What has already happened.

Okay let's start from the beginning of my arrival. The plane Burke and I were on from Dallas landed in Washington Reagan airport at approximately 3:50pm (EST) on Wednesday, then we walked to baggage claim and found our luggage. (sidenote: I did not realize how hard it would be to walk with two huge rolling pieces of luggage). We then checked in at the SuperShuttle desk, ended up waiting about 25 minutes until our shuttle arrived. The drive to our new home was pretty uneventful except that it was about 40 minutes. Upon entering the building a young woman told us to leave our luggage in the entryway and go downstairs to pick up our keys by this point it was about 5:05pm (EST). The reason the times matter so much is because we had not had any dinner and had to get to a mandatory meeting at 7pm (EST), which would not have food at it, and was scheduled to last until 9pm (EST).


We returned to the entryway and went up to our rooms, mine is room 505, thank god this building has elevators because I was NOT carrying all my luggage up 5 flights of stairs. So I arrive in my room, none of my roommates were there when I walked in. Although all of them had previously arrived. I claimed the last bed, which is in the "master" bedroom and has a window at the head of the bed. I proceeded to speed unpack, and was wondering what and if Burke and I would be eating dinner. I then got a text from Burke saying that his roommate AJ was getting chinese food and if I wanted any. I of course said yes. I finished unpacking everything at around 6:30, and walked down to Burke's room. Luckily the chinese food arrived at about 6:45pm. We all ate as much as we could as fast as we could. We ate until about 6:57pm, and rushed downstairs to the meeting. I can honestly say that the first 45 minutes of the meeting were useful, the rest was either obvious information or stuff that could be found on the Washington Center's website. Hense by this point I was very tired and still rather hungry. Luckily the meeting ended pretty quickly at about 9:15pm. Burke and I returned to his room, ate some more chinese food and then I left to head to bed although I had to take my chinese with me so that I would have something for breakfast because I still had not had time to get to the grocery store.


Thursday was pretty busy, although we had a little more free time. We both spent the day with our programs respectively. In the morning my program met and our program advisor (Josh Bartell) gave us a rundown on what the summer would entail as far as the different requirements. We got out of the meeting at about 11:45am, and had an hour to eat lunch before we headed out with our program groups to tours which related to our programs. Again I did not have time to get groceries so luckily one of my roommates let me eat a bowl of cereal. The tour in the afternoon was the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts. It was an informative tour, and I have some photos I took up on facebook from it. That ended around 3:30, so I returned to the RAF (Residential Academic Facility) [where I live] put down my stuff and headed out with Burke to finally pick up some groceries.


Finding the grocery store was an adventure in itself, you see I had printed directions and did know the address. Although we ended up walking right by the building because the sign with the name on it was pretty high up, and as you all are aware I am not noted for being tall. So we walked around wondering where it was and luckily saw the CVS which is right across the street from it. So we picked up all the necessary food items, figuring that we would get the non-urgent stuff either on Friday or during the weekend. For dinner we went to this Italian place right across the street from the RAF. It's called Zuppa Fresca, it was a very nice environment, and not expensive for the portion sizes, although it did take about 40 minutes for our food to come out. But the taste definitely made up for it. Afterword we returned to the RAF and at 8pm went downstairs to the Ice cream Golf Social, and yes that is what it was called. Although oddly enough their idea of golf was that each table with ice cream was a 'hole'. I teamed up with a girl named Abi, she's from Gloucester, Massachusetts. She is lactose intolerant, so I offered to be her taste tester. There were nine holes in all, and I did try each one, again facebook has proof of this. She's really nice and we've been hanging out a lot, with a group of people. After the ice cream social I headed up to my room and all of the girls wanted to complete our roommate agreement form. Luckily we're all rather similar. The other girls are as follows Jacque (pronounced Jackie) who is my roommate, Emily and Caitlin. Jacque is from Ohio and is a psychology major. I don't remember where Emily and Caitlin are from. But we ended up completing our roommate agreement, and then headed to bed.


