Saturday, July 17, 2010

Foreigners and funky weather

DC has earthquakes? Who knew? Apparently not I, even after DC experienced one this morning... After staying up late chatting with people and thus putting off some foreign policy studying, once I crashed for the night I even slept through the tremors that went through the city around 5am. And more odd weather ensued as uncharacteristic thunderstorms began clattering around 20 minutes after I was safely in for the night.

Cool things from today:
- Finishing my American Foreign Policy midterm. Wilsonianism vs. Rooseveltianism anyone?
- Sprint workout outside in the early afternoon, thus avoiding both shin splints from the Georgetown track as well as the hottest part of the day.
- A site visit to the Hong Kong Economic Trade Office (while others' Embassy visits were choices between Australia, Czech Republic, and Austria) located in a lovely brick building that seems to have been a Georgetown house once upon a time.
- Being given snacks, lots of brochures about both what to do in Hong Kong and what events the Hong Kong Economic Trade Office holds in the DC area, and an awesome spiel on Hong Kong and the intricacies of China's "One Country, Two Systems" approach by a cute little man with a mixed Cantonese and British accent! I love accents. I have had so many conversations with people about accents here - both foreigners' and foreign-to-DCers'.
- Seeing all the cool fishes of the "Wild Oceans" and how humans interact with them in the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History's IMAX theater with funky 3D glasses. We looked awesome.
- Taking more silly photos at the Natural History Museum - this time with Peace Corps interns!
- Found a sweet white blazer for only $20 at H&M. Those stores are everywhere in DC, and I'm a fan of their good stuff for good prices! Looking like a pro never hurts in this city. It's fun to dress professionally during the day, be a strong working woman, jump into athletic clothes, and then eventually the amazing comforts of pajamas.
- Keeping an ear on a few Asian tourists and knowing what language they're speaking. Also observing the trend that women as old as their forties protect themselves from the sun using rain umbrellas, many with stereotypical cartoony characters no less.
- Tschuna, her roommate Kaylee, and I decided to walk towards home from downtown but along the route of metro stops so we could just hop on one when we felt like it. But somehow we never did. We found ourselves at the White House, glowing against its cobalt backdrop. But somehow, some incorrect orientations, a , and some purposeful meanderings later, we made it back to Georgetown to change our of our pro clothes, take cold showers, and collapse into bed.

Some of today's photos:

Hong Kong Economic Trade Office:




Natural History Museum silliness with Peace Corps interns Brittney, Matt, Tschuna, and Tschuna's roommate Kayleee.




The White House never sleeps.


I forget what this place is called, but it was gorgeous and hoppin' at night!


A semi-early night for an early morning tomorrow! Coincidentally I'll end up back at the White House, this time for a tour!

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Super secrecy

Today's site briefing: CIA.

Tasks: Split TFAS group in half for two buses. Figure out how to line up in alphabetical order at 7am. Turn off all electronics. Marvel at the mist rising from the Potomac River and surrounding forests. Leave everything on the bus but money for the "gift shop" aka table in the bunker they set up for us. Receive overview of what the Agency does and what opportunities in the CIA are possible for us college students. Hear from a panel of officers from each of the Agency's four directorates about what they and their directorates do. Walk from the Circle Room that seems to have been constructed by some lava-lamp-obsessed architect in the 70s to the main building to stare at the 16-foot CIA seal on the marble floor as seen in movies.

Thoughts: It's kind of cool that the CIA created a lot of technologies a long time ago that we now see on the market because they made it first and, once it was no longer vital to keep classified, sold it to the commercial sector. The language bugs me - "We are the nation's first line of defense," threat, enemies. Most disturbingly that the human beings they are asking to commit espionage against their own countries are referred to as "assets." Cool they have tons of different jobs you wouldn't expect - woodworkers, hairdressers, cosmotologists, etc. Strange they view themselves as an independent organization (in that they do not work actively to change policy) and yet take direct orders from the President to execute covert operations. No surprise there are no photos from this site briefing.

