"That's God's Country Up There."

The best description about the town comes from a few different emails… Let’s see what I can paste together.

What can I tell you about the town? The schools for LT are WONDERFUL. They are small and intimate. There is a "No Hat, No Play" rule for the kids, the sun is so strong here that they have to wear a hat outside.There are two on the mountain to choose from, I think we are going with the smaller of the two- about 280 Students total K-7th grade. LT's second language in school is Japanese because we are so close to Japan, and there are a lot of Japanese people who immigrate here.

The town is more crafty than artistic because it's very touristy, but there are some good artists in the area. TONS of galleries. Every winery and beer garden has one in addition to all the lone galleries. Everyone you talk to is a photographer or painter, though they all take nature photographs- pretty flowers and stuff... I haven't figured out what I want my body of work to be up here yet, but I'm staying away from flowers.



There are two markets a month on the mountain where people sell arts, crafts, jams, vegetables, and other things. I'm going to bind journals and sell them there with some other things, like my prints (eventually). I’m just waiting for all my supplies to get here via boat.

They are huge on the environment, the water we live off of is rain water, they have things like "half flush" for the toilets, they are big on gas powered utilities and no one uses microwaves, along with a dryer- I'm mostly hang drying the clothes. It's kind of cool.You have to go to the butcher, the baker and the green grocer (for fruits, vegetables, and eggs). The grocery store closes at 6 every night if you need anything else. There are two street lights in the town and no traffic lights, only roundabouts. There are about 6,000 people total in the town. These are just a few of the huge changes we've been adjusting to. Although, everyone seems to help everyone out here, and when they hear that you are new in town and from America (though everyone initially thinks we're from Canada) they are so excited.

The mountain (rain forest) has 9 national parks in it, waterfalls, hiking trails- all that fun stuff. It's dark by 5:30 the latest (because we're still in winter... we came from Summer, and it was light till 8pm.) What's the coolest is at night, you can see the Milky Way Galaxy.
There is almost no crime- I think the worst I've heard about is teenagers shutting off peoples water supply (It's a switch in the front of the house).

The people are great. In fact, Derek just got his first gift from a patient on Sunday. It was a pumpkin, a full grown, organic, fresh off their farm pumpkin. We were even given some tips on how to avoid the sobriety checkpoints, which might occur at 8 on a Sunday morning. We’ve already encountered one, Derek had to pass a Breathalyzer test- standard. Honestly, there is no way we would have made it up the mountain with the wicked curvy roads and inclines if we were the slightest bit tipsy. (Btw, it takes 20 minutes to get down the mountain.)

We are about 40 minutes from the beautiful beach. On the weekends Billy is letting us use a studio of his down on the beach in Pottsville (for free- awesome!). You can hear the ocean from it. Just walk out to and there it is!