In Which We Take A Little Detour

Date: October 29, 2016
Location: VA Hospital, Seattle, WA

I was pretty tired when I arrived last night, so I greeted the family and went right to bed.  My host mom got me up early this morning to see Seattle.  Seattle is the city most people think of when they hear "Washington," but it's not the capitol. I didn't know that.  The capitol is in Olympia, about an hour South of Kent. She said we'll go there later. I'll put up pictures.

But Seattle is an interesting city. My host mom volunteers as a chaplain at the VA Hospital in Seattle every Saturday. I asked her what a chaplain was, and she said it's like a pastor without a church. She says she provides spiritual support. I think that means she prays with people and gives them communion if they want it and smiles and holds a lot of people's hands.

Anyway, she said the best view of Seattle is from Beacon Hill, where the VA Hospital sits, so she took me with her. But we ended up taking a little detour.

On the way from the parking garage to the hospital, I had a little trouble with my eye.  It must have come loose in the envelope and it fell off. It didn't hurt, really, but just try looking around through one eye!  My host mom said she understood, because she is blind in one eye too.  The same eye!  That made me feel better.  The only thing she had in her purse was glitter glue but nothing to hold the eye on while the glue dried, so she took me to the emergency room.

 Here I am waiting for the nurses. We stopped at Starbucks first.

Once the nice nurses patched me up, we went upstairs to the dialysis floor.  My host mom visits a very special man up there named Pastor Brown.   She sits with him while he has his treatments and they talk and laugh and then they pray together.  They hold hands to pray.  My hands were kind of small so I guarded the TV remote while they were praying.

See these bracelets my host mom is wearing?  They were made in Kenya and are called Rafiki bracelets.  Rafiki is the Swahili word for "Friend". There are lots of people from Kenya around here and it is helpful to speak some Swahili.

After we finished with Pastor Brown we went to look out at the city. Here it is:

Seattle is nicknamed "the Emerald City" and you can see why/  Everything is so green here.  Washington State is "The Evergreen State" and you can also see why that is...