Lake Washington

I've been in training the past few days, its pretty intense. Really easy stuff, but there's a lot to remember and we have long days. I used my lunch break to take some pictures of Lake Washington. These were taken right out side of our training facilities. The last one is a place called Sound Garden that sounds really cool when the wind goes through and it's where that awesome band got their name.

Downtown Seattle

Today I got to see some more of the town along with a few fellow trainees. We went to Pike Place Market and walked around a bunch, and I took some pictures. Then I went grocery shopping and picked up lots of soup and top ramen. Training starts tomorrow, getting down to business!

In Seattle

So I made it up to Seattle successfully. The plane ride was interesting, I sat next to a person with Tourette's. He was kind of having a hard time there, but the plane made it fine. I took a very expensive cab-ride to the apartment I'll be staying at and have started to settle in. The apartment is sort of near University of Washington, seems like a pretty safe area. I took a huge walk around the neighborhood, there isn't much going on in around here. There'd probably be more if school was in session. It's close to Lake Washington which is beautiful. It's very pretty here in general; there's some snow on the trees and top of houses and cars but everything is still pretty green. I tried to take some pictures but it was too dark and they didn't look good. I'll take some tomorrow and post them. It's definitely colder here than California, but it's not too bad, it actually feels kind of nice. Training starts monday so tomorrow is a day off, I'm probably going to take the bus downtown and explore a bit.

Tomorrow I'll Be Gone

Hello everybody, I created this blog mainly to keep everyone updated with what I'm doing and also to keep a log of my adventures for myself. Previously I have traveled to China in summer 2005, Malawi and Zambia in summer 2006, and last summer I toured the United States with my band. (You can read about this trip and other musical happenings at Real Love Record's Livejournal)Now I'm headed up to Seattle tomorrow and after a couple weeks will be making my way up to Alaska. The last couple months I've been at home not doing a whole lot, I've read a whole bunch of good books, painted a little, hiked a little, wrote some music and not a whole lot else. I'm super excited to get back to work and see a new part of the world. Hopefully I'll keep this updated fairly regularly while I'm in Alaska and during future endeavors. Please comment or better yet email me at klcoons@gmail.com, I'd like to hear what's going on with my friends and family while I'm away. I will end this inaugural post with a little poem that I love and feel is appropriate.

At a Window
Give me hunger,
O you gods that sit and give
The world its orders.
Give me hunger, pain and want,
Shut me out with shame and failure
From your doors of gold and fame,
Give me your shabbiest, weariest hunger!

But leave me a little love,
A voice to speak to me in the day end,
A hand to touch me in the dark room
Breaking the long loneliness.
In the dusk of day-shapes
Blurring the sunset,
One little wandering, western star
Thrust out from the changing shores of shadow.
Let me go to the window,
Watch there the day-shapes of dusk
And wait and know the coming
Of a little love.
- Carl Sandburg