My family's finally here in Seattle! =) *beams*
I went to meet them at their hotel in Downtown after school, and it was great seeing the much-missed familiar faces and finally being able to hug them after 5 long months. The feeling of euphoria is indescribable, and it was truly at that point in time that I realised how much I've missed them.
Brought them down to the heart of downtown at 3rd and Pine, then we walked to Pike Place Market to see the first Starbucks and the pig that's supposedly a tourist attraction. My parents are really funny though, they didn't want to take pictures at all! The first thing my mum did when she reached the market was to buy a piece of halibut fish for our lunch tomorrow, and the fact that a small piece cost $12 didn't even faze her; she bought it straight without blinking. My goodness. And she even told me it was cheap. I was pretty much stunned for quite a while. Haha.
After that we walked along the waterfront and enjoyed the cool evening breeze. We also had dinner at "The Crab Pot", where we ordered "The Clambake", which consists of a pot of dungeness crab, snow crab, clams, oysters, mussels, prawns, salmon fillet, halibut fillet, corn on the cob, sausage and potato. It was a thoroughly novel experience for me: we had to wear bibs, we had small wooden boards with digging forks to eat our seafood on, and the waitress poured the entire contents of the pot in the middle of the table for us to eat. Shall put up some pictures of the feast soon!
...Running around in my head. I have totally zero mood to study right now, must be post-excitement from the Olympic Peninsula trip, pre-excitement from my family's arrival tomorrow (!!), looking forward to a whole month of travelling after the finals, and returning to Singapore where there's great food and I can eat what I want without constantly worrying about the price. (Not that it's any good for my weight though. Haha.)
On another note, I think I'll miss the independent and "adventure-filled" (relatively) life I had here, communing and interacting with the rest of the GIP people, and travelling to different parts of Seattle.
My life will return to its original routine again when I return to Singapore, and everything will be like it used to be 6 months ago, or will it? I wonder how I have changed these past 5 months, and whether I've even changed at all.
One thing's for sure: I will definitely start complaining about how hot the weather is for the first time in 6 months. =)
My subject registration is screwed up. On the STARS website, my registration year is listed as year 3 (?!) and even the time is for year 3 subject registration. GAHHHH!!!!
Lousy system. Why didn't the GIP office coordinate this with OAS?! Sheesh. Like I have a lot of time on my hands now, especially when my exams start NEXT WEEK.
Just felt like ranting for a while. =)
On a slightly happier note, the prof under which I'm working gave me a Fred Hutch keychain as a souvenir and thank you gift. Haha. And I'll be seeing my family in 6 more days!
On the spur of the moment, we decided to skip the boring nutrition lecture (oops hope my mum doesn't read this haha) and crash the Geology field trip to Discovery Park. Actually we're not supposed to go since we didn't take the course but lots of the other GIP people have crashed their field trips already so I thought, why not? =P
The weather was kind of miserable though and Seattle was back to its old rainy self. Our van got lost on the way but it was still kind of enjoyable as the driver was cracking jokes all the way. When we got to the beach at the park, the TA told us to look for metamorphic, igneous and sedimentary rocks. I was momentarily stunned because I remember having learnt these terms during geography class eons ago but I just couldn't recall them. (Sorry Mrs Chua. Haha.) The field trip was quite fun and I regret not having gone on the earlier field trips...I've been here for 5 months and I haven't even gone to Mt Rainier, Mt St Helen, Cascade mountains, Mt Baker...arghh! I'm missing out on the good stuff!
The beach at Discovery Park
Rocks Galore!
Sheila is happy to be on the field trip.
A cliff formed by glacier erosion (I think - the TA was talking about glaciers)
After that we went to my prof's house for a bbq. Her house is in a really expensive neighbourhood and it's so pretty inside! It had a patio, wine cabinet, fireplace, back porch and a few levels I think. It's exactly the kind of house my mother would like to live in in her retirement. Haha.
It was still raining (pouring, in fact) when we got there, so the bbq had to be held under cover in the back porch. And although it was a bbq, we didn't actually get to do any bbq-ing ourselves; her husband Carlos did it all, and he actually prepared the hamburger patties from scratch by grinding beef with onion and some unknown green vegetable. It was really yummy and I ate till I almost burst. I also got to meet my post-doc's wife and son for the first time. His wife is sweet and gentle, while his son is absolutely adorable and has chubby cheeks that I want to pinch. Haha. A real picture-perfect family, I would say.
My post-doc Yoshi with his wife Hitomi and son Ryotaro. Ryo looks a bit 'dao' but he's actually just shy. Don't you just feel like pinching his cheeks? =)
Members of the lab - Kevin (undergrad), my prof Suzannah, me, Jennifer (another post-doc), Yoshi, and Chuck.
Everybody who came for the bbq!
We did a series of silly jumping photos. Don't ask me why. -_-
Yep, in the end I decided on going for the SSA bbq at Alki, though it took me quite some time to decide and now I've been labelled as a fickle-minded person. Haha.
The beach was freaking cold when we reached because even though the sun was out in full force, the wind was also out in full force. Brr. Poor Cherlyn was decked out in beach gear and wore only shorts and halter (and I was laughing at her haha =P).
We had quite a bit of fun playing frisbee and soccer, where I got too excited and got slammed into and knocked down on separate occasions. I think I'm not meant to play soccer man..
The food wasn't great because the meat wasn't marinated, but it was true american style bbq, complete with potato salad, hot dogs, beef patties and corn on the cob. I wasn't really full though because there wasn't enough food to go around and there were too many people (although I suspect the main reason is that some people simply ate too much haha).
Photos will be up when I finally manage to get my hands on them!
Should I go for the bbq at Alki beach this Saturday or go for the sports meet at the IMA?
I want to play badminton!
But I also want to bbq. -_-
It was so popular that when I reached the HUB (Husky Union Building) lawn at 6.20 pm, a lot of the food had already been sold out. Hence I didn't get to eat my duck wings. -_- There were long queues for every single stall and it was difficult to decide which one to start queueing for because there were so many things that I wanted to taste! In the end I decided to queue up at the desserts stall first, where I bought an egg tart and 2 sesame balls. I'm glad I bought the sesame balls first because they were sold out soon after. Haha. I ate quite a lot of things today considering that I spent only 5 bucks; I had fried radish cake, egg tart, sesame balls, and century egg with pork porridge. I also tasted a little of the siew mai, crispy chicken with vinegar and salt, tau huey and noodles with pork gravy ('zha jiang mian'), courtesy of some of the GIP people. =) The night market was not as exciting as I envisioned, but I did manage to have my fill of food there.
P.S. There's going to be a dearth of photos in my blog from now on because my camera has decided to go crazy on me and now whenever I try to take photos in the daytime, they all turn out too bright and pale. Since the daylight hours have now lengthened (the sun sets at 8.30 pm..and it's not even Summer yet!), my camera has been rendered effectively useless.
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