaysia for all of you who are as geographically challenged as I am). So I tagged along to go sightseeing with my aunt.

I found KL to be a really interesting city, but mostly because of how much of a contrast it was to Manila. It was clean! And not filled with pollution, bumper to bumper traffic, barefooted beggar children…It’s actually a very well designed city – wide streets and lots of green space. I’m not sure why this was so surprising to me. I guess, having never been to this part of the world before, Manila became my baseline standard on what to expect.

The visit led me to think a lot about why Manila is the way it is. Despite the extreme traffic, Manila isn’t this backwards, underdeveloped place. Belize seems far more “third world” to me – that country lacks the majority of basic infrastructure. There is one traffic light in the entire country, and two “highways” which are both single lane roads. But in Manila (if you are at least middle class), I can’t think of anything that I can get in the States that I couldn’t get here. Some things are harder to find, some are more expensive, but a LOT of things are much cheaper. And once you get out of the city, there are lots of things to do (mountains, oceans, beaches, caves…).

But after going to KL, I realized that much could be IMPROVED in Manila, and it would have far go to bear any resemblance to KL. Honestly, it seems to me that all the problems stem from population size. The city is totally overrun with people. Less people would mean higher paying jobs, less traffic, less pollution…And what I find a bit fascinating is that (I realize I’m delving into an extremely controversial issue and making broad generalizations but) this problem stems from the influence of the Catholic Church. The Philippines has about 500 years of Spanish colonial history. And the Church continues to be a strong cultural presence. I saw myself a church with banners plastered all over it proclaiming “say no to abortion, say no to contraceptives, say no to family planning…” But its so strange, because so many other historically Catholic countries (Spain and Italy for example) do not have this problem. My aunt and uncle explained that this is because those countries already have separated church and state, while here the politicians are all still afraid of angering the bishops. ALTHOUGH. There is currently a move to pass a reproductive health bill, allowing access to family planning information and contraceptives. So that’s cool in my book.

But KL. My two favorite parts of the trip were visiting this Chinese Buddhist temple and visiting the aquarium. The temple was one of the most peaceful places I’ve ever been in my entire life, which in a way was hard to comprehend because there was twangy oriental music playing, it was bright and well lit and colorful…and yet the location had this palpably calm presence. And the aquarium – well I’ve never been to an aquarium I didn’t enjoy, and this one was surprisingly well designed. I like going to aquariums in different places because they always feature the local fauna. And I liked that this one placed a significant emphasis on freshwater fish – usually those fish get treated a bit like second class citizens. Oh and the seahorses! Many seahorses. Which are adorably absurd creatures.