CSSI Days 20/21: Summer Picnic and Goodbyes

The last Friday of CSSI was filled with many moments of laughter as we enjoyed our last day at the Seattle office and then joined in on a Google summer picnic. In the morning, we had some free time, so we took advantage of the shuffleboard and foosball tables until lunchtime.

We were lucky enough that our final day at Google coincided with Google's annual Summer Picnic! We, along with summer interns and Google engineers, were invited to Vasa Park to enjoy an afternoon of food and fun. I think the pictures speak for themselves:  

We had an amazing afternoon at the picnic; it was the perfect way to enjoy our last day in Seattle. Later, we headed to University Village a final time for some post-birthday crepes (as my actual birthday had been spent madly coding!). It was the first time I'd ever had a crepe, and it was fantastic.

Finally, to end off the night, we finished watching The Internship! It felt fitting to watch the movie after CSSI as the next step for us is (hopefully) an internship at Google, but we laughed at how funny they depicted the whole internship process.

Next was when the goodbyes and sadness began, as many people were leaving early in the morning the following day; many hugs and best wishes were exchanged. Carrying over into the next morning, having to bid farewell to new friends whom we'd just spent so much time with over the past three weeks, it was sad to think that it would be a long time before we'd see each other again. Not only was CSSI itself incredible, but we were able to meet so many amazing and talented people along the way, from fellow CSSIers to the many Google interns, instructors, and other employees who helped us throughout the program. While I've taken all the new experience and knowledge that I have gained with me, the people are what I will miss the most about CSSI. I can only hope that we will meet again someday!

CSSI Day 19: Final Presentations and Graduation!

Today was an exciting day, as we all got to share this past week's work with Googlers at the Seattle office. After three days of working hard on coding, Kristen, Emmi, and I are excited to introduce Telephone, an interactive game designed to test your memory and facilitate communication between both old and new friends! Modeled after the traditional party game Telephone (or Broken Telephone as we know it in Canada), players in a game pass along messages that they receive, trying to send the same final message as the initial one. 

Telephone's homepage; the telephones display their functions when hovered over
(which you can experience by taking a look at the game!)

You can check out the game here: http://telephone-2014.appspot.com. To test out gameplay by yourself, you can open the application in multiple tabs and play as players with different names. Or, even better, invite your friends to check out the game together!

I am really happy with how our game turned out; starting off CSSI with no programming experience and having only three days to code the entire program, I am proud of our team for working so well together and I learned so much during the process. From the beginning, I knew Javascript the least well and so I was hoping that we wouldn't need to use it at all. However, ironically I ended up writing all of the Javascript in the program (and there was a lot of it!); throughout the process, I gained a lot of experience with connecting the server and browser through writing code where Javascript and Python communicated each other. While Telephone is still in a very basic state - we hope to implement features such as password-protected games and sending messages through audio recordings - I think that we were able to accomplish a lot within a short amount of time and I really hope to add some additional features in the future.

After presentations, we had a closing party where our game won the award for Best Design! On top of everything, the party turned out to be a graduation ceremony, complete with graduation caps, certificates, and even a book scholarship! After the hard work of the week, it was fun to relax and celebrate our learning and projects. For the rest of the day, we hung out and took advantage of the shuffleboard and foosball tables some more, relishing one of the final days at the Google offices.

I can't believe that tomorrow is the last day of CSSI already! We'll be celebrating at a picnic with Google engineers; it's sure to be a fantastic way to cap off what has been the most amazing three weeks ever.

CSSI Day 18: Birthday Magic?

Do you believe in birthday magic? I think I might after the magic that was today. I woke up this morning with only one goal in mind: finish our project at a reasonable hour today. After the results of yesterday's work, I wasn't very optimistic about this goal, but I was determined to enjoy my birthday and not let the stress get to me. By some source of magic or another, we were able to solve all of the problems from the day before and a few more by the end of the day, finishing our game! 

