heading home

i leave for charleston in 3 hours.
the trip was filled with lots of coffee, great vegetarian cuisine, and lots of time to catch up with old friends.
it was wonderful seeing bekah and carly. its been about three years since we lived in England together. they let me crash on their couch one night and filled me with wine and homemade bread. carly gave me bangs! yesterday, bekah showed me around downtown ballard, which is a very eclectic town and definitely worth visiting.
jessie was a wonderful host and graciously took me in for almost the entire week.  we visited all of her favorite local joints (in the bowl, gorditos, gypsy coffee, zoka) and spent hours catching up while walking all over the city.
downtown was not my favorite place, but the little towns that surround it are the gems of the northwest.
i loved ballard, wallingford, and capitol hill.
it was a wonderful spring break, but i'm glad to be heading home to seventy degree weather.

himalayan blackberry

day 4: himalayan blackberry, college of charleston, and the locks and ladder
i met up with the college of charleston alternative spring break.
they have been working with a plant nursery and a forest restoration group.

we went to discovery park and uprooted hundreds of invasive himalayan blackberry bushes.

we visited the dam in ballard & saw boats go through the locks & the fish ladder so salmon can travel through the dam.

for dinner we had bubble tea and more pho.
after a long bus ride home i made it back to jessie's.

a good time with old friends

day #3: gyspy coffee (round II) and an afternoon with old friends
jessie and i woke up and enjoyed tea and video games

mike (jessie's boy), jessie, and i went to gypsy coffee for a second time.
we played scrabble (mike won by 9 points, sadly).
we went across town to ballard and met up with carly and becca.

they are old friends that i met at l'abri.

we ate pho, the infamous asian soup.
after short walk we were at the doorstep of carly and becca's house.
it is an adorable basement loft.
we drank coffee and ate dark chocolate and enjoyed a great conversation.

scrabble and coffee

day 3:

a long walk to jessie's all-time favorite coffee shop, gypsy coffee.
we played hours of scrabble and then caught the bus to a burrito shop across town.

followed up by an evening of school work and procrastination at zoka's coffee roaster.

the rainy city

yesterday was day 1 in seattle (update):
cloudy and cool.

morning coffee at http://www.zokacoffee.com/ which is one of jessie's frequent coffee stops and conveniently a block from her house.
we explored downtown seattle and pike's place.

lots of fish and flowers.
we packed our lunch and picnicked over looking the puget sound and snow-covered mountains.
we thrifted in capitol hill and enjoyed some delicious vegetarian asian food.

the evening was topped off with knock-off sour patch kids and sex and the city.