Guatemala

Yesterday I was reading the blog of a friend that I went to Guatemala with and she did some reminiscing because at this time last year that is where we were. The wonderful, beautiful country of Guatemala! I miss Guatemala every day of my life, no exaggeration. But not in a depressing way, more in a "wow! I can't believe I got to go there!" kind of way. And at least once a month I find myself wishing I could go back for a few weeks.

I miss Guatemala a lot, the country, the people, just about everything about Guatemala...well, except maybe the bathrooms and the lack of hot water...but, other than that I miss everything. :) I have been reading through the emails I sent to family and friends while I was there (thanks grandma). And each day I sent home a random fact that I didn't want to forget. Here are those random facts for you to enjoy...

-I never saw a public garbage can in Guatemala (except for inside the national parks i.e. Tikal). So the garbage COVERS the streets and there is a lot of pollution. It is sad because this seems like such an easy thing to fix, but I'm sure it does cost a lot of money, which makes it a difficult fix.

-There are stray dogs everywhere! In the US when a dog is on the street they generally run to the humans, in Guatemala, I was not once approached by a stray dog.

-Most of the women (outside Guat City) wear traditional clothing, but then men just wear levi's and a t-shirt.

-People are ALWAYS honking in their cars! SO loud!

-I saw only one stop sign and outside of Guat City I never saw a street light...comforting right...not even on the Pan American Highway (which we had to cross everyday...)

-At least 90% of the cars have tinted windows, even the old ones. Kinda creepy.

-Tons of motor scooters that always have at least 3 people on them.

That is Guatemala in a random facts nutshell. I miss it and someday I WILL go back!

The Apartment

Here are the long awaited pictures of our apartment now that it is all put together. :) Sorry some of the pictures are sideways, they wouldn't rotate. :(

Bedroom. The hanging on the wall is from when Richard's parents went to India (I must say between India, China, and Guatemala, we have a very culturally decorated apartment. :)


Living Room


Office/2nd Bedroom

More Office/2nd Bedroom

Dining Area (yay! now we actually eat at our table...it is very exciting!)

Bathroom

Our kitchen with tile flooring and granite countertops that we LOVE! Yay for counter space finally!

We love our patio! We have already barbecued on our little gas grill twice (we've only been here 10 days). And we bought 2 camp chairs so we can sit outside and read and stuff.

Our laundry/storage closet! I LOVE having a washer and dryer in the apartment! YAY! So there it is! We love our new apartment and can't wait for you all to come see it! :)

There is a lot of natural light in our apartment which we really like. Our other two apartments had hardly any so we love the change!

A Beautiful Day Outside

On Monday we enjoyed an absolutely GORGEOUS day outside (this while everybody in Utah woke up to snow...YUCK! No Thanks!) Ironic that the day Utah gets snow in late May is the first day we've been in Seattle where it was gorgeous all day and not one drop of rain fell! The weather here is actually great! I know everybody talks about how much it rains, and in the week we've been here we agree, it does rain quite a bit. But it doesn't last very long and it isn't pouring rain. If you think the weather in Utah is spastic and changes at the drop of a hat then you haven't been to Seattle...seriously...it is nuts. In just 10 days I have already learned to NEVER, I repeat, NEVER go anywhere without a jacket. No matter how beautiful and warm (or hot) it is when you leave the house...TAKE A JACKET!!!!

Anyway, now that I have given you my point of view on the weather in Seattle here is the real point of this blog post. On Monday it was beautiful outside and on Sunday somebody in our ward had told us about this great park/lake just a few miles from where we live. So we packed a picnic, took our mits, frisbees, etc and set off to the park. As I said, it was a beautiful day so there were lots of people there and it was so fun. We enjoyed a great picnic (all prepared by Richard) and then we played some catch. So in the middle of the park is a huge lake (there are lakes pretty much everywhere you look in Seattle) and it has a great walking/biking/rollerblading trail around it that is abouot 2 1/2 miles so after our picnic and catch we walked around that. It took us about an hour and it was so fun! We were sweating by the end (that is how nice of a day it was). :)

The view of the lake from where we were eating our picnic.