My team worked fantastically well today, supporting each other when necessary and otherwise each working on our own components. Because of the way we coordinated it, there weren't many problems with concatenating our separate coding together, which has been a relief throughout this entire process. Today, I was really happy that I was able to reinforce and learn more about Javascript, my least familiar programming language, while coding and debugging our application. I handled a lot of data transfer between server-side event handlers and browser-side Javascript functions today, meaning that I got to code quite a bit in both languages.

After lunch, we had a presentation about how to deliver presentations effectively (ahead of our final project presentations tomorrow)! After discussing some tips about engaging presentations, we broke off into smaller groups to practice speaking in front of an audience. I can still remember when the very thought of public speaking was a nightmare to me; over the years, however, I've grown in becoming more comfortable talking to crowds. Regardless, the practice that we did was really beneficial because I got a lot of feedback into things that sometimes I didn't even realize I was doing. I felt that the workshop really helped us get ready for our presentations tomorrow.

Then, I was presented with a cake and card from the CSSI team! It was so lovely of them and I felt so grateful to be able to celebrate my birthday at Google, with all my fellow CSSIers. 

Cake! Two candles to represent 18? Why not.

As if there wasn't enough icing on the aforementioned cake, we also found out today that our team won the scavenger hunt from Seattle Saturday! The prize was an awesome bag filled with various Google goodies:

Fruits of our scavenger hunt labour = excitement!

All in all, my 18th birthday ranks high up in the list of "most awesome birthdays"; after all, just being here at CSSI for the past weeks have been an amazing experience that I will never forget. It's hard to believe that we'll be back home in less than three days... However, first off it's time for final presentations on our projects tomorrow. I'm really interested in seeing what everyone came up with, as well as debuting our finished game! 

CSSI Day 17: Project Progress and Mock Interviews

Once again, today started off quite well with a lot of debugging and working out problems with our user interface. Additionally, we were able to get started on the design aspect of our application! This was fun because I really enjoy graphic design as a hobby and all three of us in my team got excited to make our web pages look fantastic with CSS and Javascript. However, we still have a few major problems that we need to solve before continuing with our coding, and we are all racking our brains and the Internet in search of answers.

After lunch, we had mock technical interviews with actual Google interviewers! I enjoyed the session very much, because we got to experience the atmosphere and content of real Google interviews; it was great to hear a lot of feedback and tips from our interviewer, who was very kind and answered a lot of questions. In the end, through having an afternoon of mock interviews I feel better prepared for problem-solving and working with code during future interviews. 

The updates are fairly short this week as we slave away at our final project, but I hope that by presentation time we'll have a working demo to share. As we head into tomorrow, I feel very focused and I know that my team will be banding together well; we are all hoping for the best and I know we'll be doing our best to make it happen. 

CSSI Day 16: Projects and Resumes

I'd be lying if I said that today wasn't an exhausting day for everyone. I felt strangely drained throughout the day, particularly due to trying to solve problems that are beyond our capacity of the programming that we have learned. However, that's not to say that we didn't celebrate some victories today. We started off with a running head start through having the first few pages of our application coded; this continued throughout the morning with successfully adding all of our data into the datastore. However, that was when we realized that a major component of our application requires auto-updating web pages, which we'd underestimated the difficulty of. There is one method of doing it, which involves using the Channel Python API in App Engine, but reading through the tutorial we felt that the self-learning how to incorporate the code into our program was over our skill level. Tonight, our team will be trying to work out the details and hopefully find a solution, as well as laying out the tasks for tomorrow. Still, I'm having a lot of fun applying what I've learned in CSSI to the beginnings of our project, and I feel like we are almost on the right track. 

The highlight of the day was the resume workshop after lunch. I thoroughly enjoyed having break-out sessions with members of the Google recruiting team, for I learned so much about how to write a succinct yet detailed resume. I thought that the session was extremely helpful; it was so nice of the recruiting team to take time out of their work to come look over our individual resumes. 

