Our first week in the States

We have done it. We took the plane from Asia to the States. Just like that. Living the American Dream ;) The flights were horrible though. First a 3 hours flight to Taipei/Taiwan (where we had to wait 7 hours for our next flight) and then 11 hours to Seattle. Both flights had turbulences so that I could not sleep and even cried as I was so scared and did not know how to calm down anymore. Luckily we arrived well after all at Seattle on the same day we left (we faced a 15 hours’ time difference back in time).

Seattle

Seattle is the biggest city in the state of Washington and hosts the headquarters of Amazon, Starbucks and I think even Google… maybe that is the reason why the hotel prices are so unbelievable high. The first night in the United States of America we spent in a very special Airbnb. Our host turned out to be a scientist just like in the Big Bang Theory. He and his big friends entertained us with new theories about quantum physics and we learned all kinds of things about Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity i.e. how elementary particles interact with each other and how you can turn those interactions into new sources of energy. He was even working on a warp engine and showed us a kind of magnet driven engine that he had build by himself just using copper wire, a cylinder, magnets and a little remote control. The rest of what he told us we did not really understand as it contained a lot of equations, laws of nature, physics and chemistry. To sum it up, we spent the night at Sheldon Cooper’s place.

After that first special night in a suburb in Seattle we treated ourselves with a nice hotel so we walked into the Hyatt with our Asian flip flops and backpacks. We used our further stay in that big city not for sightseeing but to go shopping. We needed to get jeans again, shoes and some hoodies which we bought at Goodwill (that night at the Hyatt left kind of a hole in our budget for the first week). We did go down to the river and walked a little through downtown but did not really see a lot.

The funny thing is that we enjoy the countryside suddenly more than a big city so we tend to escape cities as fast as possible. And that is what we did the next day. We took the bus to Spokane Valley.

Site note: I was suffering from a big jetlag so I slept almost through the whole bus ride. I only woke up once and that surprisingly happened when we were driving through Leavenworth. Look at that picture! I thought I was dreaming as the Americans just copied a Bavarian city (and they did a pretty good job!)

Spokane Valley

Why Spokane Valley? It is the place where Lynn and her two sons Cameron and Tanner are now living. Rick lived one year in St. Maries/ Idaho 18 years ago (in 1999) and one of his two host mothers is Lynn. He had told me already a lot about his year in the States and was very excited to see his host family again. They gave him a loving home back in the days and he had one of the best years in his life being there (living in the mountains, going hunting, snowboarding and being a 16 years old boy …;)).

Lynn picked us up (she has not really change after all those years) and we could sleep at her house for a couple of nights (she was the one who found Amy on Craigslist). It was great to have a home for a few days J. Thanks Tanner for letting us sleep in your room, thanks Cameron for helping us to find our way around in your house and thank you Lynn for everything (the food, the love and the help).

PS. If we ever get a dog I want to get a Sharpei <3!!!

Amy

As mentioned before Lynn found Amy on Craigslist. Amy is a 1992 Ford E150 Campervan with leather seats, a wooden interior, purple carpet, an old cassette deck, VCR, TV, a 1985 Nintendo and a solar roof. The price the owner asked for fit perfectly into the budget we set ourselves to buy a campervan (or any other car where we can sleep in).

We had calculated that it would be cheaper to buy a car to sleep in than renting a car and sleeping in motels or hotels and this van would be perfect. We called the owner and took the bus the next morning to the middle of nowhere (Medical lake) to take a look at that van … We immediately fell in love with it and the owner seemed to like us so we made an appointment for the next day to let it be checked by a mechanic (Lynn called one for us).

Everything turned out to be just fine with the van! We only had to change the oil and the air filter, make an oil change and replace the motor that sprays water on the front windshield.… so we bought Amy! The best thing though turned out to be having met Steve, the former owner of Amy. We still do not know why (he mumbled something about Kharma and good people meet good people) but he:

• Changed the oil filter

• Made the oil change

• Replaced the air filter

• Bought us lunch

• Arranged the license for us

• Replaced the water pump of the front windshield

• and let us go through his storage (his hobby is ‘Storage wars .. buying garage boxes) where we could take some useful things with us (a cooker, a lamp, cassettes, videos and a jacket). For free!!

Rick and me felt so blessed and grateful and still could not believe what had happened to us. We were ready to go..and so we did :)

St. Maries / Idaho

St. Maries is the place where Rick actually lived in 1999. It is a very small town and everything still looks exactly the same as 18 years ago. We camped next to the St. Joe river, Rick went fishing (he even caught fish), we surprised/visited Chuck (Ricks host father back then) at the golf course where he works, had great breakfasts at the family dining and drove along all those places that have so many memories for Rick (the high school, the river house, the round house etc etc.). It was so nice to see the 16 years old boy back in his eyes remembering more and more from his time in that little town in Idaho.

Ps. We bought a SIM card for the States but it covers every state except Idaho LOL.

Liberty Lake

After we left St. Maries this is the place we headed to next. It took us 2 hours to get there driving through the mountains and listening to country music. Yihaaaaa.

Liberty Lake is the place where Kyle, Ricks best friend from that time, is living now. He, his wife Alaina and his 3 cute little boys live in a beautiful house in a neighbour that just looks like the ones you see in movies (i.e. the Truman show). We were invited to the 4th birthday party of his middle son and went to another birthday party of a 4 year old in the neighbourhood. It was a very nice day. We had Burgers and Hotdogs and spent the whole day and night just catching up (Rick catching up and me listening).

Thank you guys for having us. It is nice to see that true friendships do not change even after 18 years and thousands of miles in between.

We will stay one more day around here before really starting our roadtrip from West to East which will end on 16th September in New York. This is so exciting! We still pinch ourselves every morning just to be sure that we are not dreaming.