Saturday...

I guess today would be the best place to start. Today was a typical Saturday for me, and it's weird because this is the first weekend that I've actually felt normal waking up here and was actually looking forward to hanging out by myself all day.

In the morning, I met my neighbor/apartment manager Lindsay and we walked to the YMCA and did an awesome strength-training class. [Lindsay is the first person that I really spent time with when I moved here. She is awesomely funny and kind. She's sort of been looking out for me since I moved here - she makes me dinner and finds me second-hand furniture. She has a CRAZY 3-year-old son named Cougar, who is crazy-cute and hyper. I love hanging out with her because we always have a good time. Mostly we drink wine and hoola-hoop.]

The instructor was an older lady who was NOT in the best shape (never really a good sign), but she was nice. I always thought the Y was kind of yucky place, but the one in our neighborhood is really nice and the people are super-friendly. This is a trend I've noticed since moving here. Things that are not pleasant or interesting back home are on average cleaner, closer, cheaper, or actually exist here. Examples (off the top of my head): independent movie theatres, farmers' markets, the YMCA, publc transportation, Vietnamese restaurants, and atheists. A mix of good and bad, you see.

The weather has been cold and yucky this weekend because we had a huge windstorm this week, which apparently is like the worst weather they get here. People kept talking about this wind storm and I thought it was going to be terrible, but it wasn't. They kept saying "You don't understand, when the wind blows really hard, it knocks trees down and the power goes out!" which I guess is true because there ARE lots of freakin' trees here. Anyway I was expecting a tornado-like situation, but no no, just wind. And rain. And cold.

So this morning after the Y class, I braved the grey windy weather and walked to the farmers' market. There's one a few blocks away from my apartment every Saturday morning. Anyway they have produce, flowers, pasta, honey, wine, seafood, and all kinds of great stuff. The flowers are my favorite even though they always die quickly after I get home. Today I bought fuji apples, honey crisp apples (yay Washington state), asian pears, and a cute pumpkin. This is the first time I've been since it got cold so there were all kinds of great squash and pumpkins and gourds. Which is really amazing if you're like me and you thought there was only one of each kind of those. There's actually lots, apparently. Oh, and here they have these fruits that are cross-bred between plums and apricots - they're called pluots. Seriously, and they're yummy. People go kind of nuts for them.

After that I went to Safeway to get normal food, mainly breakfast cereal. I ran into my friend Meghan as I was leaving and she was totally drenched from the weather, too. Meghan and I are the only first-year female grad students in our program this year, and it's been really great to have her to hang out with. She's from Maryland and before grad school she spent three years in the Peace Corps in Morocco, which is just freaking cool. You would think she's this huge hippie but she's totally not. She also fascinates me because she's the only discernable religious person in the program this year (other than the Mormons....another story) and she's Catholic to boot. :) We've had some really interesting conversations so far, especially over drinks.

I came home and got to use my new coffeemaker. Ok so everyone here really drinks coffee all the time. I drink at least one a day, and I swear it really is the best. It' also expensive so I went to Target and bought my own coffeemaker so maybe I'll stop spending so much on coffee every day. On the same note, I posit that seasonal winter latte flavors such as Pumpkin Spice and Gingerbread should be FREE for all, especially poor college students who walk to school in the rain in October.

Anyway I made coffee, spent about 4 hours on facebook and netflix [ok I seriously stalked every one of my friends/acquaintences on facebook and rearranged my entire netflix queue twice - good stuff], listened to Stephen Colbert on NPR's Wait Wait..Don't Tell Me (so funny), tried to study Arabic, made turkey chilli, watched a bunch of episodes of American Dad, Back to You, King of the Hill, and Kitchen Nightmares on fox.com, watched the play-by-play updates of the LSU and UW football games on espn.com, texted my bf, and drank wine.

All that to say, I'm getting used to spending time by myself. It's really helping me to do well at school, not to mention I love being able to go to the gym, and basically follow my own schedule. I do not like not having someone to eat dinner with and watch TV with :( but I think I'm making the best of things. I really like it here but I keep trying to compare it with home. Truthfully, you can't compare them because they just are too different. I guess I can just compare myself now with how I was then, and basically I feel the same, just healthier and little lonelier sometimes.

Anyway, I'll try not to let all my posts be this boring. It's been a while so I guess I have a lot to say. I seriously think pictures will help :) Until then, thanks for hanging in there.