As we move into crunch time and some heavy programming in the next few days, I am hopeful that our project idea will come together and take shape. Our team is working hard together; I hope to have some great updates in the days to come!

CSSI Days 14/15: Woodland Park Zoo and Underground City

This weekend has gone by so quickly that I can't even believe just how much of CSSI has already gone by... I'm combining the two weekend days into one post because it has been so eventful and filled with further exploration of the lovely city. 

We started off on Saturday with a trip to the Woodland Park Zoo; I'd actually been looking forward to the trip since it'd been so long since I'd gone to a local zoo where I live. The weather was perfect for walking around, and we got to see many animals. Here are some pictures below:

Penguins! Surprisingly living outside in the hot weather.

Giraffes frolicking around the field

An elephant!

After spending most of the afternoon at the zoo and checking in with everyone at 4:00pm, we celebrated Christine's birthday with cake and Happy Birthday songs in many different languages! Out of everyone who was there, we counted twelve languages known between us; it was so cool to see that out of such a small group, we knew quite a few languages. Next, a few of us set off for University Village, a local shopping and dining area that was only a short walk away from campus. For dinner, we went to a sushi bar! This was so exciting, because I'd always wanted to go to one where the plates of sushi revolve around the tables, and Blue C Sushi was exactly that. The food was, needless to say, delicious.

Outside Blue C Sushi

Rotating sushi bar!

Some of the scrumptious sushi I had

Dinner was followed by taking in the scenery and doing a little shopping, we walked back to the dorms after sunset and hung out there for a little while until it was time for bed. After a long day of walking around, it was nice to finally relax in our rooms and go over plans for the next day before going to sleep.

Today, we set off for lunch first at Auntie Anne's (tried soft pretzels for the first time and they were awesome!) and Cheesecake Factory (for some pre-birthday cheesecake)! Afterward, we embarked on Seattle's Underground City tour, which I'd wanted to go on since last year in order to learn some more about Seattle's history. During the tour, we visited a few underground buildings preserved from the early 1900s; I learned many interesting facts about the city's earlier days, including one of Seattle's corrupt mayors Henry Yesler, a fire that burned down the downtown region, and a 2001 earthquake. To be honest, the tour was a bit short for my liking and there wasn't too much to see underground aside from dilapidated buildings, but the history aspect was what made me enjoy the tour the most.

One of the original banks in Seattle; it was
open 24/7 for business due to the gold rush.

Original historical underground skylights,
installed for natural lighting.

The first ever known picture of downtown Seattle.

To end the day, we went to dinner at Red Robin, a classic American burger chain. The three August birthday girls, we actually all ended up getting birthday sundaes and being sung to by the serving staff!

Red Robin selfie while waiting for food

Back at the dorms, our group began some preliminary planning and coding for our final project, in order to get a jump start on tomorrow's official beginning. From what we were able to accomplish today, I feel confident going into Monday that we'll be on schedule for the week and it was exciting to finally get started on the programming! Also, seeing as today was likely our last opportunity to explore the city, I enjoyed the packed weekend, particularly getting to experience many places that I hadn't been to last year. As we head into the final week, it's crunch time and I'm ready to put my acquired coding skills to the test. 

CSSI Day 13: Let the Projects Begin!

Our final projects officially began today! First, however, we had a discussion about reverse engineering, where we broke out into small groups to discuss the mechanics behind different popular websites and and applications. Our group got Google+ Hangouts, which was interesting because I'd never really used it before, and so we took some time to look more into the details of its features. About Hangouts, we had to answer four questions:

1. What does the application do, from the user's point of view?
2. How do users interact with the application?
3. What handlers might the application have?
4. What data is stored by the application?

The first two questions were easier to answer because they were a lot more intuitive; the latter two got us to think more logically and linearly about how different parts of the application achieved what it wanted to do. In my opinion, the exercise was a very great way to start getting us thinking about the actual steps that an application takes in order to execute its variety of functions. Through thinking through these processes, it was easier to design our own project while keeping these in mind to help guide us.

