Dear loved friends and family,
I am sitting in our new living room eating a burrito and thinking about you all. Seattle is a pensive place. Maybe it is the constant drizzle, the patient traffic, or the unheard, lapping waves of the Puget Sound. I am not sure. But I think a lot here, and miss you all a bunch.
Ryan is at an REI training right now. He has decided to work at REI part time until he finds something better. He has two interviews with banks next week—Washington Mutual, and HomeStreet (a local bank committed to community development). Ryan says that it is time for him to get out of the apartment! And, although I love having him overjoyed at my arrival every day after work, I think it has to do with his being alone at the computer every day!
I suppose that it is about time we got around to telling you what we have been doing with our lives since our wedding September 4th. We drove 3 hours up the north shore of Lake Superior after the wedding reception (bawling our brains out, and hungry as cows!). We stayed at Adventurous Christians (a canoe outpost that Kelsey worked at in college) for a few nights before heading out on a canoe trip in the Boundary Waters. It was atypical Minnesota weather—sunny and hot in September! We swam a lot, had a run-in with a hermit, and did a mean portage (Paulsen portage into Seagull Lake). All in all, it was great. We got to catch up with some old friends who live up in the woods, and said goodbye to the Northcountry for a while.
We’re now in Seattle! Hurrah! We arrived on the 16th of September, and went to a Wheaton alumni picnic that very day. As we were walking out of the park bathroom (at the picnic) we bumped into SueLee Choi from Wheaton! We were overjoyed to see a familiar face in a strange place. Before we found our own apartment here we stayed for a few weeks in a family's basement. They were great "cultural brokers" and helped us find our way around the streets and ideologies of Seattle. It made life so much easier to have Jen and Dano as our "mentors" when we arrived!
We are now living in North Beacon Hill, which is directly south of the International District where I work (I walk to work every day!). It is a mostly Asian neighborhood, with a growing Hispanic population. The area is in transition, slowly in the process of gentrification as the refugee population from the Vietnam era grows older, and the white folk migrate south. We have had some long, hard talks about where we should be living, where we should go to church, and how we should spend our time. We aren’t sure why we feel that it is important to go to a diverse church, or not to live in a “nice” neighborhood. Although we had ubiquitous discussions on those same topics at Wheaton, we are unable to articulate our logic now. But we are slowly meeting people who are thinking along similar lines, and realize that these are questions we SHOULD be asking for our entire lives. For the moment, we have the best of both worlds. Through our conversations about community we have found a great neighborhood, a church community, and are slowly but surely making friends.
I started work at the Refugee Resettlement Office September 21st. I am working on their Jump$tart Microenterprise Fund as the “Program Developer.” The fund gives loans to refugees and asylees who wish to start small businesses. I have found that I will be wearing many hats: volunteer coordinator, the fundraising/development researcher (i.e. grant writer), and the marketing outreach supervisor. I am excited about interacting with my refugee clients, but overwhelmed by the responsibilities of the job.
We really are loving Seattle. The mountains are so close, the Public Library is GREAT (and free!), and we have a garden plot. The view from our kitchen window is of the Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains. We have an old-school new-age hippy neighbor downstairs, and a teacher from France shares our balcony. It is an interesting neighborhood to say the least. We do, however, miss all of you acutely. We were saying over dinner last night how much we crave people who know our stories, and who have seen us change and grow over the years. It is difficult to move to a new place, despite the excitement. We are still advocating for all of our loved ones to move here with us!
Please email or call us! We’d enjoy talking about anything and everything with you. We love you all.
Kelsey and Ryan Jones-Casey
P.S. The photo of us is at "Honeymoon Bluff" on the Gunflint Trail in the Boundary Waters...on our honeymoon, of course.