Smile!

"Simply Lemonade" was a GREAT deal at Sam's Club so we couldn't refuse and bought it as a treat. Richard wanted to bring some on our picnic and this is what my genius, engineer husband came up with. Love him! He is so smart!

TONS of turtles hanging out on the logs while we were walking around the lake.

Thai Food and the Mariners

Thursday, a guy from our ward came over to pick up our boxes and take them to a family he home teaches that is moving out this week (we were very glad to get rid of them) and as he was leaving he gave us a gift certificate as a "welcome to the neighborhood" gift. We thought that was very nice and we were very appreciative. It was to a little hole in the wall Thai restaurant called Phayathai, it is just around the corner from us and apparently it is always voted best Thai food in Seattle (which is saying a lot, because there are A LOT of Thai restaurants). So we were excited about our gift certificate thinking it would be fun to go there, when we opened the gift certificate it was for $40! Wow! Way nice!

So we went there for lunch yesterday and it was sooooo good (Richard is eating the leftovers right now)! We really liked it a lot and it is totally affordable for lunch and it is a really fun little restaurant. We will definitely be going there again (especially since we barely used half of our gift certificate!).

For our evening activity we went to a Mariners' baseball game. It was sooooo fun (unfortunately they aren't very good this year, but apparently we picked the right night to go!). So we got to the ballpark at about 6:45 (the game was starting at 7:10). As we were walking to the ticket office there were a ton of scalpers, but they were asking for more than we wanted to pay (we were planning on buying the cheapest tickets ($8), but when we got to the ticket office we found out that they were sold out and the cheapest tickets they had left were $22 (for not very good seats). So...back to the scalpers we went. After some walking around and "playing the scalping game" (which the scalpers are way better at) we ended up with great seats (the face value of the tickets were $40 each and we paid $40 for both) and we were very happy with the seats. It ended up being a more expensive evening than anticipated, but it was totally worth it, we loved every minute of it and now we know we have to buy our tickets early if we want the cheap ones. :)

The game was so much fun and the Mariners beat the Padres 15-8, so needless to say it was a very exciting and eventful game. Here are a few pictures from the night. We had lots of fun and we will definitely be going back! (PS...the hat Richard is wearing in the picture was a graduation present from me so that he could really support his new team). :)

GO MARINERS!

Pike Place Market

Today we had our first true Seattleite experience. We drove to downtown (10 minutes away) and explored Pike Place Market. As with many major cities Seattle's downtown is a series of one way streets. While looking for a parking place we finally found one on the street but it was on the opposite side and we couldn't make it. No problem, we'll go around the block. Second time around I thought that there was a spot on the right side of the street, we get down there and it was an unloading zone only. No problem, we'll go around the block. Finally on the third time down the street we successfully made it into the parking spot. Good thing Richard's an expert parallel parker. A skill I'll have to work on.

Pike Place Market was so cool! It is huge and has so many different things. The produce stands and the fish markets were giving out free samples, which was really fun. The peaches and pears were so delicious! I was even a good sport and tried a sample of smoked salmon, now I can 100% say I DO NOT LIKE SALMON! It was good for a minute, while it tasted like ham, but then the fishy after taste kicked in. YUCK!

Here are a few pictures from the market.

First Prepared Meal

One of the many amazing things that we love about our apartment is this wonderful patio, this grill will be getting a lot of use this summer! We are also excited to get some chairs to put out there so we can hang out and read while enjoying the fresh air!

I will post more pictures of our AMAZING apartment once it is all cute and put together! :)

The Move!

The UHaul is all loaded up and ready to go!

Picture of the "Welcome to Washington" sign...obviously it didn't go very well.

We stayed Monday night with the parent's of a friend in Kennewick. This is us at the Columbia River temple.

Driving the truck is very serious buisness.

Driving into Seattle! Downtown straight ahead! We were like kids on Christmas morning!

Driving into Seattle there was water all around us, we went over lots of bridges...no wonder Richard wanted to live here! :)