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Monthly Archives: February 2010
10 Years Later, much the same
So it’s been a while since we last mentioned Europe. With all of the other things going on, we kind of took a break from blogging about it. If you didn’t read them or want to remind, here’s a list of the postings:
Day 1 : London or Bust (London)
Day 2 : Sight seeing & City Hiking (London)
Day 3 : Falling Down (London)
Day 4 : Motoring Day (London)
Days 5, 6, & 7: An attempt to accelerate this process (London, Cambridge, Paris, & Zurich)
Day 8 : Love at First Sight (Zurich, Chur)
And so that leaves us in Chur (here’s a map).
We woke up in the morning and headed down to catch the train to Arosa. First, however, we wanted to make sure we had some lunch. Because we were on a budget for food — due to the exchange rate as well as having just spent a premium of $150 on a hotel in Zurich a couple of nights before — we headed down to the local grocery store — Coop. I won’t get into the details, but apparently in grocery stores, you’re supposed to weigh & tag your own produce. They won’t do this at the register. Especially don’t do this if there’s only one cashier. Who doesn’t speak English. And who has to run back to the front of the store & do this for you. Causing the single line to get longer.
But I digress.
So we headed down to the train & got on with about sixty or seventy somewhat rowdy German senior citizens. Fortunately we found of the smallest second class sections and were unbothered by them so were able to enjoy the ride through the mountains.
The train stopped at about 4 or 5 little wonderful towns on the way up to Arosa. We didn’t stop as it didn’t look like there was much to do there, but they were enchanting nonetheless. We simply stared in awe and day dreamed about them from our train window.
Note some of the senior citizens departing the train on the car behind ours.
It had been 10 years since I was here last. The last time I was here was in June of 1999 for a choir trip. Now that I think about it, we also had a large contingency of senior citizens with us on our trip — as it was the intergenerational choir trip, with both high school students & senior citizens. Here’s a pic I shamelessly stole from one of my friends on Facebook who posted this.
Our first order of business was to eat, so we walked around the little lake and sat on the bench to have our lunch – which consisted of bagettes, wonderful cheese, grapes, and a couple bottles of water.
And of course, our second order of business was to try to run faster than 30km/h for the local speed sensors. And then plan our hike.
We kept on hiking up through Innerarosa and up to a beautiful chapel overlooking Innerarosa — complete with a majestic cemetery (I don’t use those words together very often).
We stopped to take a quick bathroom break while we had the opportunity (in the cleanest public bathrooms I’d ever seen) and refilled our water bottles and had a drink out of the free water “fountain”. Not sure what’s in the water but it was better than any bottled water I’ve had.
We met some other hikers who spoke enough English to take our picture
At this point, Katie had the high point of her trip. I kid you not. All the places she’d been & things she’d seen so far was nothing compared to what she saw & heard next.
Yep. Cows. (She would say “NOT just cows — COWS WITH BELLS!!!!”). They just wandered throughout the countryside and hills, and we could hear them long after we could make out any of their features of them.
Next was onward and upwards
And up, and up, …
And at this point we had come up far enough, and had to start the descent a different way back.
This is part of a 5-star hotel which, at the cheapest time of the year, if you reserve in bulk, starts at $325 a night (source).
The train home! Thanks Arosa! See you in another 10 years!
Tenpin
Wednesday nights are a favorite of ours. This is the night we meet with a group of friends from our church for small group—mostly doing bible study or related lessons, and just sharing our recent life struggles & triumphs.
Every once in a while, we ‘let loose’ and have a night of fun (not that our regular group times are ever lacking in fun and laughter). Last night, about half of our group decided to meet at TechCity Bowl and show off our mediocre bowling skills.
Team Canada (Jason) vs. Team U.S.A. (everyone else)
I love these gals & guys. They’re part of a group of friends we’ve made through our church over the past couple of years, and I can honestly say that life would be pretty rough without them. We’ve all been transplanted here from cities across the U.S. and Canada, each of us far from our families and friends back home, so we’ve become each others’ Seattle substitute family.
