Hello everyone! I would love to share with you how amazing this experience has changed my life. From day one we were recieved with open arms, making us feel like home, and as the time went by once beeing in class I starting feeling like fish in the water, it couldn't have been in a different way, Why is that?, Well when it happens to have a teacher like ours, learning is aquared easily because of the great sense of humor Frieda has, as well as the musical she is and the importance she gave to each lesson she carried out, focusing mainly in our pronounciation futhermore encouraging us to talk and write about all the different places we were taken or had visited on our own, which by the way were really meaningful to me, and each word, lesson, view, friend, classmate, teacher and host have a especial part in my heart as well as in my knowledge.

      I'd like to thank you all for being part of this wonderful expirience, and for you my dear teacher I took the best for you, which is your passion. Thank you Frieda for sharing yourself to us, for making us feel like home....Blessings for all!!!

Fremont and their huge things

I love going to Fermont, finally I could see this Troll that everybody at school talks about, actually at the very beginning of our course we were told about this place and this gigantic sculpture and I could not avoid climbing in order to get a picture.

My friend Mariana was my company almost all this trip, because she loves trolls too, we noticed that many people enjoys getting a picture there.

This Troll was built under the bridge and as far as I know it was built during a competition with the main purpose of avoiding vandalism and homeless living there.

We also took a long walk and found something really weird, there was Lenin represented in a statue, I could not understand why? There is a chocolate factory which I decided not to enter because I am not a chocolate lover but some of my classmates went crazy.

Mariana and I walk down the bridge and while we were approaching to the lake, we found another statute, but this one was really interesting, it represents Sri Chinmoy, a peace maker.

I really love walking along Fremont streets.

      Going to Ballard happened to be a smelly and salty but great recreational activity in as well as visiting the restaurants in the area.

       Our classmates and I were really interested in watching what we learnt about The Locks and Salmon in class in the Ship Canal. These locks have been built with this incredible engineering which main purpose to help boats to cross from one side to the other is to move boats from the water level of the lakes to the water level of the Puget Sound. In additions these locks prevent the sea water to get mixed from the Puget Sound with the fresh water of the lakes. I had the chance to see that happened and it was really exciting how it is possible to maintain the level of the water and the way the water goes up.

      We also looked forward to see salmons, and the way the release their offspring, unfortunately that was not possible, at least I could see a single salmon.

     Once having seen all this, we went to grab a bite, our teacher suggested two places, The Totem House and a Fish Restaurant, of course I chose The Totem House because the teacher told us that there delicious hamburgers are sold and as being a hamburger lover, I could not miss the chance, and I was right, the hamburger I had was OMG, hehe….I planning to return to this place one day.

Café and History

        I would like to share with you how incredible experience I had in one of these cultural activities we have been enjoying in this wonderful program. Not many universities in the world are concerned about giving students the chance to learn about Seattle's history and enjoy different types of coffee almost at the same time; and where is this chance taken?, well The Burke Museum has this interesting fusion. 

      This wonderful Museum counts with two stories, on the first floor you can find a coffee shop where besides drinking the coffee of your preference or any other special beverage you can also spend time with classmates doing homework or only chatting as well as having the great opportunity to visit one on the museums rooms. This room known as 'Pacific Voices' you can see and read about the beginning of the civilization, ceremonies, traditions, about the first inhabitants in Seattle as well as incredible  facts about The Salmon which happens to be of great importance for the Seattleites, furthermore about whales and the way they communicate and the engineering of their body. In the other hand, on the second floor there is a room known as Life and Times of Washington State can learn about fossils, fauna and flora, there are incredibly dinosaurs fossils as well as species that lately got extinguished.

                                              On my way to Jimi Hendrix’s Memorial

       Last Sunday my friend Luis Ruy and I decided to visit Jimi Hendrix’s Memorial which is located in Greenwood Memorial Park in Renton, Washington.

       Our journey started once we got on the first bus, I mentioned first bus because in order to get to Renton you need to take 3 buses which are in our case 71 from home to Downtown, 101 to Renton DC and 105 to Monroe AV.

       Along our trip Ruy was telling me about Jimi because I do not know about him very much. He told me many interesting things about this wonderful artist, as for sure many of you know or perhaps not, Hendrix is recognized as one of the most creative and influential musician of the 20th century, he pioneered the explosive possibilities of the electric guitar as well as innovating a style of combining fuzz feedback and controlled distortion in order to create a new musical form. What it really surprised me was, that he couldn’t read or write music at all.

       For all these reasons we decided to visit his grave, which happens to be in an incredible park, surrounded by beautiful trees and sharing the area with some other musicians as well as Chinese Dynasty and many other important people.

      I was really amazed by having had the opportunity to be in such an interesting place full of passion and creativity.

Talking To Natives

         Along this week my team and I have been working on a topic we were asked to choose for our final project which happens to be about Food, Restaurants and Eating Habits. We have been developing possible questions in order to interview people in Seattle and today some students, teachers and workers from UW were invited to our class to help us to have more practise in reference to our projects. 

      I was really excited about talking to them as well as having the opportunity to carry out everything I have been working in. They were so keen to help us that it was really easy to deliver the questions. The class next door joined us as soon as the guests arrived and once the stations were  oragnised, every team started asking questions in turns. At the beginning it was a little crazy but as the time went by every team felt more comfortable so that the activity turned much more interesting as we were going from one station to another getting as much information as we could for our final project.

                                                             Seattle’s Passion

        Today in class a great activity was delivered at one of Mac Carthy's classroom, its name, Coffee Seattle's Passion. We were asked to look for and visit as a team a Coffee Shop in UW.  My classmates Luz, Antonio and I had to go to the Burke Café which is located under the Burke Museum on Campus. It is a cozy beautiful place where you can see teachers mostly and you feel comfortable right the way because of the baristas' kindness. The weather happened to be the perfect excuse to carry this activity out due to the kind of questions we had to make such as what’s your most popular drink this time of the year? or Are  you open on weekends and in the evening?, among others. My classmates and I decided to ask and have the most popular coffee; "the Pumpkin Latte", the least popular; "the Green Tea Latte" and the weirdest; "Iced Coffee" as well as having the most delicious dessert which by the way I did not know how it was called until today, its name is "scone" which is a small rich pastry or quick bread, sometimes bake on a griddle and this one was filled with blueberries and covered with sugar. To our taste all our drinks were delicious and we were delighted by the scone. In addition there was something that surprised us a lot, Amanda Knox had been drinking coffee there by the time she studied in this university.