Good bye Seattle

After almost 2 months in Seattle, Sarah is heading back to Austria. I'm missing her already.

Loading the plane and boarding passengers.

Pushing the plane off the gate. 17 hours of travel ahead.

16.5 hours later at Vienna International Airport, united with Sandy and on the phone with Peter in Seattle.  Only a short 45 minutes drive home left to go.

Last evening in Seattle

Can't leave Seattle without a famous burger at the RAM.  Cheers!

Audobon Teen Trekker Nature Camp

I was from August the 5th to August the 9th on a Nature camp. We were four boys and four girls. Here are the names of the other children: Tristan, Trenton, Sten, Mason, Emily, Desivie and Gwen. 

Monday, 5th 2013

Today I met the other children. First we had to make a little book by our self. It was really fun because nobody told us, how to do it. When Sara was there, we played a little game. Everyone could get four different snacks. A fruit snack, carrots, nuts and Annie's brunch. You could take one of each or four from one of the snacks. For each of this snacks you have to say something about your self.

• Fruit snack:  ( I can't remember)
• Annie's Brunch: Something crazy that happend to you
• Carrots; about your family/pets
• Nuts:  favorite hobbies

Outside we played a game on wooden planks. One of us was blind and we had to tell him, what he should do.  The goal was to go on the other side of the place were we started.  In the beginning it was a bit hard but in the end there were no problems. 

We also met Sara's snake Draco. It is a small snake and it is three years old. In a park we ate our Lunch. Later, we walked to a place, were we sat at the water.  After that, we walked back and played games.

Tuesday, 6th 2013

Today we made a list, where we can write our names next to a job for the camping trip ahead of us.  We also looked for things, what we need for the trip to the North Cascades NP.  It was a lot of work to find the right things.

We also went on a hike with the other children. I think, we drove 45 minutes to the place were we went on the hike. There we played a game about knowing the names of the other children.  Then we set up the tents. Sara asked us who was born in January, February or March and these people had to set up a tent. Then people from April, May or June had to set up another tent and so on.  After that we ate our Lunch. When we were ready, we took down the tents.  It didn't take us too long, so we went on a hike. We had to answer questions about nature on a paper, too.  It was very interesting.

Wednesday, 7th 2013

Today we drove to North Cascades National Park with a big car. It took us two hours.  When we arrived there we had to set up the tents. (The boys were faster then the girls - of course!)  Then we ate our Lunch. Sara asked us if someone wants to go for a little hike.  Gwen, Mason, Tristan and I said "Yes".  The other children and Ambar stayed at the camp site.  Before we returned from our hike the others began to cook Dinner.  We had Burgers and Veggie Burgers.  At night we played "BS", a fun game of cards.

Thursday, 8th 2013

Emily and Desivie woke us up in the morning.  For Breakfast we had chicken links, hashed browns and scrambled eggs. (Yummy :D)  After that we went for another hike of two hours.  It was amazing!  On the way back, I played with Sara and Sten "Two trues and one lie".  You had to tell three stories from you.  One of them should be lie but the others had to guess which one is the lie.

For Lunch we made Grilled Cheese and Quesadillas.  I helped Gwen because she was the only one who had signed up for "cooking Lunch" and for me this was not fair if she would have had to cook alone.  When we were done we walked with Sara and Amber to a place where we were allowed to go into the water.  It was cold but comfortable :D.  Sten and Tristan were very wet!

Sara had to buy fire wood and Gwen, Mason and Desivie went with her. Emily and I began to cook Dinner. We made Spaghetti with Alfredo sauce and fly :).  Fly because Emily mixed the Alfredo sauce and after a while she said: "Oh, a fly!" She stopped for a second.  Then she said: "Oh well" and mixed the fly in the Alfredo sauce. The name of the fly was Gilbert. It was really fun. :D

At night we looked for stars. There were lots of stars. It was also cold but we weren't too long there.

Friday, 9th 2013

Gwen and I had to wake up the others. Sara said the night before that we can make the hot cocoa before we wake up the others. Gwen had a good idea. She took a cup with hot cocoa without water and showed the cup to the boys.  She said: "Hey Guys, we have hot cocoa."  Tristan and Trenton jumped out of the tent and wanted the hot cocoa, despite Tristan telling us the early in the week that it is very hard to get him out of bed.  Once everybody was out of bed, we had cereal with almond milk and coconut milk.  Then we had to take down the tents (This time, the girls were faster then the boys) and load our stuff into the car. Sara wanted to go for another hike with us but most children wanted to go to the water instead. We spent only five minutes at the water.

When driving home, we took a little break  There Tristan found a dead finch on a car from Texas. He dug a whole for the bird and all children helped him. Then we took pictures of the grave and after that we drove home.  We arrived back home one and a half hours late because of the traffic. When we arrived, we helped Sara and Amber to put all stuff out of the car. 

It was really great!!!!

Update on my state quarter collection

Thanks to many friends helping me find state quarters, I have a full set of 50 state quarters, DC, and 5 territories. 

Thanks everyone!!!

