the first week

Washington, D.C., is a beautiful, wonderful place.  Truly.  I love it.  I love it.  I love waking up each morning and running along the Potomac and by some of our greatest National Monuments.  I love riding the metro to work.  I love the people here.  I love walking past the Capitol and, you know, just the other typical buildings.  I love walking around the Senate buildings. I love having questions and questions on end and learning so much just by working.  I love the inside of the Capitol building.  And I love giving tours of it because I get to meet new people and interact with them and spend more time in the Capitol. 

Seriously, I don't know if I have ever had so many questions in my life.  I just feel like I am learning from everything that I see, hear, and do.  As I walk through the Capitol I make connections with my Art History, American Government, and Christian History classes.  And as I sit at work, it feels like there is this huge bath of knowledge just sitting there for me to ingest, and I feel like I can't get it in soon enough.  The best way to explain it is this--imagine a starving James that walks up to a buffet of new, but slightly familiar foods.  That's how it is for me.  There is so much that I know a bit about, but much, much more for me to . . . devour.  I am so excited for these next few months.

Something I really love about work is that I get to read the newspaper and keep up-to-date with everything.  We watched a lot of the speeches from the RNC--my favorite was Condoleezza Rice's speech.  She is one of my heroes.

We are actively pursuing fun outside of work as well.  Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights were spent at the Barlow for FHE/institute (yes, I'm going to INSTITUTE) and a hefty reading assignment.  But, Tuesday night was quite the adventure.

We found out about a free outdoor movie and decided that, of course, we had to go.  To make a long story short, what should have been about a 30 minute trip ended up taking us about 1 1/2 hours.  But, it was an adventure, we shared some good talks on a dirty "baby-making" bench, and made it in time for the famous last 40 minutes of Dirty Dancing.  And there was free popcorn.  And Christmas lights.  So I was a happy camper.

Today was also busy.  It started off with Carly and me going to the gym early in the morning.  We hadn't been there before, though, so we got a little lost.  Finally, after about 15 minutes of wandering, we walked into one of the GWU buildings to ask for help.  As soon as we walked up to the desk with our sheepish smiles, one of the men looked at Carly and said:

"Uh-oh girl, what you did?"

We laughed and explained our dilemma, and they pointed us in the right direction.   After the gym we went to breakfast at Lindy's Red Lion.

Class went well today--I think I'm really going to like it.  I will learn a lot about how to be involved and how to understand politics.  After class I ate a bit of cereal and then we headed out. We went to the Old Post Office, an outdoor jazz concert (it wasn't actually jazz), and some exploring.

Riding up to the clock tower in the Old Post Office

Museum of Natural History

"Jazz" Concert

(We dipped our feet in the pond)

After our time in central D.C., we went to Georgetown for dinner, exploring, and dessert.

We came back and watched Big Fish in the basement (while I worked on this for you).  One of my favorites, and I haven't seen it quite a while.  I think you might like the movie, mom.  My favorite part is a scene where the main character is standing in a field of potted daffodils that he collected from five states . . . . . . .my dream.

Anyway, that's it.  That's the summary of my week.  I cannot believe that it's only been a week.  I feel like I have been here for ages.  (In a good way.)  I'm going to go to bed now so that I can get up early to go on a long run.  Yaaaayyy.

{Love you lots.}