Friday was a busier day because we had to be up and at the meeting place by 8:45am so I got up earlier. We had a small group and we all headed out on the Metro to get to our destination. The attire for the day was business professional so I wore a nice blouse with slacks and some short black pumps. In the morning it was all required meetings in a large auditorium. I sat with Abi and two other girls I met Tina and Miki. The meetings were more useful this time around and after those were finished we each got to sign up for a civic engagement project, I signed up to be part of the Veterans one, but it is first come first serve, so I am not 100% sure whether I'll get in or not. Although it would be really interesting and the service day for them is to work the 32nd annual National Wheelchair Olympics which would be a cool experience. After the morning meetings we got together with a group which started out as only 6 people but ended up being 14 for lunch. We went to a place called Zentan, it's a sushi restaurant which also has other offerings (lucky for some of the guys they even serve a burger). After lunch some people went back to the meeting building for the afternoon question sessions although most of us just wanted to return to the RAF. My feet were killing me by this point and I knew I had at least 2 blisters. Well when we got home I limped up to my room and began my investigation, and upon reviewing the situation, it turned out that I had 9 blisters, and was in quite a bit of pain. I have since remedied the situation and they are all slowly healing. For dinner Burke and I just wanted to stay in so we made some ramen and watched Futurama.


Saturday morning was just a simple morning doing some organizing and a quick run to the grocery store with Burke to get a few things like laundry detergent. After lunch a group of us (me, Burke, Abi, Ryan, Andrew, Matt, Daquan, and Shanece) all decided we wanted to get out and explore. So we took the Metro to the Smithsonian stop and decided to go into a few of the museums. It was a lot of fun, although it was a little hot. First we went into the Freer Gallery which had a lot of Asian art, from early Chinese art, to Japanese, Indian and even Middle Eastern art. It was rather interesting to see it all. Then we just headed down the road stopping at a few places (Smithsonian Castle, sculpture garden) and eventually ended up inside of the Air and Space Museum. It was really busy in that one, but I mean it is Memorial Weekend. So we didn't stay too long in there, but did see the important stuff, like the Apollo exhibit. After that one the group was really tired so we decided that the last museum would be the Museum of Natural History. We got to the museum and looked around for awhile, eventually ending at the whale exhibits. Abi has volunteered on a whale watch for eleven years so she was telling all of us all kinds of information on whales, it was pretty cool.


After we returned from our Smithsonian visit we just all went back to our rooms to rest following the busy day we had. I personally took a nap and man did I need it. For dinner that night Burke, Matt and I decided to go to a burger place, we decided on Five Guys Burgers and Fries. We began to walk to our destination and found out that it was located in almost the heart of Chinatown. That was really cool to see because all the signs are in English and Mandarin (a good opportunity for practice!). While walking to our choice for dinner I saw a place....RITA'S ITALIAN ICE!!! I was so excited because I have told Burke about it before but he has never had it. I told the guys that after dinner we had to stop there and get some Italian ice. We got to Five Guys and each had burgers respectively, afterword we walked back toward the Rita's and got some Italian ice (Burke had cherry, Matt and I both wanted the Swedish fish flavor). We then wandered Chinatown for a little while and came across a street band, which was really impressive to watch, especially the younger kid because he had the solos and was really good. After that we headed back to the RAF and hung out in Abi's room with the rest of the group. Once it got later everyone decided to head to bed.

First Post!

Okay well hello everyone. This is my blog for the summer, to keep everyone somewhat up to date on what is going on in Washington DC. I am not sure how regularly I will post about what is going on, I will post at least once a week, sometimes more depending on how much free time I have. As far as photos I'm not sure if I will be putting them up on here, I figure they will just be on facebook. Also the next few posts I'm hoping to get in, will be from when I arrived this past Wednesday until now, so that anyone who didn't get earlier updates will be up to date. As for now I'm off to the grocery store to pick up some food, a group of us are having a potluck dinner of sorts tonight (pasta, salad, bread, etc.) and I'm out to get a good amount of Ceasar salad.


Zaijian!