Yesterday was my first attempt at a typical DC trend: Happy Hour. Now I'm 20, so don't worry, I'm allowed to go to Happy Hours for the food! My friend Kate and I have been playing email-tag to line up our schedules for Happy Hour food while we're both still in DC. She also latched on to the fact that I had never tried sushi before, and we made a Tuesday 5:15 plan to meet up at Current Sushi by Dupont Circle. What a swanky place! A very cool atmosphere with dark, sleek furniture. She grabbed us a seat at the bar, another first for me, and I proceeded to order a nice, cool water on the rocks while I got counseled on all of the options on the Happy Hour menu. I had never tried sushi before, mostly because 1) only in the last couple of years have I started liking fish, and the idea of raw fish always weirded me out and 2) when it comes to food, I'm a texture person, so I couldn't imagine being ok with anything slimy... But, I have heard an incredible amount of people gush over sushi here, and as I figured it would probably be better to try something on a coast than in Minnesota, I had vowed to try it before I left. Mission accomplished, and I was quite pleased! After our incipient dish, despite discovering a tiny white worm inside an edamame pod and learning that had we ingested the worm it would have been healthy, we were game to forge on with the rest of the plates coming to us. Shrimp and vegetable wontons were piping hot so in my impatience I might have burned my mouth slightly, but they were good enough to add to my list of things I want to learn to cook. On to the actual sushi. Oh, and might I add, since I had failed miserably in my only chopstick lesson from my dear roommate Jessie, this was a little nerve-wracking on the outset, but I actually managed to make my hands work right for the most part and didn't look like too much of a white girl foreigner to sushi (I hope!). In taste-testing salmon and avocado rolls, spicy tuna rolls, and nigiri eel there wasn't a one I disliked! And surprisingly the one I was most apprehensive about because of the whole texture deal ended up being my favorite. The eel was quite sweet and not at all slimy. Another item crossed off the list.
Today I got the opportunity to see more of DC through work, which was pretty awesome. Alyson, the woman I met who works in the Peace Corps' Congressional Relations Office and happens to be from my hometown, asked for interns to volunteer to pass out flyers to congressional offices to publicize our event on the Hill tomorrow. My supervisor has been really great about me getting to experience everything Peace Corps and DC have to offer kindly agreed to my volunteering to help publicize today and also to do setup and cleanup tomorrow (and attend the event!). So I get to do some behind-the-scenes work as well as attend with other interns and staff in the Congressional Visitors' Center the speeches by the Peace Corps director and the six members of Congress who are Returned Peace Corps Volunteers. Today's adventure was traveling in a pack with Alyson and four other interns to Union Station (the closest yet still not-so-close metro stop to the Capitol) and divvying up flyers in Senate Office Buildings Hart and Russell to give to all the Senate offices demarcated by huge flags outside the doors. The two buildings shared the typical majestic DC architecture on the outside, but the flavor of the buildings once you stepped within was quite different. Hart is very open and spacious, but feels a little stark with white walls and lots of transparent glass. Russell, on the other hand, was characterized by beautiful, tall, dark wood doors to all the offices as well as plush carpeting to offset the white walls. Splitting up floors, we tackled the buildings in much less time than expected and will hopefully (or not) see some of the very gracious and/or some of the somewhat snarky Hill interns at our event tomorrow!
Unfortunately I did not document in photos my sushi experience yesterday, but I figured I'd take a picture of my cute mini-cube at work, especially before my team's imminent move down to the 5th floor. Never did get around to decorating...
"The Senate is the living symbol of our union of states."
Union Station - my first time here also, but it is bustling! Part train station, part shopping mall, part metro station, all beautiful.
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