My whole experience in this wonderful country!!!

Being here was one of the best experiences I have ever had in my life. I have always thought that travelling and living abroad is the perfect chance to learn from people and enrich my culture.

I deeply believe that when I visit a place I root myself to it and that is how I can live a better experience to grow up and mature my ideas, also my knowledge.

I have enjoyed having class with an amazing, lovely and funny teacher, our teacher Frieda, who made me remember that teaching is one of the best jobs in life, because you have to enjoy what you do in order to get your bounty.

Also I learnt from all my classmates not just about knowledge, but how to behave and share my knowledge, because from them I learnt that knowledge has to be shared in order to trascend in life, if not we get stucked.

From Seattle I heart the rainy, cold and windy days which helped me to find the peace I was looking for so long. So I am still thinking that this is not a coincidence and that I must be here for a special reason and that is why I got here, because of the destiny.

Walking the streets and realizing that my country has greatness and that me as a Mexican citizen can contribute to made it better day by day, that was one of the gifts I take deeply with me now.

Having the chance to be a student at UW makes me feel happy, because at least I could experience a bit how does it feel to be a Husky student here and that was awesome.

However, I had the chance to taste new food, to talk with people from many other parts of the world on the bus or while I was walking in the Pike Place Market. Drinking coffee everyday as I always dreamt -because I am a coffee addict- was scruomptious!!!

And the last but not least I thank you, because in some way we became at least two chaps that knew each other amazigly in a foreing country being Mexicans...Many thanks for reading my lines and also for dropping me some lines too.

Fremont.

Today I went to visit Fremont, this experience was really nice because I visited another part from Seattle and the guides were really nice with me.

I visited the Troll wich was amazing! because I love trolls, it is really big and it is below a bridge.

Then I walked through the streets and saw the Lenin satue and I got to the chocolate factory where I could try as many chocolates as I could, because I really love chocolate, my favorite one was Chai Tea flavor and the Chiplote one.

Outside the facory there are two topiary dinosaurs that protect it.

I also saw a part of the lake that it is there and the most amazing thing was that there was a policeman checking the cars in the street and he seemed really cranky.

Nice neighbourhood!

Burke and Bainbridge Island!

On November 19th I went to visit two places here in Seattle, WA, those were Burke museum in the UW and Bainbridge Island.

Burke museum has a slogan which says "The life before you", such slogan caught my attention because in the museum there are a lot of amazing things about how life used to be here in Seattle thousand years ago.

It was really special to me seeing all the dinosaur bones and fossils that are exhibited there, I also learnt how glaciers were formed in the Puget Sound area, and how this area is so important for Seatle.

My favourite par from the museum was the exhibition named "pasive voices" in which you can learn about people from other countries and how they celebrate their typical holidays here in Seattle, it was also amazing to see special objects for them and their culture.

This place was so nice and meaningful to me.

Secondly, I had the chance to hop on a ferri at the ferri station and go straight to Bainbridge Island, the second best place to live in the world! Such an amazing experience the one I had, because I could see the nagnificent view of the Island and Seattle, I could see the Space Needle, the Columbia Center and the Great Wheel all together in the same view.

The experience of lsitening to the sound of the water, feeling the breeze on your face, seeing the landscape full of seagulls and in the water lots of jellyfish atonished me.

Then when I reached the island the experience was really wonderful, because the place is really quiet, peaceful and cozy.

The main street is full of some shops where you can buy clothes and shoes, but there is an area where you can eat bakery, chocolate or coffee, there is also an ice cream shop called "Mora" where you can have the most delicious ice cream, but if you don not know what falvour you would like to have you can ask to try as many flavours as you wish to have the one you like the most; you can even have a crepe or a pie.

I walked close to the place where you can rent a cayak and have fun there and I think this place was so nice and pecular.

At the end I took the ferry to go back and I stayed outside and felt the freezing breeze and took a lot of pics, I had a really pleasant and lovely day here in Seattle.

Ballard.

Today in the morning we hit the road and wet directly to Ballard! Such an amazing experience the one we had today in this lovely place.

First we visited this place in order to see the Hiriam M, Chirrenden Locks in the Salmon Bay which are in the Ship Canal from Seattle, WA.