After lunch, we got our groups for our final projects and set out to brainstorm some ideas. Although still in the early stages of development, Emmi, Kristen, and I were able to come up with a solid plan by the end of the day; I'm really excited to be working with them during the next week to make our project come to life through applying everything that we have learned! Stay tuned to find out what web application we're working on.

Friday night movie night!

In the evening, a large group of us went downtown to see Guardians of the Galaxy, the newest Marvel movie. But first, before the movie began, we got to go to Gameworks, an arcade that was right next to the theatre. I got to play Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) and a very cool racing game with a motion chair that mimics the movements of your car. It was so fun to play in an arcade again for the first time in probably 7/8 years!

DDR battle!

Cool racing simulator

I'm not a fan of action movies but I did want to check Guardians of the Galaxy out as there was a lot of hype around it. I thought that the movie was great, largely because it was so funny! The many different character names were a little confusing at times, but the humour kept the movie interesting and cut through much of the tension. I had a lot of fun tonight playing at the arcade and watching the movie with everyone; I'm only looking even more forward to the activities to come on the weekend!

CSSI Day 12: App Engine Projects and Kayaking

Today was only a half-day of classes in the morning, which consisted of working on select App Engine projects to further practice the skills that we'd learned from the week. For the first hour, I had to focus on debugging my code from yesterday after adding in a new feature; the process was painstaking because my code appeared perfectly fine and so it involved going through line-by-line. Through this, I learned an important lesson: App Engine templates still read code that is "commented out"; while no normal programming language (that I've encountered, at least) actually executes code that is labelled as comments, the App Engine template  did. While this problem took far too long to solve, I'm really glad that I learned about this unique feature of templates to help in future projects.

Afterward, I worked on a "Rock Paper Scissors" application, in which the user plays against the computer - randomly generated computer responses. The basic setup game was quite easy to program, which I'm hoping means that I am improving in my App Engine/incorporating Python with HTML/CSS code skills. I hope to add more features to the application before I launch it, but here is what it looks like now (again, graphics are minimal as I haven't been focusing too much on the CSS aspect of the code):

Start screen of game

Game results page

After having lunch, we had a tech talk with a biologist who is currently working on a team and with Google on projects such as looking at different antibodies and researching how to create antibodies to match antigens of diseases, and mapping out neural pathways of the entire brain. This was really interesting because it exposed us to some of the projects that Google takes part in aside from its main line of products, as well as how computer science factors into these projects. Having learned about the immune system and the nervous system in Biology class, I was able to understand the more technical aspects of the presentation more deeply. However, I think that this talk really opened all of our eyes to ways where computer science isn't the main component, but still extremely important in other ventures. Computers are masterfully taken advantage of to do tasks at a faster and more efficient rate of humans; however because the greatest "computer" - the brain - has yet to be replicated, there are many issues to be encountered when working with technology. While these smaller challenges may be eventually resolved, looking at the bigger picture really makes me wonder just how much more information is beyond the reach of humans and computers alike, and the extent to which it will take for us to acquire such knowledge to our satisfaction.  

Kayaking and paddleboarding right against the Seattle skyline.

In the afternoon, we visited Alki Beach, a local Seattle park, to go on a kayaking tour! This was my first experience with kayaking, so I was extremely stoked. I was expecting for it to be harder to balance in the boat, but after we got in, even in a two-person kayak it seemed difficult to capsize. I definitely wasn't expecting to get so wet though! Not only did we get wet due to residual water from our paddles, but we started a little water fight in the kayaks amongst CSSIers and in the end many of us were soaked. However, the entire experience was fantastic; we got to kayak along the coast of Alki Beach for over an hour, and it felt both fun and relaxing. Later, we had dinner on the lakeside in the park with interns who were working at Google for the summer, which also gave us time to soak in the fantastic weather.

I also tried skateboarding for the first time...
and was consequently very, very shaky.
This photo masks it well though!

Hanging off the edge of the lake during dinnertime!

During free time, we walked down to the beach and even got to play a bean bag toss game similar to "Cornhole" or "Tailgate", where a two-person team tries to score points by tossing and then hitting bean bags into the holes. This afternoon was a fantastic way to wrap up the day and enjoy the Seattle sights from the lake; not only did I get to try kayaking for the first time, but simply hanging out with everyone outdoors in the fabulous weather was a blast. 

CSSI Day 11: Databases and Internship Talk

Today was all about datastores in App Engine, and how to use them in order to store data from users not locally, but in a database for future access. In the morning, we learned how to import datastores and add data to them, use queries to create objects out of and filter through the data, and also to delete data. This sounded a lot easier than it already was, especially grasping the many different aspects of datastores, including models, its properties, and manipulating objects inside of them.

Next, we began our project for the day, to create an application where users can create profiles and write messages on other people's profiles. This involved many steps, including:

1. Creating a form to take in user information
2. Storing the gathered information in a datastore
3. Creating a homepage to link to every user's profile
4. Creating profile pages for each user
5. Allowing users to delete their profiles
6. Enabling users to leave messages on others' profiles

I managed to complete the exercise today (yay!), but I haven't deployed the application yet so it isn't available to view online. I realized today that fully understanding the programs we built goes beyond understanding the code; instead, it is equally important to grasp the process that occurs in both the browser and servers. Through being able to explain what goes on in the background, it becomes a lot easier to apply those concepts to becoming better at coding.

After lunch, we got to meet a panel of current university (or college, as they say in the US) interns working at Google; they spoke about their experiences both applying to and working at Google. Furthermore, they gave us advice for writing resumes and participating in interviews. Hearing them talk about their roads toward the internship was very perceptive because it was easier to relate to these students, some of whom had only been in university for a year. As an added bonus, there was actually a University of Waterloo intern there! That was exciting, as afterwards I was able to ask him about questions that were more specific to Waterloo. 

After dinner, before leaving on the shuttle, I got to play shuffleboard for the first time at the office! The sliding is super tricky to get a hang of in the beginning, but I really loved the game. It's like a mini-version of curling, and since I really enjoy watching curling (especially during the Olympics) I had lots of fun.

The shuffleboard table! This game needs to be more popular.

I can't believe that today was already the last day of formal instruction... where has the time gone? The past few days have been a whirlwind of education and fun, entwined into a brilliant experience so far. As we move into finishing up App Engine and getting started on our final projects, I am excited to find out who I'm working with and begin coming up with our own ideas for building applications!

P.S. The Capital Cities Quiz app that I shared yesterday has been updated to include US capitals! Check it out here: http://capitals-quiz.appspot.com

Also, song of the day - awesomely upbeat remix of Pompeii by Bastille:

CSSI Day 10: App Engine Developments

Standing outside the office doors!

One of the two buildings on the Seattle campus.

Google Seattle sign; how fitting!

We continued our progress in App Engine today by learning about templates, which made coding much easier through allowing for the integration of separate HTML files into the main Python code file. This made the code for our applications look a lot cleaner, and consequently easier to read.

We began with creating a quiz for users to take, in order to learn how to connect HTML input boxes with Python actions. To make the quiz more bug-proof, we learned to use conditionals and for-loops in the HTML code to prevent users from submitting the quiz with blank answers. To make our quizzes look more aesthetically pleasing, we added pictures to our program through served static files using App Engine.

After lunch, we had a "Laying the Groundwork for a Technical Career" presentation, where we learned about Google's mission, recommended courses to take in university, additional resources for practicing computer science, as well as different internships that are available throughout the university years. This talk was fantastic and very informative, including the Q&A session at the end. I think that the advice we received through the presentation will definitely aid in being better prepared for work opportunities (especially at Google itself!) in the future. 

