A hostel experience: Saturday

This weekend I took my core group to Portland for a hostel experience. I'm rather pleased with the amount of adventure crammed into two short days. Some featured attractions from Saturday:

Saturday Market, including a visit with Martin from Kenya (where three of the girls are going this summer). We learned that he lost his trust in America when someone stole his bike. And that if he ever caught us stealing, we'd probably pee our pants. Also, that he stopped taking people to airports because Americans always cry, because tears are reserved for death and catastrophe in his culture.

Voodoo Doughnuts, where you can purchase an absurd range of creatively named and composed doughnuts. Mmmm. Grape Ape, complete with purple...ummm, something (maybe kool-aid? pixi stix?). Vaguely disquieting, but tasty (the whole experience).

A police stand-off: eerily similar to being in Seattle during the sniper shooting. Complete with taizing; reports of open gun fire; and obnoxious, narrating spectators; but somehow we couldn't leave. The criminals, commanded at multiple gun-points to leave the vehicle one-by-one with arms up and shirts off, were surprisingly dumpy and middle-aged. Perhaps I have been watching too many action sitcoms?

Powells. (there are no words.)

Green Papaya, where we ate amazing, spicy mango salad, which I attempted ineffectively to balance with approximately 5.7 liters of water.

American Apparel, where I tried on these but not these. (Work out shorts?!! Work out what? Your repressed desire to be Paris street mime? Your fear of being killed after dark by low-flying, small aircraft? Whether or not skin needs ventilation? Any other ideas?)

Powells. Again. Because they have a public restroom and I had consumed 5.7 liters of water.

Pizza Schmizza. We volunteered to pick up their left-over pizza, which the hostel gets. Amazing. And they had collections of: paper mache skulls; old keyboards; fun fair rocket cars (full-size); a bat mobile; action figures mounted to the wall with cartoon captions; antique shoe molds. I like collections...and free pizza.

We went to bed content, if somewhat gastrically disturbed.