sitting with a troll under a bridge

I wake up just minutes before Lindsay knocks on my door to see what I am up to.  I eat a banana and a handful of edamame for breakfast.  I head to the market with Lindsay and she buys a glass pin, soap, lip balm, and other souvenirs for her relatives.  I buy pasta at the market: 1/2 pound of each of the following: sweet potato ribbons, lemon garlic orzo, and tangerine basil fettucine.  I also buy four roma tomatoes, and then pesto from an authentic Italian food store.  I meet up with Lindsay again across the street at a coffee shop and chat with her while she fills up on caffeine.  We put our purchases back in the hostel and meet up with two of the guys we met yesterday on the tour.  We invite them to join us and after saying yes, we are now a girl from Maine, a girl from Georgia, a Quebec guy, and a guy from Texas.  We walk to Pioneer Square, explore a book shop, get cookies, and admire statues.  We then find a waterfall park and take photographs, before a group of college students with a rack of props arrive to take pics there too.  We walk to the bus stop and ride through the free zone, paying $1.50 when we exit in the Freemont District (outside the free zone).  We explore this artsy, liberal district, posing with the famous troll statue under a bridge, then eating pizza across from the Masonic Lodge.  We then visit a giant Lenin statue rescued from Russia and currently on sale for $250,000, before getting gelato (mine is nutella/chocolate orange chip/ and a taste of azteca chocolate on top).  We peruse a stationary store before visiting the small rocket ship adhered to the side of a building (apparently someone announced a few years back that Seattle is the center of the universe and they put the old NASA missile there to commemorate that feat).  We take the bus back to the hostel and we all say goodbye as Lindsay and the Quebec guy are leaving tonight.  Lindsay leaves all three of us with gifts she brought back in Asia (apparently, she bought souvenirs without knowing who she was going to give them to).  The guys each receive a small silk woven embroidered sampler from Thailand, while I receive a salmon-colored scarf from Laos.  Then Lindsay heads out of the hostel for the bus stop and we make the decision to see her off again.  When I exit the hostel, I see that a woman from Children's International has stopped Lindsay, hoping for sponsorship and I realize she needs to catch her bus.  I rush her, running with her suitcase behind me as I see her bus is already there and is leaving soon.  The woman gets on the bus with Lindsay, hoping to make the sell.  The bus drives away about 10 seconds later.  I go back into the hostel and find myself invited to join the guy from Austin, Texas at a coffee shop called Bauhaus, 15 blocks away.  I drink hot chocolate, while he drinks coffee and we talk about Seattle.  We walk back to the hostel noticing the decent views of the Space Needle.  Once back, I make a spinach, goat cheese, garlic, and olive oil sauce for my sweet potato pasta.  I chat with the sea captain I met on Thursday night while I eat.  We discuss trips of a lifetime and his dream of paddling through the Aleutian Islands in Alaska and skiing down each volcano.  Later I join the three people from Utah (Jacob, Kristiana, and Blake) at 10 pm.  We head to the sushi restaurant for a roll of veggie sushi.  They head out to the club after, while I go back to the hostel and play yatzee with a group of hostellers, all strangers to me.  The hostel is alive with activity and noise tonight, but I have no interest in joining in the partying, as I have a good book to read and a journal to update. 

Lindsay leaves with the promise of visiting me in Maine. It is hard to believe we only became friends two days ago.