Blog tag!

Ok, so I've been tagged! Here's the deal - there's this game running rampant around the blogosphere (well, ok, I just heard of it today) it is called "blog tag". What happens is that someone list 10 things about themselves that very few people know, and then "tags" some blogging friends (not sure if it is supposed to be 3 or 5 friends) to do the same on their own blog.

My friend Arin tagged me.

So, here goes. 10 things that few people know about me:
1. I don't like walnuts. I don't mind them in baked goods, but I think they are gross on their own.
2. I won my school spelling bee when I was in 5th grade.
3. While I'm a pretty avid hiker nowadays, that wasn't always the case. The first time I EVER went hiking was a 3 week trek in the Himalayas! I literally had never gone on a walk in the mountains before that day (being from flat-land Michigan is my excuse). I guess it is a good thing that it turned out that I liked hiking, because it could have been a pretty miserable few weeks if I decided I didn't like to hike!
4. My three favorite cities that I've visited are Kathmandu, Nepal; Cusco, Peru; and Jerusalem, Israel.
5. I didn't own a car until I was 29 years old.
6. I love the song "I will Survive" by Gloria Gaynor. Is that her name? Anyway, it is an old song, but I know all the words and it is fun to belt it out as loud as possible. Actually, I'll toss in a 6b here - my definition of a good song is that I know all the words. I guess I'm not a great musical connoisseur!
7. Peter and I were robbed at knife point in Panama. Horrible experience. No one was hurt and they only got Peter's watch, but I was pretty freaked out by random groups of young men for a long time after that experience.
8. I know how to say "there is a friendly water creature hissing in the elevator" in Finnish. Comes in handy sometimes.
9. The first time I ever felt an earthquake was when I was sitting naked eating breakfast cereal in my apartment in Japan. (Not sure why I was naked and eating cereal exactly, it isn't my normal custom, so please don't count that as something new that you've learned about me.) Anyway, I noticed it was an earthquake because everything started jiggling! LOL. It was just a tiny one though (the earthquake, I mean).
10. Hm, one more? The first apartment that Peter and I ever had we nicknamed "The Pompidou" after the museum in Paris where all the pipes are on the outside. We lived in the basement of this college student's house. We didn't own any furniture for months and literally camped out with sleeping bags in the middle of the room. It was a blast! We've lived in some dives! The other most notable was the pink stucco apartment building in Seattle. Our apartment was just over a tattoo parlor. In fact, when we were out the tattoo guys used to sign for our UPS packages!

Ok, so I'm tagging Amy in South Dakota, Lyn, Amanda and Stacy! Kendell, I'd tag you too, but I see that Arin already did that!