The locks were built to move boats from the water level of the lakes to the water level of the Puget Sound and vice versa. Also, they were built to prevent the mixing of sea water from the Puget Sound with the fresh water of the lakes, and by the way I saw lots of salt on the bridges, which I think comes from the water that reaches that part.

However, the locks were made to maintain the level of the water and it is really amazing to see how the level comes up and down when an operator closes and opens the doors.

There are only two locks, one is for the boats and vessels and the other ones is for the big ships and that one surprised me a lot, because it was empty and some people were down fixing it.

I could saw how the locks can elevate and down a boat and it takes like 7 minutes for a small one to go up and down.

I really loved the sound of the water. I saw the place where salmon can be fished, and it would be great to see how they capture salmon.

I found this place amazing!!!

Burke museum.

On Tuesday our lovely teacher took us to the Ballard Museum. This visit was really amazing because this museum is about culture and the fossils that were found here in Seattle. I could see the nature issues of this part of the world and how they affect animals and flora.

I could also see how a volcano was origined on Earth, such an amazing thing!

My favourite par was the one about named "Passive voices", such area is about immigrant people that are now living here in Seattle, and how they celebrate special holidays from their countries here in Seattle.

  

I enjoyed the visit of this place and I also had fun with all my classmates.

MOHAI

Last Thursday I had the chance to visit the MOHAI in Seattle...let me tell you that it was such an experience. First, I we took the bus 73 to get there and it was an amazing experience to see the way  , we passed over a big bridge which crosses from one part to another, close to that bridge there's a station of water airplanes, watching them was really nice, because I had never had the chance to see one of those.

Reaching there was amazing, because we passed a place where there were boats and I met an Alaskan guy, who showed me how to paint a boat after they made it with wood, interesting! Isn't is?

In the entrance there's a big bell which is really beautiful. Then when I got to that place there were lots of amazing stuff there. One of my favorite sections was the one to remember the WW II, which by the way made me realize this place used to be a shooting place; the most interesting part In this section was the one in which there is a special "survivor atomic bomb kit" where you can see big cans that contain special stuff in order to survive an atomic bomb explosion, i.e. oxygen masks, food, instructions to protect yourself against gases, etc.

Also there's a machine that was used to do cans, and there's a special add that says " Can what you can", which by the way I really loved because there was the beginning of food in containers, there are cans of milk, veggies and fruit.

One of the things I liked the most was the music section, where you can see the Nirvana's award for their platinum disc and the playlist of the las show they performed here in Seattle and that was written in hand by David Grol, there's a ball that has the name of Pearl Jam and they also mention hi I Hendrix and some other singers and bands that are important and were born in this town, for example, Modest Mouse, which in fact I like.

The small theatre shows a presentation about how Seattle got burnt and borne from the ashes, which since my point of view it's an amazing fact of this place.

The Bezos' section, which by the way is dedicated to technology and how it improves our everyday life is really interesting and it was more exciting for me to know that Bezos is the founder of Amazon.

At the end a I visited the surroundings of this place, where you can find some boat, the one I liked the most was one of the oldest, which was painted in green and is 124 years old.

After that we took the light train and went to visit SAM which was nice, but ai didn't liked a lot because I think there should be more art not just pop art, even though there are many things to see.

I ended up the trip by eating taco in "la vaca", which by they way were really far from the real tacos we have in Mexico.   

Coffee shop in Seattle.

Today I spent the morning with some classmates at the Ave looking for a place called 'the Ugly Mug'. When we finally found it there was a really small but charm place, where you can have a coffee and a slice of pie, a cookie or even something salty. The place was really nice, because there were nice people attending it.
The coffee they sell is really nice and delicious and we interviewed people there, we found that the most common coffee flavor is the pumpkin, apple cider and eggnog.

It was a pleasant and comfortable morning with my classmates, because we got a coffee and a small chat about our scholarship and the lucky chance to be here in Seattle.

My amazing weekend!

Hi everyone! Now let me tell you that I walked for a long time to visit again the Public Market, because it is a place that I find interesting. After some time tasting some spicy jellies and drinking coffee I left the market to go and visit the Space Needle.


I never imagined the amazing view from the top no matter it was cold! I spent time watching the lovely and amazing view form the sea and the mountains.

I really enjoyed staying there and having a nice coffee...Where? Obviously in Starbucks!


