Well, isn’t Seattle great! We had great weather over the weekend, so I made the most of it, visiting a schoolfriend I haven’t seen for 21 years on Saturday and wandering around the city centre yesterday, including going down to Pike Place market.
We had a later start than usual today (thank goodness!) so convened at 11am to go to the University of Washington. It was good timing, as my phone went haywire over the weekend and so I had to take it in to Verizon this morning (needless to say they did a hard reset on it. Really, IT seems a no-brainer: if it isn’t working, turn it off and start it again. If that doesn’t work start it all over again from scratch.)
We had fun at UW – it was a discussion on diversity, which is the theme of our visit. they had various people from across the university’s different programmes. Needless to say, we had a lively session with them, covering the high school dropout rate, University career services, the appointment of supreme court judges and the stratification of American society. After that we went to the Northwest African American Museum. Did you know that Jimi Hendrix and Quincy Jones are/were from Seattle?! and on the pioneers that came west was an african american called George Washington Bush!! The museum has been developed in a historically African American museum and above the museum there is rental housing for low-income families. They also have a geneaology centre, supported by the Mormons, who apparently provide immense support to geneaology across American society. Who knew…
Off out for dinner in a bit and then hopefully going to see a film.