Week One: Warming Up With DC

Only three days after my slew of finals ended, I arrived in Washington, DC! By “warming up” (in the title) I mean to say slowly preparing for a crazy two months of traveling once we arrive in London. The phrase has nothing to do with the weather. I actually had expected a wave of heat and humidity the second I stepped out of the airport, but instead it was crisp, chilly, and sometimes windy to the point that walking outside feels like resistance training. Now it has become more sunny and warm, but not to the point where I want to melt, which I often do during the summer. I come from a city inland from Malibu, CA, where we had been experiencing temperatures in the 90s, considerably different from the atmosphere here in DC. That being said, I should admit that I’m a bad Californian and cannot take much heat at all, so I love this DC weather!

View from The Grand Apartments

My three roommates, Pam, Leslie, and Alisa were the first new people I met and we all get along amazingly! We are honestly content sitting around in our living room, cracking jokes, and rolling around with laughter (literally, in my case). Laughing definitely contributes to the daily workout, on top of having to walk everywhere. Our group of 30 heading for London seems to be an interesting mix and we come from colleges and universities all over the states. On the first day of the seminar we had to do introductions, and even though that activity tends to bore people, with this group there were a lot of laughs and hilarious comments.

The roomies and me - left to right is Alisa, Leslie, me, and Pam

With no car handy, we have been using the metro to get to the Washington Center and around town. In preparation for being completely poor in Europe, my roomies calculated prices and came to the conclusion that buying a 7-day pass would be more economical than pay-as-you-go. That means just in transportation alone, I have spent $55 for the cab ride to the Grand Apartments from Dulles, and $39 for the metro pass. Then calculate in the food costs and whatnot and … my wallet is hurting. Speaking of things that are hurting… my feet are hurting. We’ve had to walk around for site visits plenty of times so far, and they’re not actually that far apart, but I have had the worst luck with shoes anyone could ever have. My “professional” shoes gave me blisters, so I switched to my new sandals, which made my feet raw. So I bought another pair of sandals, which rubbed the back of my feet to the point of bleeding… then I bought flip-flops but the thong part of it has made blisters as well because I’ve already worn them too much… moral of the story: bring shoes you KNOW you are comfortable in! Or else you will be limping like me all over DC and it won’t be very enjoyable… On a more uplifting note, I just bought padding to stick in my shoes so I won’t be walking around with open wounds anymore… although I’m sure you were on the edge of your seat wondering what would become of my feet.

So far, I’ve visited the National Building Museum, Chinatown, Ben’s Chili Bowl, the DC Arts Center, the Anacostia Community Museum, the Eastern Market, and the Newseum as part of the agenda that the Washington Center drew up for us. We were on a schedule with those visits, and I personally like to look around on my own timetable. Apparently, my roomies and I were thinking the same thing, so yesterday (on Saturday), we went down to the National Mall (and by “mall” I am referring to the strip with the famous monuments that stretch from one end to the other, ending with the Lincoln Memorial) and walked our hearts out. (As a side note, no, that experience was also not good for my feet). We got off at Union Station and walked all the way to Lincoln Memorial.

The Capitol Building when roaming the National Mall

Getting lost in DC...my roomies asking directions from the cops haha

The reflecting pool was slightly overrated in my opinion, it was just a shallow, muddy body of water with ducks swimming around in it… but the WWII Memorial was quite pretty and the view from the Lincoln Memorial was pretty as well. The Washington Monument is very, very high… it looks so much shorter from far away (yes, duh, I know, things are supposed to look smaller from further away, but I really didn’t expect it to be that tall).

The reflecting pool leading up to the Lincoln Memorial

Today, I met up with a friend from high school who I haven’t seen for about two years. He is now attending Georgetown University and is out here taking summer classes as well as working for a think tank in the Department of Defense. It took forever for me to get to that side of town, but it was well worth it. We had brunch in this interesting Asian fusion restaurant where I had to debate whether or not to spend money, but ultimately gave in and decided “what the hell, I like food.” That was worth it as well (even though now I am going to pack sandwiches for lunch the rest of the time here just to make up for the guilt I feel for eating out so much). We trekked around Georgetown, which has really nice shops and buildings in the old style architecture that I absolutely love. He also took me for a tour of Georgetown and some of their older buildings like Healy Hall were really pretty as well.

Healy Hall at Georgetown University

Later in the evening, we went to the AFI (American Film Institute) Silver Theater and Cultural Center to see an old French movie by Jean-Luc Godard, called À bout de soufflé or Breathless. After that movie, we sat in our same spots until the next movie started, which turned out to be The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Even now I still have the infamous theme song playing in my head, complete with “wah-wah-wah-wah” noises.

The Potomac River while walking around Georgetown

By tomorrow (Monday), I will have been in DC for a week, which means that we are headed for London in several days! I have never been to Europe and I’m excited to get thrown into a completely different scene. I heard somewhere that to really rediscover yourself, you should move and live in a different place every so often (I forget the exact amount of time). That could be true, since a change of scenery would most likely take you out of your comfort zone and throw you for a loop, or several.

I still have some time left in DC though, and a few more sites to see! I hear that there will be a lot of walking in London… on the top of my list is to buy shoes that don’t kill my feet before we head across the Atlantic (if you remember, my feet have suffered all sorts of pain since arriving). That ends my mini-self-pity party about my feet (hopefully). I’ll keep you posted on my whereabouts!