Rookie in Seattle

Last Monday my friend Emily and I caught a greyhound at 7:30 in the morning down to Seattle for the Rookie Road-Trip event at the Vera Project. When we arrived at the bus depot we met our friend Nathalie who came bearing snickerdoodles!

The first thing we did was head down to Pike Place Market, I had never been there before and we needed some lunch. Nathalie bought a $5 octopus balloon animal that she grudgingly carted around town all day.

Walking around Pike Market was okay, it was very busy and hot so we didn't really get the chance to stop and look at everything. We weaved through a mass amount of people to eventually find an alley way that led to the gum wall! It looked really gross in person and I got gum all over the bottom of my shoes.

After that, it was about noon and we were all very hungry so we headed to Beecher's Grilled Cheese, where they make their own cheeses. Here Emily stands very excited with the CIP (that stands for 'cheese in progress').

Emily's boyfriend had bought her a little monkey at the night market in Vancouver a few weeks ago and she wanted to take photos of it posing around town, Amelie's garden gnome style.

We sat in a park under a tree as we ate our grilled cheeses, it was all very pleasantly picturesque, minus the hordes of tourists. After we ate our lunch we forgot about taking pictures with the monkey, sorry Phil.

Nathalie, realizing the bus system in Seattle is a slow one, got us over to the Seattle Center right after lunch. It's a beautiful place, we walked past a glass-blown outdoor garden, where there were massive brightly coloured glass sculptures nestled between ferns and hedges. We walked past the Space Needle as well, it made me dizzy just looking at it, it goes up so high! The Helevator at the PNE pails in comparison.

When we eventually found the Vera Project building we realized we had shown up an hour early. Which was more than okay with me, because we'd been outside in the heat for hours now and it just so happened that outside of the building there was the most glorious site: a kiddie pool!! The coolest, most refreshing kiddie pool I've ever seen.

It really was a sight for sore eyes, I don't like being outside and I certainly don't like walking in the heat for long periods of time. Call me lazy.

Eventually the Rookie event was about to start and we left our beloved kiddie pool. We left it, but kept it in our hearts forever. I wasn't too thrilled about getting out of the water, yes I was one of those kids.

Once inside, a person that worked at the center informed the massive group of people that Tavi and the gang were out buying supplies and were going to be a little late. We made awkward small talk and ended up meeting some pretty cool chicks from Olympia. Cool gals from Olympia: if you're reading this, I'm sorry we left before exchanging URL's!

Finally the Rookie girls arrived and got things moving. We all sat down quietly on the floor of the center and waited for instructions. They introduced themselves (I think), and explained what we were doing. They had brought gems, pom-poms, glue guns and a whole assortment of little trinkets for head-band and glasses decorating. What the real point of the event was to meet other like-minded readers, mingle, and have a chance to chat with the contributors of Rookie while doing something fun like pouring glitter all over your possessions. So many people, so many gems!

Some people (not me) came like really prepared and brought their own decorations including plastic cats, mini baby figures, and my favourite was a tiny black and white toilet bowl.

Of course I didn't get any pictures of it happening because I'm an idiot, but we ended up meeting and talking with Tavi. I did however get a photo of her with Nathalie's octopus which is probably more important. Also Anaheed came over to our little group and asked to take my photo and I said 'Sure, but only if I can get one of you as well!"

We met Hazel and Petra (and Petra's sister and boyfriend) too! I was sort of zoning out when we talked to them so I don't remember much about it, I think I was hungry at this point.

We only had a few more hours in Seattle so we decided to get out of there pretty quickly, which is sad because we missed Nora and a group photo and chances to talk with more of the readers. But before we headed out we went over to Samuel to say hi, to be honest I was more nervous about meeting him than I was Tavi! He was great though, he took down Nathalie's number so that we could meet up for dinner later.

Although we left an hour before meeting up for dinner, the bus we took to Capital Hill took over an hour. It was hell, no air conditioning, and some crazy dude who seemed sweet as pie before (and judging by his conversation is also a school teacher) was talking on his phone about a movie he was working on and how he was literally going to make the lead actress eat shit and "wipe off her whore make-up," pretty unsettling stuff.

Finally we made it to Capital Hill and met up with Samuel again. All we had on the brain were tacos. Luckily this was America, land of the free, and cheap-ass Mexican food. The first street we landed on and there were at least 3 different taco restaurants to choose from. We decided on a little paper sign that wrote 'tacos' and had an arrow pointing up  a staircase. We followed the staircase to some of the best tacos I've had in my life. I had to make everyone slow down on eating so I'd have time to actually take a picture of our food.

I made them pose like they had just enjoyed the best meal of their lives.

Finally Samuel had to go to an outdoor show on the other side of Seattle, we wanted to go as well but wouldn't have had enough time to catch our bus back to Vancouver. Parting is such sweet sorrow or whatever.

After we said our good-byes, Nathalie took us back to the bus depot, kissed our cheeks and made sure we had our passports (not really). The bus depot smelt really bad and everyone there looked dirty and were very rude. I was glad to be going back to Canada, where everyone's polite and there's plenty of poutine.