Cloud Cult on stage

Live Music and painting in West Seattle 

Good bye to an old friend

River Rafting on the Wenatchee river (Eastern Washington)

Sunday, August 4th, 2013

First time river rafting for Sarah!  And it started by getting out of bed early :(  However, we made it, packed up swimwear and dry clothes for the way home and headed out toward Monroe, following Highway 2 over Steven's Pass into Eastern Washington all the way to Cashmere, WA.  Leaving the cloudy sky behind in Western Washington, the eastern side of the Cascades greeted us with a 90 degrees sunny day - 90 degrees Fahrenheit that is (leaving you with a little puzzle on how to convert that into degrees C).

The drive was about 2:30 hours long and we arrived at Cashmere, WA, just in time to get a sandwich for lunch and get changed for the trip.  Everybody grabs a life vest and a paddle and jumps on the school bus that carries paddlers up the river to the launch site.  A quick safety briefing, a few practice turns in calm waters, and down the river we go in a small boat that holds six people.  Five more boats follow in our group, but we are in the lead boat and get to explore every bump, every wave, every eddy before the others get there.  The water is cold when it splashes at us, but it is even colder when we attack another boat during a calm stretch of the river and soak them with river water :)

This isn't our boat but it is on the same stretch of the river that we were on - so much fun.

The trip goes for about 2:30 hours on the river and we enjoy several rapids, go underneath bridges, watch Ospreys in their nest, see one Bold Eagle sitting in the trees, and take a break at a beach to take a swim.  Peter is soaking Sarah in the cold river to compensate for skipping a shower that day.  The trip ends after some really tricky but most fun rapids.  Dinner is served by the rafting team in form of grilled steak and tasty sweet corn - yum.

Every fun day comes to an end and ours closes by the long drive home, this time using HW 97 and Interstate 90 over Snoqualmie Pass to Seattle.  The only sad part of the day was saying good bye to Sarah's favorite pair of Jeans who eventually burst at the seams and are beyond repair :(

Visit to Woodland Park Zoo

On July 28th, we visited the Woodland Zoo.

Peter and I spent five hours at the Zoo.  There we saw lots of animals, for example a sloth bear or two Komodo dragons.  

In some parts of the Zoo we had to pass a forest or a glasshouse.  The sloth bears, the lions and the Jaguars had got babies.  At the sloth bear we saw two cubs, at the lions three youngsters and at the Jaguars we saw one little one. They all were so cute!!!

There were lot of animals and we visited most of them.  I think, the best animal was the Komodo Dragon.  I had never heard about this animal and in the first moment I thought it was a real dragon with wings but it hasn't got wings :(.  The head looked a little bit like a dragon but its body was like a big lizard.

Peter wanted to show me the Grizzly Bears.  He said, that it can kill people. At the enclosure we saw two full-grown Grizzly Bears.

This are the animals, which we saw at  Woodland Park Zoo:

• Flamingo
• Lemur
• Gorilla
• Tree Kangaroo
• Kangoroo
• Penguin
• Sloth Bear
• Snow Leobard
• Emu
• Wallaby
• Snow Owl
• Grizzly Bear
• Steller's Sea Eagle
• Elk
• Wolf
• Meerkat
• Orangutan
• Siamang
• Tapir
• Komodo Dragons
• Warthog
• Indian and African Elephants
• Lion
• Patas Monkey
• Giraffe
• Visayan Warty Pig
• Hippo
• Rattlesnake
• King Cobra
• Python
• Two-headed lizard
• Sloth
• Flying Fox
• Gila Monster
• Tucan

I had never seen these animals:

• Steller Sea Eagle (they are bigger than a Bolt Eagle)
• Rattlesnakes and King Cobra ( they are really venomous)
• Two-headed lizard that I could touch ...

It was a great day in the Zoo because in the Zoo there were lots of animals and also one, which I didn't know before :D.

At the visitor center:  the next movie in the series :)

Here are more pictures:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/98866839@N08/sets/72157634850132468/

Summer course "Demystifying Computers" at the University of Washington

From  29th of July through the 2nd of August I took a computer class at the University of Washington.

In this class there were 14 girls in the age of 13 to 19 years old.  We learned about how computers think. There was one group leader, Mike, and also seven teaching assistants who could help us, if we had a problem.

I spent three hours a day in this class. In the middle of the three hours we made a little break. During the break we were able to take a snack if we wanted. We could either take a small bag with crispy gold fish or a bag with fruit gummies.  Today we were allowed to take both of them :)

We played an educational computer game called "Gidget". In this game you have to clearly tell the computer what you want from it = programming. We had to play in groups and our group was called "green-yellow" which are mine and Shira's favorite colors.

We had to write our own code solution and figure out which one of the possible right one's.  All levels were different. For all levels, the playing field is a grid.  Sometimes it is larger than in the other, and some times smaller.  In the first level, for example, you have to make "Gidget" go to a puppy.  The grid is 3x3 squares. The Gidget starts in the middle ([1,1]), the puppy stands on an underlying ([2,1]). Next to the grid there is a display where we could enter our code.  It started with an example written "left" but we had to go "down". You can replace the word "left" by "down 1".  The Gidget will go "down 1" because I wrote the word into the display, where the code will be standing.

Some levels were more difficult, but once you understand the commands, then they become easy.  In this game you learn playfully how computers think.  If you have played all the levels, you can also design your own levels with your own objects, sounds and backgrounds but it is much more difficult for program a level than playing them all together.

It was a really great week, because I now understand a bit more than before. :)