evergreen beginnings

Seattle was my home base while travelling in the States, being my first and last stop. I stayed with family and I didn't realise how much I'd come to feel attached to them. The American side of my big ol Vietnamese family were so kind and generous that I felt really, really lucky.

In my travel dramas, my one week old phone stuffed up like a crazy mamma and that led to me losing one of the main SD cards I used for the first third of the trip. In my travel and photography noobness, I lost track of where everything was and was well, way too lax about it all! So here are some of the few shots on my DSLR, something I really am still too unworthy of using so I make no claim that these are great photos. I hope you just get a feel of how I feel about these places. Since I pretty much just spent the first few days even practising getting used to pulling out a camera, I don't think I lost that many good shots but for the ones that makes Seattle, Seattle, and that is the evergreen trees that grow in practically every nook and cranny. This is one of the most green states in America so its Emerald City nickname is just right on.

I loved Seattle and will definitely come back. The Pacific North West states are often mocked as the "hipster" states because they generally value environmental consciousness, healthy lifestyles and art culture, but because it really is in their nature, to a Sydneysider like myself, it doesn't feel pretentious at all. And with those values, they have my heart. The Seattle mindset taught me something straight away about American values: individualism. As soon as I realised how integral it is to them, it unlocked something in me and made me feel so much freer.