Then I visited the Pacific Science Center, and I didn't like it at all, so I deduced to go to the EMP MUSEM, which was amazing and incredible, I could saw many stuff about horro movies, my favorite ones. also there was a place to conmemorize Jimy Hendrix, there were some parts of his guitars. Then I visited the Guitar Gallery and it was quiet and lovely.


The most interesting part for me was the one in memory of Nirvana, such an amazing place full of stuff form the band...That place killed me! I was astonished!

I ended up by visiting the hall of videos where I saw many of my favorite music videos and I had fun singing and playing the drums at the music studio.

This place is really recommended if you are really fond of music!

The Gold Rush Museum.

Today's experience was really nice, at 1:40 pm we went to a bus stop at the Ave, in order to take the 73 bus to get to Pioneer Square, there I experienced the origins of Seattle.


We saw some beautiful streets which were covered by lightened trees, there were some totem poles, which are really lovely and nice.

The museum was really nice, I got a "Passport gold traveller" which was amazing, because thanks to it I visited all the stations to get each stamp and to realize how people from that time used to travel in order to get gold.


I watched a movie in the theatre about the origins of the Rush of Gold in Seattle, Alaska and Canada, and in fact all the info in it was really interesting to me.

What a native-speaker experience!!!

Hello, today was an amazing class, because we could have the chance to practice our speaking ability with native speakers of English.
This chance to spend time talking about many topics was really amazing for me, because it makes me realize that I can be understood, such a nice thing!
I really loved having fun by asking some native speakers about the Culture of Guns here in Seattle, and I found interesting points of view from different people.
Also, the experience of having my classmates next to me made me feel comfortable and this made the activity more meaningful for me.
What i liked the most is the fact that we shared a bit of our culture with people from here and the other way around.

Veteran's day.

This year the Veteran's day was on November 11th. It isn't easy for me to see that here in USA people commemorize the ones who fought a war. It is special for me, because you can see how much respect people have for others. I don't agree with wars, because I think it's not the way we should solve problems, unfortunately there still exist war.
I spend the day with a family that comes from Arizona, and they invited me and my friends to have dinner with them. Ashley, a member of the family, cooked a pre-Thanks giving dinner for us. Dinning there was really amazing for me, because I could taste typical food from here like green beans, roasted turkey and ham, baked potatoes and carrots, smashed potatoes with bacon, olive oils which were really scrumptious, sweet potatoes for dessert and pumpkin pie.
We ended the day having fun by playing card, we played 'nerds' and it was really funny.

Just a life.

Claudia Leyra was born in a small town in the State of Mexico, such town is well known as Amecameca de Juarez, and it is a lovely cold and rainy place which is located close to the Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl mountains in Mexico. There people are really narrow-minded, but they have a lot of values and traditions.

She was born on December 13, 1985 in a small house where her mother, Luz Maria, used to live with her father, Martin. After 3 years of being married they split up and went to live apart, Claudia moved on with her grandmother, when she was 6 years old; there she met her cousins Erika, Fernando and Franco, who were like her brothers and grew up with them having fun and a lot of good experiences to tell.

When she was 18, she went to live by herself to Toluca and there she studied to be an English translator, after working as an English teacher in different schools, she decided to study a master’s degree in applied linguistics to teach better her students. She really enjoys having fun in the classroom and spend time with her students also in the classroom. She likes reading and writing, in fact she is the author of several pieces of writing that their professors assigned her for homework.

The Ave.

Today I walked the Ave here in Seattle, let me tell you this was a great experience, because there are a lot of things to do and also places to visit in this avenue. I really love walking and enjoying the smell of all kinds of food  -it was scrumptious! that I even felt I was starving. 

I interviewed some people from the stores and restaurants, some of them were kind, some of them didn't, and I could realize that there are a lot of immigrants in this place.

I also noticed that there are many homeless people in the street, such a thing was really surpising for me, because I never imagined that could be possible here, anyway, I hope God help them to stand life day by day.

I personally enjoyed the company of a nice classmate, who walked with me and talked to me all the time, it is amazing meeting people from my country in a foreign country.

The store that I liked the most was the smoke store, where you can get many stuff to smoke, I don't smoke, but is nice to learn something new everyday.

I thank to my professor because she made me having fun in the Ave.