The UW

The University of Washington has got to be one of the most beautiful collage campuses. The buildings are old stone and brick buildings with a ton of character, the streets are lined with mature trees, providing cool paths and the building we stayed was located on a hill overlooking Lake Washington with Mt. Rainier in the background. It was just gorgeous. The back of our dorm had this huge patio that I absolutely loved. Boy I wish I took some pictures. Once I discovered the patio, I moved as many meetings there as possible.

I found this picture of the view from the patio on one of the cyclists blogs.

Unfortunately the dorm rooms left a little to be desired. This building had it rooms arraigned in clusters. There are 4 two person bed rooms surrounding a living area and a bathroom. The bedrooms are relatively big, but the furniture is bolted to the walls. The beds are a slab of wood attached to the wall with some deluxe blow up mattress on it. Each room also has two closets that take up way too much of the floor space (never thought you would hear me complain about a closet being too big :) ) and two desks again bolted to the walls. Most of the beds had drawers under them. While it was fine for me for the weekend, I can’t imagine living there for a year. And I had a room to myself (Jen, Ed and I all had rooms to ourselves since we had work to do until all hours of the night.) Then there is the bathroom – it had one toilet, one shower and two sinks, for 8 people! My sister and I had that set up growing up and I can’t tell you the number of fights that ensued between the two of us. Just imagine 8 people for a year. We did fine with the 6 of us for the weekend, but there were several discussions on who was going to take a shower when.

The staff was amazing. At the beginning of each new shift I would introduce myself to the new staff, explaining I was the coordinator of the event and chances are, I would need something. And I always did, carts to move stuff around, keys to various rooms, directions to the place, copies, things printed off. I am not going to lie, I asked for a lot. The staff consistently was friendly and quick to help. I need to look into talking to their boss and let them know how accommodating they all were.

The weather in Seattle was abnormally warm and the UW does not have air conditioning, which was one downside. Thankfully it is really not humid there and there was nice breeze to cool things off. The cafeteria was big and had plenty of selections. When I had a chance to eat I was happy.