Seattle so far…

Posted by Chris Leggett on May 9, 2012 in US life | 4 comments

Jen and I moved into our new home yesterday – an apartment in Seattle’s Queen Anne neighborhood. And the actual move itself forced me to do something I wasn’t expecting to do at this early stage of my new life in America: drive on the right-hand side of the road.

You see, Jen unfortunately lost her driver’s license during all the craziness of traveling, and so ironically I was the only one of the two of us with a valid driver’s license. We had about three suitcases each to move, we’d acquired a few extra things, and our local friends were all working, so renting a car and doing it all ourselves was our only option. I was in the hot seat, so to speak.

It’s one of the most stressful things I’ve experienced in a while, and something I’ve been quietly dreading for a long time. I knew the time would come eventually when I would have to suck it up and drive.

It wasn’t necessarily being on the other side of the road that got me – I got used to that pretty quick. What got me was being on the other side of the car, which threw my whole center of gravity off. I had very little sense of the right-hand side of the car, and I think my brain was subconsciously trying to compensate for this. It meant that our car ended up on the far right of the right-hand lane, and Jen (bless her) had to keep reminding me to “center up”.

Anyway, after a day’s worth of driving round the city and picking up/dropping off our belongings, it appears that we’ve survived unscathed, except for the fact that I feel like I’ve aged about 15 years in a single day. You have no idea how glad I was to see the back of that car! But I do feel a lot more confident about driving over here, now.

We love our apartment, and we love our neighborhood. It’s made all the better by the fact that Jen has already been offered a job at the Pacific Science Center as an assistant working on the upcoming King Tut exhibit. The Pacific Science Center is very walkable from our apartment, and is right by the famous Space Needle. It also takes the pressure off us, big time – even with the one income, we know we can sustain ourselves now.

Here are a few pictures from around our neigborhood!

Jen at the monorail.

There’s a museum here called the EMP, which features music, sci-fi and pop-culture exhibits – pretty much three of my favorite things. I can’t wait to check it out!

There’s a Taco Bell near our apartment. This could be dangerous.

Also, FYI, NZers – I’ve adopted American spelling from here on in