Washington: Roozengaarde during daffodil season

Seattle is currently gearing up for the possible return of Snowmaggedon, or heavier-than-usual snowfall that brings the city to a slippery skidding slowdown as the various hills that comprise the landscape of Seattle is rapidly transformed into hazardous slides leaving drivers and city crews to cope with the ensuant chaos. Businesses close or alter their hours as their teams are able to safely navigate their way in or are not so able to. Of course, all this slippery icy terrain is exceptionally beautiful as Seattle glistens under a blanket of frost, so it's tempting to go out and explore despite the potential risks. Also, given that the terrain varies wildly from one neighborhood to the next, some parts of town keep moving along smoothly while others come to a frigid halt as accessibility goes down. While it snowed a little earlier today, it was only a light dusting that set about to dripping away shortly after landing, but the portents are there. Winter is here, and snow is coming. 

Given the deep chill settling into the air around us, it's probably understandable that I'd rather reflect back on some sunny spring days when the daffodil fields were ablaze with the brilliant yellow flowers as the sun beat down, glowing warmly in the sky above. To partake in the sight yourself, you'd have to drive North of Seattle on I-5 for roughly an hour to Mount Vernon, where Roozengaarde resides. The farm is fairly easy to find using your maps and the information provided by their website, and parking is fairly ample, though I imagine it will fill up during peak visiting season and hours. I went on a weekday and the gardens were still quite bustling with a wave of visitors, soaking in the sunlight and admiring the assortment of blooms decorating the expansive grounds. Admission was only $7 at the time of my visit, though it may go up during their Tulip season, where the rainbow blooms are not only incredibly beautiful but exceptionally popular and bring in visitors from all over the region. After my own meandering stroll through the grounds, I can definitely understand the appeal, it was stunning! I thoroughly enjoyed my visit and would recommend anyone go at least once, and if Roozengaarde is full there are other, smaller farms nearby that would love to host you! After my time here, I headed towards Deception Pass for a hike, and during the drive, I passed several farms, one with a very friendly little lady waving excitedly as I drove by. Pretty idyllic scenery, for sure, and a wonderful respite from the hustle and bustle of the city, and the cold. Should you find yourself nearby, I absolutely recommend checking them out! Just, if you do, mind the signs. Please. They exist for a reason. Don't be like these assholes! You're a visitor, and the signs exist for a reason, so respect the signs and keep things pretty for everyone! 💘

Edmonds: Vibrant sunrise and life updates

Hello internet friends, randos, and other curious visitors! It's been a minute since I posted last, for which I apologize. Life has been a bit hectic for us at 710studios, as we're currently in the process of preparing for a move and our internet connection went from decent-ish to utterly and laughably abysmal, so the battle for bandwidth is a real struggle right now. But that's right, y'all! We're moving out of the suburbs and into the big city proper, and we're so excited!! Not only will the relocation make my daily commute incrementally easier than it's been for the last 10 or so months, but we're absolutely stoked about the new home we've found. We'll have our own private space and be able to walk around naked again! We'll have tons of storage and the space to do tie-dye again! There are fruit trees, hammocks, a community garden, even a yoga studio on-site! It's like a dream come true and I can't even begin to fully express how grateful and enthusiastic we are about this change up to our routines. We're looking forward to learning more about our new community, too, which is comprised of some truly talented and inspiring creative and professional individuals who are involved in some utterly mind-blowing artistic projects! 

My long-suffering car with over 200,000 miles, Svetty, and I recently did a quick run-up to Lynden, Washington, which is kind of like a suburb of Bellingham if I'm understanding it correctly, but I apologize to anyone I may have offended with my lack of knowledge about Northern Washington's townships. Since I got booked for the event only about a week prior to its occurrence, I didn't have enough lead time to request time off at my day job and as such drove to Lynden and then back to this burb North of Seattle in one night... roughly around 3 hours of driving, on top of commuting in to the city earlier that same day for work... it was a lot. I listened to a few Podcasts, as is my usual form of vehicular entertainment, and thoroughly enjoyed the drive through the countryside, but upon returning I could tell my eyes and brain were starting to fry from too many hours behind the wheel combined with 4 hours of straight drawing, too, but it was worth it. Not only did I have a blast drawing at the event, but it's also wonderful to see somewhere new. If you've never been outside of Seattle, the rest of the state of Washington offers an astounding array of natural beauty and lush green spaces to blow your socks off time and time again and I'm a bit sad I didn't get to spend any time exploring while there on this brief visit. It feels really good though, cruising up the 5, feeling a tingle of excitement as Vancouver (Canada) grows closer and the trees open up to adorable farm houses presiding over large expansive lots... I don't know about you guys, but I love seeing new cities pop up on the road signs as I'm road-tripping, the possibility and shiny newness of it all. Leaving from my old hometown of Las Vegas you're faced with a few hundred miles of barren desert before you start to see other pockets of civilization crop up, but here in the Pacific Northwest, you're more likely to find yourself deep into a forest or suddenly surrounded by rolling fields of agricultural green goodness. Even in the city, the abundance of trees makes rounding each bend an exercise in uncertainty, as you can never quite predict what you might spot, whether it's a herd of goats casually grazing in the city, or a Sasquatch peeking out from behind a tree, it pays to keep your eyes open. 

I'm grateful, too, for the time we got to spend living in this cute little house in its cute little suburb. It's been an interesting adventure, for sure, and it allowed us to get onto our feet firmly planted in the area, which can be a real challenge.  But times change and it's high-time for a new chapter, and while it's been nice, the move ahead is going to be great! New dawns, new days, new adventures lie ahead! 💖

Happy 2019!

Happy New Year guys!!!! 🎆

I hope you all had safe and fun festivities to participate in last night, whether you went out on the town or nestled in at home with a bottle of champagne, but no matter how you choose to ring in the new year, there's no denying that 2019 is officially upon us. I think it's fascinating how different cultures choose symbols to ring in the New Year in good fortune, whether it's long noodles for long life, carrots golden orange hue representing riches in the year to come, or shooting off countless explosives into the sky! 

Personally, I'm a complete and total homebody, happy to bury myself in a mound of blankets and celebrate the event with a homecooked meal, a snuggle buddy, and a drink. I've been fortunate enough to celebrate New Year's in my hometown of Vegas, abroad in Tokyo, and now in Seattle... while living in Tokyo (or, at least, in the next suburb over) I was able to watch the Tokyo Disney Sea fireworks display ringing in the New Year, so I'd stand on my little patio with a whiskey and coke in one hand and a smile on my face as the brilliant illuminations crackled across the sky. Vegas, as you might expect, goes absolutely bonkers- the Strip shuts down and becomes a pedestrian haven, where heavy drinking and outlandish behavior is the normative way to bring in the countdown. As much fun as I'm sure it is to get lost among the sweaty, drunken masses marauding through Las Vegas Boulevard's most populous corridors, that was never particularly appealing to me as a local... and, let's be real here, most jobs in Vegas are based around the tourist economy, so chances were I was stuck working well past midnight on one side of the Strip, and then faced with the conundrum of trying to navigate my route home around the road closures. All this given, perhaps it's no real surprise I'm happiest to sequester myself away at home and take in the annual tradition in a more low-key way, with only my most precious people around. To each their own, though! You do you, boo-boo. 

I've been gearing up for this change for weeks now, and am quite excited for all the things to come in the year ahead. I hope that you, too, are going forward into this new year with optimism, hope, and a heart full of love and joy. Thank you for joining me here, and I look forward to all the new content and adventures to be shared over the coming months! 💗

Vegas: Summertime Fireworks

 What could possibly be a more American way to celebrate our independence and the creation of our nation-state than to get irresponsibly intoxicated and set off explosives in the street? Often there's a ceremonial barbeque involved as well, where slabs of pork, beef or tubular meat-forms are seared and slathered for consumption, though this particular Fourth's festivities were devoid of such sustenance and socializing around carcasses. It was a rather impromptu thing, at least from my perspective, as I kind of crashed the housemate's party while Antho was at work. While there's no shortage of places from whence you can purchase boom-booms in all sorts of shapes, sizes, and configurations, we hadn't gone out and done so due to limited funds. These things, they happen. I wasn't particularly upset about this lack of combustive arsenal, partly due to the fact I'm not exactly 100% comfortable with the combination of booze and explosives in residential areas. I mean, Japan does fireworks, and they do them big and beautiful, so it's not exactly like celebrating with fire flowers is an entirely new phenomenon...  but those shows were generally situated around rivers or water, even in the case of Tokyo Disney's firework shows...

Anyway, when I was able to get over my trepidation at having things exploding several feet away from my vehicle (full of combustible gasoline and such), I was able to capture some pretty fun photos of the fire-flowers in blossom. I know, they're technically called fireworks in English, but I find the Japanese term of "hanabi", or fire-flowers, far more poetic and in-tune with the ephemeral beauty of the bursts. As brilliant and stunning as they are, they only light up the sky for these brief blasts of intense beauty. I'm not familiar with the chemistry involved behind achieving the different colors, or the different shapes, though I know the shape of the tubes themselves can provide some degree of variation in the bursts. That's one of the cool things about life, though, I suppose... you don't have to completely understand the mechanics behind something to appreciate it's beauty. Sometime's it's best to just stop and take it in for what it is before it's gone.

Vegas: Cloudy Strip Sunset

Living in the desert, one becomes accustomed to seeing vast, open swatches of sky peeling out in all directions because most of the things that grow out there are stubby and low to the ground, including the residential houses, typically sprawling single story things, though more multi-story buildings are popping up more and more as the population grows. Generally speaking, though, once you move away from the teeming heart of the city, things tend to get low and long, creating an unobstructed stretch to the horizon. Even on the Las Vegas Strip proper the city has relatively few skyscrapers, and there's still ample room between the towering monolithic structures to keep that view of the sky wide open. There's a lot of open spaces, a lot of long, empty drives through deserted two-lane roads to escape that insane oasis and the horizon can seem an endless, unreachable stretch. It was only after living in Japan for two years and becoming used to the labyrinthine crisscrossing of electrical wires, the shadows of multi-level apartment buildings and business crowding in from all sides, and the comforting blanket of heavy urbanity that I started to realize how an agoraphobe might feel when trying to step beyond the confines of their nest. The first time I drove upon returning to the United States, a stretch from one small satellite city beyond the borders of Las Vegas metropolitan area to the big city proper, the sheer expansiveness of it all hit me. 

 There remains many open, empty spaces still in this country, patches where humanity has barely impinged, which is both gratitude and horror-inspiring.  When you seek to escape from the oppressive needs and rituals of the city, with their taxes and menial jobs and road rage, these empty, untouched spaces symbolize that freedom you're craving, but if you need help or assistance they can be painfully desolate and empty. Strange, isn't it? The sheer power of perception. The city of Las Vegas is kind of like that, too. It's something different for everyone who visits, and just like finding shapes in the clouds, it's entirely up to your own interpretation what you make of it. The expansiveness of it does allow for some nice views of the sunset, I suppose. All that emptiness has to be good for something, after all. 

Korea: 홍어회 in화정 or Hongoe in Hwajeong

Throughout my entire stay in South Korea, I lived in the small town of Hwajeong, in Goyang prefecture. It's only a short commute outside of Seoul, about 30 minutes by train in to Anguk area which was without a doubt one of my favorite neighborhoods to spend time in. Hwajeong was a charming little suburb to reside in, though, and I thoroughly enjoyed my time living there! Not only was it easy (enough) to commute to and from work on the daily, but there were multiple options for shopping, recreation, and dining throughout the area. While your typical suburb in Las Vegas has at least one convenience store nestled in its midst, there's no real guarantee that you'll be able to get to a grocery store on foot, not in any timely manner anyway..this issue is referred to as "food deserts", where fresh foods are less readily available and residents need to commute to have access to amenities. In Hwajeong I could walk 5 minutes and have my pick from several small groceries, multiple convenience stores (of different brands/names) and countless fast or slow food restaurants. Who says that Americas the greatest country in the world? For sheer capitalistic indulgences and opportunity, South Korea certainly seems to have learned from us and upped the ante.   

Another thing South Korea does well, that we don't really do much here, is fermented fish. Tangent much, eh? In the United States, you might find some form of pickled fish hiding in a dusty, forlorn corner of the grocery store's "ethnic" section, but in Korea, there's a famous fermented fish whose name strikes fear into the hearts (and nostrils) of those familiar with it: Hongoe. This funky beast is the result of fermenting skate, those cute little mini-mantas who have the peculiar habit of urinating through their skin. This, naturally, gives the fermented variety of their flesh a distinctly ammonia-heavy odor that even I, a girl whose sense of smell is laughably non-existent, found challenging. To be fair, hongoe is a challenge even for native Koreans who grew up around the stuff. Typically eaten with super-ripe kimchi and sweet milky rice alcohol in the form of makkgeoli, you can also find hongoe prepackaged at some grocery stores. It's much more affordable to buy the prepackaged variety, and so I decided to give it a go, but I have to admit I wasn't able to eat the whole package on my own. The texture of the fish is unusual, too, with a cartilaginous crunch that's hard to compare to anything that hasn't been rotting in its own urine for an extended period of time. 

Even just looking at these photos is giving me olfactory flashbacks. Oof. Enjoy the photos of the pretty view from here out, to hopefully get some of the funk out! You might also enjoy noticing the little bird, who perched atop the tower here. 

Until next time, thanks for stopping by!

🐟

XOXO,

NAU

Korea: 광장시장 Gwangjang market at night (again)

 Gwangjang market, along with being one of my absolute favorite destinations for street food and rubbing elbows with both the local population and tourists alike (whom I would frequently encourage to eat things they might not otherwise brave ordering, like the lovely British duo I encouraged to dive into yukhoe once upon a time), Gwangjang is also exceptionally photogenic, and not just in some of its many corners, but most of them. I've enjoyed trying to capture the complex and often vastly different vibes of some of its many labyrinthine corridors because it is not easy to capture the frenetic, ever-changing energy of the place, let alone the changes of the seasonal shifts and tourist tides. Without a doubt, this is one of my favorite locations in all of Seoul. The energy and vibe of the place is hard to recreate, and I dread the day somewhere in the future when the current-day market building will be replaced with something bigger, brighter, and newer, under the pretense it must ostensibly be somehow better. 

While the nearly endless parade of activity is certainly fascinating to witness, there's something instrinsically surreal and haunting about these typically packed vicinities becoming vacant, quiet, or shuttered. As the night goes on, the crowds do have a propensity towards thinning out and dispersing into other channels, down a seemingly endless artery of alleyways and streets that ferry the strangers away to their multiplicity of unknown destinations. Who knows where they all end up? When these veins of commerce drain and grow hollowed, the remaining lights bouncing off of dark panes of glass, the echoes chasing your footsteps, it's almost like slipping into another dimension altogether.  Seoul is not a city where the trains run at all hours of the day, and as such, there's definitely a late-night rush as the last minute commuters dash off into the darkness, leaving the streets eerily quiet in those tentative moments prior to the limitation of movement and practically desolate after the final train departs the station at that early witching hour. 

Inevitably, this was one of my favorite times to wander. Not easy when living in the suburbs, but I relished in these evening strolls in near-solitude. 

Korea - Lotte world lights

Many months in a row, I found myself making the long commute to Lotte World. From Hwajeong to Jamsil station it would take roughly an hour and 20 minutes, sometimes longer if the weather was bad, trains were being decommissioned (as I often found to be the case as I was running late to work already) or other issues arose. Often times the train would be packed, a steamy airtight tube full of grouchy people rubbing elbows, day or night. The commute was, perhaps understandably enough, not my favorite aspect to working at the Lotte World location- getting to and from work took up a significant portion of my day, and often hampered me from wanting to go out and explore because of the amount of time it would still take for me to get home afterward. This, of course, was a shame because there is so much good food and so many beautiful places to find throughout the city of Seoul! Take these beautiful illuminations, for example.   

Lotte World is incorporated into Jamsil station and a shopping mall, often mingling beyond their own divided borders throughout the space. It was exceptionally confusing on my first day, and my coworker provided a very detailed photographic guide for me to find him that first run, and even so, it was fraught with issues. For one thing, telling me to meet him at Lotte Burger sounded good in theory, until I found a secondary location hidden in a corridor where my coworker had little reason to explore (and therefore no prior knowledge of). You can grab a quick bite at any number of restaurants, from the multiplicity of Lotte Burgers to sit-down cold noodles and sushi, bibimbap or kimbap a-plenty (from small stalls or major fast food chains). There are SO many different places selling clothes- from the mall proper at one end of the complex, to the underground market on the other end full of affordable tweenage styles and fast fashion, so you can get your newest styles after a day of fun at Lotte World- and if that's not enough you could even grab your groceries in the large subterranean market! The main point I'm getting at, albeit slowly and a bit convolutedly, is that you could get most of your needs taken care of or tended to while safely inside in the confines of the Jamsil station/Lotte World shopping mega-complex. There's little to no need for any visitor to step outdoors... unless, of course, you really wanted to explore the area and maybe take in the Olympic Park after a scenic walk. I would step out to vape when I could find a quiet, isolated area, or I'd enjoy my lunch out in the grassy area near a micro-convenience store hidden inside the building's outer periphery. It was on one of these outings that I discovered these illuminations, seeking a brief solace from the crowds inside before braving the long (and often crowded) commute back home. 

Certainly not the worst of surprises, huh? 

So let this be a reminder to you to stop and enjoy the little things, deviate from the norm, at least every once in awhile.