Happy New Year everyone! I've been in Seattle since Christmas, but between class, life in the bunk house, exploring the city, Christmas and New Years Eve, I just don't have the energy to figure out how many days and/or weeks it's been at the moment. I'm just happy I've had some spare time to continue writing.
What I can tell you is that Seattle is GREEN. Everything is green, grass and moss grow everywhere (without sprinklers!) and there are giant trees all over the city; it's like people here actually appreciate the fact that they produce the oxygen we breath or something. But Seattlites are also green in the environmental sense. The trail I have taken to running on has signs along all the paths about creating and preserving forests for the future. Everyone recycles, composts and commutes on their bikes to work ... in the cold, dark, rain!
That reminds me, about the rain, there's water everywhere. SoCal really is a desert. Here, its misty/foggy/rainy every morning and night. On a few occasions it has "cleared up" to be just cloudy during the day, but it usually keeps with the misty/foggy/rainy theme we have going here. Sometimes the weather plays tricks on me, I'll look outside thinking the clouds have left and realize that I am actually just looking at one big cloud that doesn't end. People tell me this is the most sunny, warm and beautiful winter we've had up in the pacific northwest in years. (Fun Fact: The pacific northwest is commonly referred to as the PNW up here.) I think they must be confusing sunny and warm with another weather pattern, cause I know sunny and warm, SoCal invented sunny and warm, and this - this is decidedly not sunny and warm.
I never know how many layers to put on. Getting dressed is a disaster. I have the same conversation with myself every time I try to pull an outfit out of my duffle: Well, am I going to be out at night? Will it rain? Do I need a sweatshirt if I'm wearing a turtleneck already? Exactly how many layers can I carry around before everyone realizes I have no clue how to dress myself?
The days aren't terribly shorter than further south; plus, I wouldn't think makes a huge difference. Why would you care where the sun is in the sky at a particular time of day if you can never see it anyways ... right? WRONG. The sun isn't up until around 8 in the morning, and its sets at about 4:30. So if I have class from 8:30-4:30, which I do monday-friday, I essentially have 30 minuets of foggy/misty/rainy "daylight"per day. And when you share a room with someone who doesn't have to be up at the crack of dawn (haha, no really) that means you're picking out your clothes in the dark! Whatever, that's fine, I doubt a light could solve my layer problems anyways as we've already discussed.
It reminds me a little bit of All Summer In A Day by Ray Bradbury. In the story the main character is a little girl at school who has moved from sunny and cheerful Earth to Venus where it rains everyday except for a few hours one day a year. On that day, her classmates decide to lock her in a closet and she misses all of the sun that she's been waiting on, for the whole year. NOAA locks me in our windowless training room everyday like that. I make sure to take a walk outside at lunch break. Overall I guess its less depressing than All Summer In A Day. I'm truthfully stoked to be in a new city, meeting cool people, learning some really great stuff and test-driving life in a completely new environment.
2014 is going to be a great new year!
Oh the sun is playing hide and seek with a few breaks in the clouds, time to work on my PNW tan!
I loved that story! Ray Bradbury for the win (:
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