In Which I find Out More of the Basics

November 2, 2016
 My host family has 15 pets.  Most of them are just for fun, but the chickens actually help out.  They have three hens: two Americaunas and one Barred Plymouth Rock. The Americaunas lay green eggs!  It's fun going out in the morning and collecting eggs for breakfast. But this morning when they went out there were THIS many eggs:

My host mom says that means somebody hasn't been doing his job, because each chicken only lays one egg per day.

Since the kids don't go away to school, they have to do PE at home too.  Other than running the dog, jumping on the trampoline, and hiking, five of them take karate...

...and five are on puppet team at their church.  Puppet team is COOL!  They have all sorts of puppets and put on blacklight puppet shows.  The team used to compete but they kept on winning all the prizes so they were asked to just do exhibitions instead.  Here's me with my new friends. 

The blue guy is Drago and the pink one is his sister Lucy.  My host brother Ben (15)  is Lucy's head and controls the mouth, eyebrows, and ears, and his best friend Harrison is Lucy's hands.  That's Brady in the front.  His Funzle is singing some weird song. Here's a video of one of their blacklight songs:

 

In Which I Learn That Homeschool = Home's Cool

November 1, 2016

OK, so the first thing you need to know about my host family is that they are a bit unusual. Yesterday I noticed right away that there were school buses running all over the place and kids crowding on down at the corner but none of the younger kids in my host family were awake yet.

That's because they homeschool. Their mom teaches them at home.  They come out and eat breakfast and then they do their lessons. Most kids have nightmares about showing up for school in their pajamas, but this is the normal way they do their morning schoolwork.
They play for a while and have lunch and then do some more lessons.
They don't always do school at home. Here are Ben, Brady and Christopher doing their history work at the coffee shop (not in their pajamas).

One day a week they go to Homeschool Co-op. This is where a bunch of homeschooling families get together and all their kids have a regular school day. The Co-op my host family goes to has about 100 kids.  They have classes, recesses, and lunch lunch; do experiments, learn art, and go on field trips. My host mom is the high school teacher. The students in her class are 8th grade to 12th grade, 13-17 years old. They call their class "Rhetoric," and all week they do TONS of hard homework to prepare for class.  Here is some of the rhetoric class writing genus and difference charts on the board:

 

 They get grades for all that work. At night my host mom grades their work...sometimes with Toby on her lap.

 At first I thought this was a really funny way to do school, but it's not so bad once you get used to it.

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...

Introductions

October 28, 2016
Hi!
I'm Bailey the Bear, and this is my travel blog.  I come from Pennsylvania, where I lived with my friend Ashely.  In October I said a tearful goodbye to Ashley and all her friends at school in New Britain, and settled into a very uncomfortable envelope to travel across the country to Kent, Washington.  Phew.  This is about as far away from home as a bear can get!

I am staying with Ashely's cousin's family for a few months before I travel again, and we are having  great adventures and learning lots of cool stuff. I've been writing in my journal but it's using up a lot of pages and I kept getting glue from the pictures and stuff on the papers.  So my host mom (Ashley's cousin) is helping me set up a blog to keep up with my travels.

First, meet my host family, the Carsons:

Wow. When I arrived and they opened the envelope that was a LOT of people looking at me.  And my clothes were all rumpled from being in the stuffy envelope, and it didn't smell so great either.  But they were excited to meet me.  Let me tell you about them:
My host dad has a long mustache.  He is a computer guy for a concrete company in Seattle.
The oldest son, Corwin, is 22. He's a horseback riding instructor and has a degree in computer animation.
Next in the back row is Ben. He is 15 and spends a lot of time doing school work, reading books out loud over the phone to girls in his class, and playing his cajon, a drum like a box you sit on.
Eli has a beard. He is 20, is also a horseback riding instructor, and is an English major in college.
Bethany is 17 and is a senior in high school. Pretty much all she does is school work. And drawing. And some swing dancing.
That's my host mom, Ashley's cousin Debbe.  She is a teacher and a chaplain, and she works as an Activity Director for a nursing home, whatever that means.
There's me and my very own travel buddy friend Fern.  You'll read about him in another post.
In front are Christopher (11) and Brady (13). They are in junior high and they like to jump on the trampoline, swim in the river, and play computer games. Christopher wants to be a wildlife conservation officer in Russia and he loves wolves and learning Russian. He does karate with his dad, Eli, and Bethany.  Brady draws dragons and performs on puppet team with Ben and Bethany and Corwin.     

Now that you know all of us, I'll start my stories: