Portland

So I left New York on August 1st with four of my incredible friends from Holy Cross for our pre-orientation adventure in Portland, OR. On Sunday, Alex, Avanti and I took Portland's version of the subway downtown to the Saturday Market, a gigantic market full of a variety of little shops, henna tatoos, caricature artists, and tons of food and locally brewed beers (Portland has something like 30 breweries.) After exploring the market we walked around downtown eventually finding our way to the Rose Test Garden (which was actually pretty cool) and of course the Oregon Zoo! We started by visiting the animals of the Great Northwest...mountain goats, black bears, and we tried to see the cougar but he was hiding. The highlight for me of course was seeing the sleeping Polar Bear who was hanging out in the shade under a sprinkler because it was 90 degrees outside. After the zoo we met up with Jeana, Lauren and Sarah and went to dinner at the Rockbottom Brewery (highly suggested by one of Portland's finest) where we consumed what we coined our "last burgers" and enjoyed some of the local brews and some good company. Eventually we headed back to the hotel and took in some Shark Week on TV.
On Monday, we headed back into the city to have lunch at the Blueplate Diner, which appeared on the Food Network and had one of the best ice cream floats I have ever had. Finally we decided that we should go to orientation and made our way over to the airport where we met a bunch of other JVs, some of the JVC staff and headed off to Camp Adams in a bunch of vans.