A Day In The Life

Ahhh, what a nice weekend! I helped miss Laura set up her room in Bellingham - it was nice to see a friendly face!  I'm sure she'll upload some photos of her new place soon.  It was really fun just to get out of Seattle for a weekend and hang out with an old friend.  I think the highlight of my weekend was sawing the leg off of a couch so that it could fit up the stairs. (!!!) Yes, yes, those college years.... have to love it!

I've been having some adventures at work, so I thought I'd share some of what I've been up to around the Wintonia.  One of the biggest perks of my job is that I can pick out all the places in Seattle I want to explore and try to plan events around it.  My current favorite event that I plan is a weekly event called Walking Wednesdays.

A snapshot from a Walking Wednesdays trip to Volunteer Park.

Walking Wednesdays is exactly that: a chance for the residents to get out and about the city and just walk around! We typically have gone to various parks around the city, but as the year progresses I'm sure we will get more and more creative.  One of my residents suggested we go see the Fremont Troll!

Last week we went to Volunteer Park, which was really fun.  There were only four of us total, but we had a great time exploring the trails around the park.  We even found an old water tower to climb up! We also found a huge green house with all types of plants and trees inside of it.

My resident took all of these pictures with her digital camera.  She loves that thing! :)

Close up of some of the flowers.

Even just getting out and about is a gift for some of these folks.  They don't have cars, of course, nor do most of them have money for bus passes.  That means that they are restricted to hanging out in the Wintonia or going only within walking distance.  That's why a lot of people get pretty excited about being able to take a ride somewhere, even if it is just to the park.  I like being able to take people places - I feel like we can talk about things that you can't talk about otherwise.  Have you ever felt the difference in environment when talking to someone?  It's a lot easier to chat with someone about something serious when you're strolling along some flowers than sitting in my office on a folding chair.  The stories people have are amazing.

Today we went to Lake Union Park, which was also beautiful.  (Can you tell how much I love this city? All I can keep saying is how beautiful it is.)

Outside of the Center for Wooden Boats at Lake Union

It was an awesome day.  We left the Wintonia around 11am, and headed to Lake Union.  Lake Union is a really interesting place because its been really gentrified in the past few years. It looks a lot more Santa Clara than Seattle, if you know what I mean.  Seattle is wild, overgrown, untamed.  Santa Clara is perfectly manicured, fought back into submission.  I like Seattle's overflowing energy.

Lake Union is still pretty though, albeit in a different way than the rest of Seattle. The Center For Wooden Boats is right there, and we got a chance to look through all the historical boats.  (Shout-out to Molly and Arianna - no sea-chanties here!)  Again, the change in scenery really opens people up.  I was amazed at the stories that some folks shared about their childhood -- and all of that brought up just by being around a boat or near the water.

Center for Wooden Boats

Center for Wooden Boats

Still from my resident's camera.  She loves it!

After we walked around the docks, we settled onto a little beach / docking area and threw rocks into the water.  It was so relaxing just to hang out with people and skip rocks and talk about childhood. (It was much longer ago for them!) We were laughing pretty hard.  I can't believe that this is my job!  We were right at a place where the water-landing planes would take off and land, too, so we just sat on the edge of the water and watched them for a long while.  Then, guess who showed up!

Ducks!

We had asked the kitchen to give us a pack of bread, so we got to feed the ducks for a long time.  Whoever said that feeding the ducks is only an activity for grandmas and little kids is completely wrong! We had a blast!  I got a bunch of cute pictures of my residents feeding them (one guy even fed them out of his hand! I called him the Duck Drive-Thru) but I can't post any photos identifying the residents online, of course.  I'll make a scrapbook or something at the end of the year though, so if you REALLY want to see, I'll show you some other time :)

It was a pretty great day.  I'm getting busy at work, but its a good kind of busy.  An integrated kind of busy.

Community is fun, too. I'll post all about those adventures another day, but I'll just leave you with this image: last night, all of us somehow managed to gather in the living room, and sang out hearts out to the guitar.  (Favorites were: Firework by Katy Perry, and, our house song, Wagon Wheel by Old Crow Medicine Show).  It was a nice spontaneous moment.  I'm really proud of myself - I've always wanted to learn the guitar exactly for this reason.  I've always wanted to play guitar and have everyone be able to sing along!  I'm pretty proud of my seven months of work.  (I've been playing guitar that long!! Woohoo!)

Love you all.
-K