arrival in WA from OH via train

Hi everyone!

This is a picture of where I ate lunch near the canal in Chicago when I got off the train for a couple hours on Tuesday. I got off the train from Cleveland, walked around for a while, and then got back onto a different train after lunch. The second picture is me inside the Chicago train station.

I am safely off the train, out of my friend's house in Seattle, with my family at the reunion. We are in the Cascade Mountains and they are big and beautiful on every side of us. They are forested with evergreens, not the foreign-looking-to-me deciduous trees of Ohio and western New York. However, I did notice that my eyes had gotten used to OH-NY-PA and that it took several hours of scenery on the train before the landscape of my childhood looked familiar again. Summer-dry, dark-green leaves, tall pines or scrawny Other, rugged mountains and forest and Pacific Ocean. My highschool friend Kate and I grilled Halibut and chopped veggies that we got at the farmers market and were so deliciously fresh that we didn't put any salad dressing on our salad. We ate on her porch with a view of TOPOGRAPHY covered in Western-USA foliage with a West-coast feeling air texture. Oceany.

I put my houseplant in a bag for the journey and now she's back in a pot. I've been on every time zone in the country in the past week. The train ride was a good slow pace for me to make the transition, so I don't feel shocked, but ready to be here. I'm happy to be sleeping horizontal again and not be with strangers 24/7. On the train I met Amish, Baptist, and Quaker passengers. I actually played Dutch Blitz with three Amish girls-- and one of them was named Rachel and is also 22! Lots of cool people and lots of time to journal and think and be in transition. It feels like a homecoming to meet up with my family and know that all these transitions are about to become settledness-- I will be with the folks I'm with now, living with them in a stable environment, for the months to come. Thinking about gettin a job in ID doesn't seem as daunting with so little else to deal with. ID driver's license, here I come!

I miss you all and send you love from Washington.

Hugs,
Rachael