Walking along the shores of Lake Washington and other news...

Wow it’s amazing how quickly time passes whilst you are breathing in and out. The 30^th of September marks my 100^th day in Seattle. I have had 13, that’s thirteen working weeks here and I have just finally completed the second run through of the technique I really wanted to learn as a priority – sigh! So what have I been up to since my last update? Mainly breathing in and out and watching reruns of TV series I love on Netflix (embarrassed face). Obviously work has taken up a reasonable amount of time too. I am continuing my church hunting; I visited another church where ‘the preach’ was given by video link. I have also revisited the UMC church I visited my first Sunday (with the expressive lady pastor), an impressive number of people remembered me and some even remembered my name!  I have ‘finished’ the Psalms of Ascent “How good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity! … For there the LORD bestows his blessing, even life for evermore.” (Psalm 133), food for thought as I seek a new church community to ‘live’ with. 

I have also joined a flute choir which boasts four flute parts, alto and bass flutes, and allegedly piccolos. We’ve had two rehersals so far and I didn’t really keep up with the playing but at least most of the time I knew where we were in the music! I hope with more practice I will improve. It will also help when I become more familiar with having a conductor and using her to figure out the speed of pieces.

A few weekends ago I went for a 15 mile walk up to the top of Lake Washington and I have a few photos to share though from that (see below). 

The MOHAI (museum of history and industry) that I visited on
the first Thursday of the month (which is free)

Inside the MOHAI

See the proof for 'Seattleites'

The space needle, taken with the fish eye setting on my new camera

My walking root
(although this is the shortest route between the two points)

Tuna and sweetcorn sandwiches - yum!

little birdies that kept me entertained during lunch

Views over Lake Washington

Beautiful ripples

Look what I found in the grass Dad!

There were a couple of clumps in different spots...

Ellensburg Rodeo

Yesterday I got to go to a rodeo courtesy of someone at work who bought a spare ticket. We started off at 7:20 for a two hour drive east across the mountains and to Ellensburg. Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures of the mountains - I'll have to take some another time. In addition I had to take the photos on my phone and this was one of those days when a zoom lens was needed - these should at least give you a flavour...

the other side of the mountains

We got to Ellensburg for about 9:30am so we could watch the parade. It started with a local fire engine...

I may have been singing 'High School Musical' songs to myself at this point...

A marching band - I was impressed with the conducter walking backwards

Representatives of the Yakama Indian Nation

The county fair had small and large livestock competitions including chickens

This mare had her foal with her in the parade

Ferris Wheel and Cotton Candy

Circle Dance

At this point various groups of riders were being introduced and
weaving backwards and forwards across the rodeo area.

Bareback riders

another bareback rider

Rider dismounting by moving onto the back someone
elses horse whilst both horses we galloping 

The aim of this was to grab the calf, turn it over and rope
three of it's legs together to secure it. Seconds later the calves
were up and running off to the other side of the arena.

I can't remember what the point of this was but it basically
involved wrestling the come to bull ground, maybe that was the point?

Mexican Rope Slinger on the horse with the long mane,
and his wife on the super clever sitting horse. 

This time they had saddles of some kind

some of the breeding stock

Working in pairs to rope the back and front of the cows

This was fun to watch ... 1) rope the cow

2) your partner runs in and...

3) wrestles the cow 

4) wrestles the cow for a long time

5) eventually both partners get on the ground and the one
that roped the cow milks it!

Bull riding

we only saw a couple of people close to getting trampled by
the bull. One guy must have been right under it's hooves but
he still stood up and walked away

Sometimes the bulls didn't want to go back into the stalls

this one was particularly stubborn

it took three or four ropes to get his out of the arena

so we had a good day and no-one was hurt - phew!

We ended the day with ice cream - cotton candy
ice cream and huckleberry ice cream - yum

Overall impressions it wasn't quite as violent a I thought it might be and it was good fun. I didn't get the feeling any of the animals were particularly worried by the experience, except the bulls who probably just live in a perpetual bad mood. It was a shame we didn't have a bit more time to look around the fair but we were exhausted by the end of the rodeo anyway. 

Yesterday I went to another different church and got to stay for lunch. I hadn't got a corn dog from the fair which I regretted slightly - seemed like a typical american thing to do. There were corn dogs for the church lunch. God looks after the big things but he also looks after some of the little things too.