Settling in in Sequim

A rainbow, the harbinger of 'riches' to come... over Discovery Bay.

By the way, Sequim is pronounced "Sqwim" and those of you who have been reading the blog for awhile will recall my visit here this last summer. For a lot of reasons, I made a decision to find a place to begin settling in for my 'elder years'. It needed to be a place with minimal snow and minimal humidity. I wanted to have access to an artistic colony of folks and older people, like me, who were still interested in traveling, being active, but not all in one place like these 'active communities' which have become so popular throughout the U.S.

Sequim Community Chorus in the first of three nights of
performances at Trinity United Methodist Church.

This is meant to be my U.S. retreat, like my Colombian one, but after living in Colombia for several years it is clear to me that my language skills are not improving well enough for me to think about getting really old there. As long as I can still make the trip there, I will be there for awhile. And I still have a lot of South America to see. But the idea of being old, ill and unable to communicate well is a combination that doesn't appeal to me.

I was lucky to find a woman who wanted a roommate and since we will both be traveling in different directions and at different times, we are more roommates in terminology than actual fact. I have a nice clean room with a view of the tall evergreens and am about a mile from the water. The house is in a quiet neighborhood with watchful neighbors about 10 miles from Sequim center. It turned out that "K" is singing in the Community Chorus so I went last night to their first performance and was delighted at the music and had happy reminders of my days singing in Lake City with our dear director, Alphonso Levy. When the group did the Hallelujah Chorus, my tears of joy and sadness mixed in with a prayer for him as I sang along with everyone else.

As I explore my new surroundings, I am sleeping on a new bed as well. It is supposed to be comfortable, but the 'cells' warm up from body temperature and when I get into bed, my own cells are already cold from the chilly nights we are having here... perhaps it will be some kind of new weight loss process because I will be expending calories warming up the bed so I can go to sleep... LOL!

Mt. Rainier as seen from the ferry on the morning I caught it for Sequim.