Speaking of Seattle…..stay tuned for some exciting news coming up in the next couple of weeks.
Our Olympic Adventure
With my job, it’s not very often that I get a Saturday off work. Sad, I know.
So immediately when I found out I would have this past Saturday off, we decided to spend that day doing one of our favorite weekend pasttimes–driving around the Pacific Northwest. It’s been months since we’ve had the free time to do it, so we fueled up Baby Blue (yes it’s a car, but she has a personality all her own and we consider her a member of our family) and booked the day for a drive west to the Olympic Peninsula, come rain or shine.
I was really hoping for shine, since the Olympic mountains are gorgeous snowcapped wonders this time of year. But instead, the fog hovered over the Sound and rain was in the forecast all day. No less excited, we headed towards the Seattle waterfront to board the ferry bound for Bainbridge Island.
We’ve ridden the ferry many many times—mostly thanks to my dad’s love of ferries and requests to ride whenever they come to visit—but this was the first time I had driven on been a passenger riding in a car on the ferry (it’s rare that Todd ever lets me drive). Quite exciting. Afterall, that’s not something you can do in most parts of this world.
We unloaded on Bainbridge Island and headed north to the Olympic Peninsula. Not really having a set itinerary, we just drove along and eventually ended up in Port Angeles for lunch a couple hours later. We always aim to dine at local eateries where we can savor some good ol’ homecooked meals.
(this pic is for any Twilight fans out there. Port Angeles had several other shops capitalizing on the Twilight craze…and no, I did not suggest we go here for that reason.)
Apparently you can see Canada from here on a clear day. No luck for us…which just means we’ll have to do the drive again when the sun is out.
After walking around for awhile, we left Port Angeles and drove Baby Blue back to the ferry to Seattle. There’s just something calming and relaxing about driving around the Pacific Northwest. Or maybe it’s more of a mysterious and eerie feeling. Either way, it’s exciting to purr along the winding roads together, not really knowing what lies ahead.
Mixed Emotions
Whenever I go home, I deal with feelings of both joy and sadness every day.
Joy, obviously, because we get to spend time with friends and family. Times which uplifts one’s heart immensely. And sadness, because I know that this short time together is all we get for the next ‘who knows how many’ months until we meet again.
Though none of us knows how long we have left on this earth, so we should enjoy every single day to its fullest, right? (but that’s a whole separate blogpost series right there that I won’t start into today 
)
We’re so thankful for Ben & Kim, who organized and invited a bunch of our friends over for lunch on our last full day in KC (okay, mostly my friends, since everyone except for Todd & Scott were from my hometown). I’d been looking forward to this for quite some time, especially because it was the first time I’d seen my cousin, Little Miss Lily, since she was just a wee little newborn.
I’m pretty sure she had no recollection of us from back then, but we were fast friends right away and I was seriously tempted to snuggle her back with us to Seattle.
And Crystal’s little boy, Gavin, so grown up and curious (and walking!) since the last time we saw him back in June.
Look deep into their blue eyes…..don’t those two cuties just melt your heart?
Crystal, Kim, little G, me, Ali & Lindsay. I’m blessed to have known these lovely ladies practically all my life.
While us girls chatted away, the men were left to entertain themselves and the kids. I got a good chuckle upon seeing the living room scene.
Cousin Ryan, Lindsay & Lily. Such a good looking family. Oh, how I wish I still lived just blocks away and could come over on a moments notice to babysit. It’s nice to see she seems to have inherited her father’s goofiness.
Or perhaps it just runs in the entire family…..
. . . . . . . .
On our way to the airport Monday morning, I was happy to squeeze in one last coffee date with my college friends Kaddie & Erin. These two girls make me laugh like no one else can and an hour with them really isn’t sufficient enough time, but I’ll gladly take whatever I can get. And at least now Todd & Erin are once again settled up on their cheeseburger bets.
So hard to say goodbye to everyone, but we had great fun and lasting memories during those 4 whirlwind days back home. Until next time….