Our second project for the day was to make a collection of profiles of all the CSSI students this year. Through this exercise, we learned how to import Python files into our main file and use the data stored in the file in our program. During this time was when I began to find things quite tricky, for there were many variables that looked very similar and thus were easily confused with one another. But after sorting out what variable belonged to what, I was able to finish the application quite quickly. After the project, I decided to modify the quiz exercise that we made today into a "capital cities" quiz! The app interface isn't very attractive yet as I haven't had the time to write up CSS for the file. Also, only the "Canadian Capital Cities Quiz" works so far; I hope to have a USA version up soon! Test out your knowledge of Canadian capital cities:

http://capitals-quiz.appspot.com/

In other news, back at the dorms I got to play the ukulele for the first time! It was really fun to learn how to play "I'm Yours" by Jason Mraz; the song is the perfect summer song and also sounds amazing on ukulele. Because I have experience playing the guitar, it was quite easy to remember the chords and learn how to strum the rhythm, but there was a chord that was quite difficult to switch to so I practiced for a bit. Still, learning to play was a great break from a day of coding. Today felt like it went by so fast, with lots of studying, creating, and debugging going on. It's now time to sleep... see you tomorrow! 

CSSI Day 9: Google Seattle!

This morning, we were greeted by the shuttle slightly later than usual, to be taken to the other half of Google Seattle/Kirkland, the Seattle offices! On the other side of Lake Washington, the Seattle campus is in a more metropolitan area, but it is literally right along the shores of Lake Union. The differences in the two offices are subtle yet stark; they are both unmistakably "Google-y", pervaded by common features of a Google office, and yet each one has its own unique charms. The Seattle offices appear more homey and grungy, but in a very artsy way with each room tastefully decorated with nautical/marine themes.  

One of the two Google Seattle buildings.

After taking a quick tour around the building (a few more pictures hopefully coming soon), we set off to work learning App Engine, a tool that allows web applications to be published online. The setup of App Engine definitely took some getting used to, as it incorporates both HTML/CSS and Python, and it was sometimes hard to tell where one would go in relation to the other. Furthermore, we were introduced to .yaml files, which are used in App Engine to specify the paths of URLs based on HTTP request handlers (from the browser to the server).

After a day of learning the basics of App Engine doing practice exercises, I came up with an application that takes user input and generates random dice rolls. It may appear basic at first, but there are actually many components coming together in the background to make the application work. Perhaps the most difficult part of the code for me was implementing the images of dice faces in place of plain numbers; we didn't really learn how to link to static files through the host, so it took some research and help to figure out how to allow the host toh have access to the image files that I needed. You can check out the application at http://dice-rolls.appspot.com! 

Sample of dice roll app!

Furthermore, we worked on a prime factor calculator, which can either take in a number and determine whether or not it is a prime number, or list all the prime numbers up until a certain number. I will definitely be trying to work on this program some more tomorrow, as not all the components are yet complete. Creating all these projects with App Engine today, one of the things that amazes me is how the different programming languages and files come together to make interactive and functional web pages. Tomorrow we will continue even further into the many different components of App Engine; I can't wait to see what other variety of functions we will "unlock" as we learn to implement more actions in App Engine. It's been a wonderful first day at Google Seattle, and I am only looking forward to finding out what's next. 

CSSI Day 8: Eating and Shopping Seattle

Today was a much more relaxed, go-at-your-own-pace day for us to decide what to do in the city. Don't get me wrong, I actually thoroughly enjoyed all the busy weekdays where we coded for hours per day; I find that when I set aside large blocks of time for specific tasks I am more productive, so I enjoy the blocks of time for classes. Nonetheless, the weekend break was well-needed, and after seeing the downtown regions yesterday it was really nice to go back.

We started off the day with a morning walk around the campus; we got to see the main fountain on campus yesterday, and today we saw a statue of George Washington (naturally, since it is the University of Washington after all). The walk was a good way to become awake and enjoy the fantastic weather.

