Locked Keys and a People Shelter Make a Fun Difference

Yesterday, after some shopping for food at Costco and Trader Joe's, my mom and I went to the Issaquah Public Library to drop off overdue books, and if it's open, we'll pick up some more books there. It was closed because of power outage since Dec.15. And we also realized we had locked the keys in the trunk of our car. And then thats when we had one of our best days in our lives. It started out very bad, though.

We came up with many ideas, but a number of them failed. For instance, we found a grocery store. We bought things that we could not find earlier: green peppers and carrots. Then, instead of credit card, we used a $20 doller bill. We got change, just as we planned. There was enough coins from the change to make plenty of calls on the telephones out in the city. We hurried to the telephone booth right outside Shell, a gas station. But the wrecked thing would not "swallow" the coins. Mom had wasted 75 cents! Also, the telephone had broke because people had banged it hard. But finally, we were still walking when we came across a small group of people. "Soup! Hot soup!" they called. Then I saw a sign that said "FREE HOT SOUP." They asked us if we wanted any soup. All we asked for was a telephone, the one by Shell had broke. They had one in the building. I hoped it was better than the other one. It was. We called dad to pick us up as he was driving home.

There happend to have a shelter for people at the City Hall and Police Station. We decided to stay there until dad came. I had fun there, especially with Denise, who is the head of Community Emergency Response Team (CERT), I think. As a result, we stayed there for almost 3 hours. Dad was supposed to pick us up in the Van Pool. And Van Pools leave only at 6 o'clock. But dad wanted to leave earlier and pick us up. So he Car Pooled instead with a friend. But his friend took a different road and they got stuck in a 1-and-a-half hour traffic jam. While at the shelter, we drank hot chocolate and chatted with each other. It did turn out to be a good day after all （At the begining, I thought we were goners)!

-Hannah