Portland Bubble

I made it back from Portland last night. Great week, went way too quickly. As usual.

I stayed with Maria. She left Vesta in Costa Rica and headed to Portland. Safe, clean, reliable public transportation, yoga, organic vegetarian food, bikes, recycling, thrift stores, indie music…she couldn’t be happier, well, maybe just a tiny bit if the weather were sunnier. I also hung with Ian in his natural environment; dogs, bikes, breweries, gloom and dive bars. Yeah! We hung out just long enough for him to get all emotionally attached and then I cruelly left him at the airport... again, but not before partaking in sushi (Amazingly yummy sushi, I might add.) hehehehehe!

We made pupusas for some of Maria’s friends, Aaron (RPCV from Honduras), Lauren and Brian. Brian is in a band (mejor dicho: IS a band) that is pretty great and going on tour this summer. Check him out: American Nobody.

We reunited with don Clos. (Oh the memories.)

We went on a tour of the Rhodedendrum gardens with Aunt Kathy and Uncle Rod. The flowers were gorgeous and Kathy and Rod are always a blast to hang out with.

I hung out with Ian and Makai (dog) at the Lucky Lab a brewpub that allows the four-legged friends. (Only in Portland.) I checked out Portland State as a possible grad school in the future. It fared quite well. I took a tour of the campus and simultaneously broke in a new tour guide. The poor kid, I felt so bad for him. He was SO nervous. He kept saying things like “We are going to go somewhere else now, but I might not remember how to get there.” Then turned around and ran full on into a closed elevator door. We did our absolute best to not laugh out loud. We were moderately successful.

Katie Questions, Me, Maria, Jon "the Rock" and some street art.

We hung out with some Peace Corps People Thursday night and went to Last Thursday. Last Thursday is when artists and enterprising eclectics line a street (don’t remember which one) selling their wares. This happens on the (ready for it?) last Thursday of every month. We did some hoola-hooping and bought buttons:

I don’t know what it means but I think it is funny.

We rented zip car on Friday and were two big, giddy dorks. Zip cars are pretty friggin’ cool. It is basically a share care for those that do not want to own a car but need to use one every once in a while. The coolest thing about them is that you lock and unlock the doors by holding a card up to the windshield. We drove out to the coast (Goonies territory) and hiked out to this amazingly beautiful overlook in Oswald West State Park. We even saw “barking, sea creatures” which were later identified as sea lions. We also saw snails, slugs and snakes which were less fun for us to see, although probably quite amusing for anyone who happened to see us see them. We dipped our patas in the ocean, and promptly took them out again. Same ocean, big temperature difference.

And then it seemed, as quickly as it had begun, I was back on a plane to El Salvador. I was relieved to be able to land okay as there had been a tropical storm warning. The hurricane that hit Costa Rica and Nicaragua was “only” a tropical storm by the time it got here. So, the rain is officially here, kicking off another moldy-never-dry-clothing season.

Tomorrow... back to work. Ick.