George Washington monument

The Drumheller Fountain

Next, we made the most of the ORCA cards we were provided with and headed off to Pike Place Market by public transit; we wanted to try Pike Place Chowder, an extremely popular seafood restaurant that had too long of a line the day before. I had a Dungeness Crab Roll and their famous New England Clam Chowder, the two most popular items. Needless to say, the seafood was amazing.

Seafood fest!

Afterward, we walked around downtown for the afternoon, doing a bit of shopping; it was fun to explore some stores that are only available in the US. For dinner, I got to try gyros for the first time! It only reinforced my love of Greek food.

Awesome food was awesome.

To cap off the day, we settled down to watch The Internship back at the dorms, a hilarious movie about interning at Google. Tomorrow we head off to Google Seattle! This weekend has been fantastic but I'm ready to learn some more.

CSSI Day 7: Seattle Saturday!

Today was a much-anticipated break from our week of learning, as we took in the sights that downtown Seattle had to offer. Our main planned events for the day were a "Ride the Ducks" tour and a scavenger hunt, but after taking a shuttle downtown we first had some free time to explore the city on our own. 

Our group decided to check out Pike Place Market first, one of Seattle's most diverse and culturally interesting attractions. Although I'd already been to the market last year, it was really nice to re-visit the place and experience the lively atmosphere once more. Pike Place Market houses a mecca of locally-grown produce and homemade foods, in addition to a wide variety of Seattle's finest seafood. Of course, the first ever Starbucks restaurant may be the most widely visited attraction there, there are plenty of fantastic things to see and taste, including mini cheesecakes, French macarons, infused oils and balsamic vinegars, and fruit ciders. As we made our way around the market, we caught a fish-throwing performance and some music by local street performers. As Seafair (a festival to celebrate Seattle at the "boating capital of the world") was happening this weekend, we watched as military planes soared over the skies, a perfect addition to Seattle's sights.

Posing in front of Pike Place Market!

 Wide assortment of food at the market.

The first ever Starbucks! 

Fresh dungeness crab!

After a few hours, we all met up to take a "Ride the Ducks" tour on a boat-shaped vehicle that turned into a boat in the water. The Duck took us around Seattle neighbourhoods as the captain explained a little bit of the city's history (and pointed out a million other Starbucks coffee shops). The highlight of the tour was when we drove into Lake Union and got to drink in the sights of the lakefront; many houseboats and floating houses lined the edges of the lake, including a famous one that appeared in Sleepless in Seattle. The captain explained that the houses were some of the most expensive real estate, for the government limited the number of houses that can be built there to protect the waters from pollution. Because I'd been living in a landlocked for a few years, it was refreshing to be on the water again. Of course, we also passed by Seattle Centre (home of the Space Needle), and drove along the harbour to take in the sights of the piers.

View from inside the "Ride the Duck" tour.

Seattle skyline, as seen from Lake Union.

Space Needle!

Floating houses along the lakeside.

Houseboat driving along the lake!

After disembarking from the Duck tour, we dove straight into our second event of the day - the Seattle scavenger hunt! As an avid fan of the show The Amazing Race, I couldn't have been more excited. Our task was a photo hunt, where we had to decipher clues to places and then go there to take a picture. My team was full of other excited and competitive people, so we quickly worked on figuring out the places and then plotting out a route on a map. For two and a half hours, we ran around the downtown area to capture the places that the clues led to; because the hunt locations spanned a wide area, it was difficult to determine which places we had to sacrifice in order to make it back to the meeting spot in time. In the end, we were exhausted but also very content with our effort. The winners will be announced Monday or Tuesday... I think that our team has a great shot!

All in all, "Seattle Saturday" as I like to call it, was a fun day loaded with activities to better see the city. Throughout the day, I was constantly amazed by the beautiful architecture around the downtown core, as well as many art pieces that were scattered around the area. Whether re-living places where I'd visited a year earlier or taking in new sights, this experience was definitely different from my previous trip, in a very satisfying way. I had a lot of fun walking around the city with everyone; tomorrow we have a whole day to ourselves, so I'm looking forward to delving deeper into downtown Seattle!