The Max, Aerial Tram, and Powell's!

Hi, this is See! So we've been here for a month now as of today. Time sure flies! The first few days here were very rainy and cloudy, but after that, it has been pretty sunny most days and not too cold. I do not miss snow or ice and especially driving in it! Portland is kind of hilly and it would not be fun if there was snow and ice around! I could get used to this no ice or snow thing. Since I've been born, I've always lived in snowy states...so this is a change for me...and I don't mind it one bit! :)

There are pretty cool things here in Portland. They have a lightrail system, which they also call The Max. I've gone on it a few times and it's pretty neat! It takes you to all the big stops and is so convenient if you don't want to be stuck in traffic. What I love is that we live only a few blocks from the Max and so we can jump onto it anytime we want to. My mother-in-law actually rides it to work every single day. Anyone who comes to visit us should know that this is the very first thing we will take you on!

They also have this aerial tram. You can't see this and say it's not cool! We drove past it the other day and I thought it was SO COOL! I haven't been on it yet though, but eventually I'd like to try it! It takes you to the big places too, like the big hospital and other sites around the area. It doesn't go as far as the Max does though.

This is Powell's Bookstore...the largest independent used and new bookstore in the world! But Daniel says that a bigger bookstore just opened in Canada recently...not sure what that one may be called. Anyways, Powell's is every book lover's dream come true of a store! I could go here EVERYDAY! It may not look too big on the outside, but once you get inside...you could get lost!

There are rows and rows of books of ALL kinds broken into tons of sections! You can find ANYTHING here!

And there are like 5 floors to this building! Or 6? I forgot! Not to mention tons of different sections. This store takes up about one block downtown!
I love Powell's!

Being Eco-friendly

When I married Daniel, I noticed he was always wanting to go recycle stuff and never wanted to throw things away that could be recycled. I always thought he was just being this 'let's save the Earth' fanatic. But since being here...I had an "Aha!" moment. It ALL makes sense to me now. All that paper and garbage he stored up in his office at church and home that he wanted to 'recycle'. All those times I wanted to throw away something and he freaked out. He grew up in Portland! He's got GREEN in his blood. Eco-friendly GREEN. No wonderrrrrrr!!!!!!!! You shall see what I mean when you read and view at the rest of this post.

There are things we're still trying to get used to here in Portland. This city is BIG on recycling and making everything as eco-friendly as possible. I took some pictures of neat things I've seen, but I'm too lazy to upload them from my old, outdated camera phone, so the pictures you see me post here are just pictures I took off the internet.

It took us a while, but we finally know which bag to throw our recyclables into. There are three different bins they give each house here in Portland to use: one for recycling food scraps and yard debris, another for recycling paper, glass, etc, and the last bin (and tiniest bin!) is for 'real' trash. If you have more trash than your garbage bin can hold, then you get charged for it! And the garbage truck only comes once every 2 weeks! Yes, ONCE every 2 WEEKS! We always have too much trash!

The green bin is for yard debris and food scraps aka compost, the blue one is for recyclables, and the smallest bin there is for trash.

Here is the little bin they give us to keep in the house to collect our food scraps.

There is an electric car charging station at the Walgreen's just down the street from where we live. This is how it looks like.

I saw some downtown, too. I saw a car being charged. I didn't take this picture here, but I swear I saw the same exact car being charged up at the SAME charging station. This is pretty much exactly what I saw.

I also saw solar-powered trash compactors downtown. They are called BigBelly because they hold 5 times as much garbage as a normal trash can holds. They run on solar power alone! Neat!

Here is the top view. Look at that solar panel. How cool!

They have these downtown, too. You really have to think before you throw something in any bin! We're so used to just throwing everything and anything into a trash can...but we can't do that anymore over here! If you throw things in the wrong bins, you get evil stares.

They also just recently passed a law in Portland that bans any store to use plastic shopping bags. We have to use paper bags for all our groceries and any kind of shopping now. I'm still trying to get used to this...especially trying to figure out how to hold the bags without ripping them by accident and then all of the stuff inside falling out!

One thing is for sure...I've never been so eco-friendly conscious before until living here in Portland. It's neat, good for the environment, but kind of annoying, too. haha. Be green!