First Stop- Hawaii (not)

I was hoping to be looking at volcanoes in Hawaii by now, but instead I'm sitting in an airport lounge drinking horrible coffee while obscure banjo music serenades us in the background. I've been on the phone for the last hour trying to figure out what's going on- first my ticket got messed up and I couldn't get on my flight, and now the one I'm supposed to catch is hours late, with the expected arrival time getting pushed further and further back. So since I can't observe any foreign places for this first blog post, I decided to talk about what's here, in Seattle.
Along the Pacific Coast, we are in what's called a subduction zone. On a destructive plate boundary or a convergent boundary, two tectonic plates move towards each other and one of them is forced under the other. Unfortunately for us living here, that means that earthquakes are frequent here. Another thing that happens as a result of subduction is the movement of trapped lava, ash and other substances up towards the surface; when a plate sinks below another plate, it goes far into the asthenosphere, shown in the picture below, where it heats up, releasing water, gas and lava.

Update:

I'm on the plane! Hawaii, here I come!