Monday, July 12, 2010

DC is overrun by Minnesooootans

It really is uncanny how many Minnesotans there are out here! And I seriously was not expecting to meet somebody else from my own little Minneapolis suburb also working at the Peace Corps! So once or twice a week there are "Brown Bags," AKA lunchtime presentations for Peace Corps interns to bring their lunches and learn about different aspects of the Peace Corps (it is incredibly cool they do this). One of the first ones was a history of the Peace Corps, others are what each region desk is up to, and the one I went to last week was by the Congressional Relations office. Once all the interns were seated and given a spiel during initial munching, we were all charged with a task. The difficulty level of going around the room introducing ourselves was increased significantly as we were asked to say our hometown and our representative in Congress in addition to our name and our Peace Corps department. But I was quite lucky, in fact, because the Acting Director and her assistant did the model introductions, and the assistant was from Minnetonka, my little suburb! Thus I no longer had to rack my brain to remember who my representative was because when it came to my turn (and I happened to be last), I just got to say, "Hi, I'm Kathryn. I work for the VDS (Volunteer Delivery System) team in VRS (Volunteer Recruitment and Selection), and I'm from Minnetonka, Minnesota too!"

Now I kind of hate the DC mentality of networking for the sake of networking, but I'd say I've been rather good at taking advantages to meet new people, and it's just been really fun to learn about a wide variety of aspects of the Peace Corps while I've been here (with wonderful encouragement and assistance from my coworkers). So even though Alyson works up on the 8th floor in the Congressional Relations Office, and I am down in the VRS Department on the 6th floor, she said "We gotta talk!" Just like basically all of the Peace Corps people I've met, she is so nice and really gushes about her Peace Corps experience, so she invited me out to lunch today and in a cute little cafe we got to talking about what brought us out to DC. She is helping coordinate an event on Capitol Hill for DC interns by the Peace Corps director and the 6 return Peace Corps volunteers in Congress, and hopefully I'll get to help out with publicity and also attend the event! Minnesotans looking out for each other.

Sunday, July 11, 2010

With three weekends left in DC, how much was squeezed into this one?

Following an awesome work week of feeling strangely guilty for watching YouTube videos with my headphones on at work (my supervisor made me! It was about business process mapping, but it still felt funny to plug in and watch YouTube at work...), writing up bios on the team for the new newsletter, creating a survey on Survey Monkey, basically doing cost-benefit analysis on blogging for my supervisor, and throwing papers around the team leader's office, the weekend arrived. My exploring buddy Tschuna and I set out from the Peace Corps for a picnic at Jazz in the Garden - this time we came prepared with healthy munchies and a blanket.














On the way to Jazz in the Garden, she and I went wandering, as we are prone to do. We saw this castle on the Smithsonian grounds and wondered what was in it, so we went in! We discovered it was kind of the Smithsonian information center, and it housed Smithson's crypt.



Another detour along the route to the Garden was the Butterfly Garden! This sign says "Where are the Butterflies?"

This was an adorable little path to bike through, with the largest hibiscus I've ever seen!




After touring the Butterfly Garden in which we only spotted one butterfly that we were unsuccessful at capturing on whatever you can say a digital camera captures on, off to the Jazz we went. We rounded the pool quite a few times trying our hardest to find a good strategic spot in the shade, which we eventually did, but funny enough we couldn't really hear the music. But it was excellent for swapping carrots and Sunchips, people-watching observations, and anecdotes about our respective proms and other strange and possibly awkward high school and college experiences.




After deciding to peace out of the Garden, we found ourselves at Starbucks a few minutes too late to go to the last IMAX showing at the Museum of Natural History and came to the consensus that we still were in movie mood, so we headed to Chinatown's Gallery Place. And I was significantly distracted and amused by attempting to read how the Chinese characters phoneticized English business names - Dunkin' Donuts in pinyin is Dangken Duona, and Auntie Anne's turns to Anti An! We decided to give ourselves the full tour of Chinatown at night with the lights glittering, and discovered some quite amusing things. A highlight for me definitely was that two Buddhist monks thought it was a good idea to ask directions to the bus stop of the two girls acting all touristy with their cameras out to sneakily take a picture not just of the Chinatown welcoming gate, but of the adorable Buddhist monks themselves! Thankfully we played it cool and were able to send them to the correct intersection.









Lucky enough to learn Starbucks Coffee's Chinese translation in class this spring, I spotted a Xingbake Kafei as well.



















Then we attempted a radical new approach to our explorations: board the metrorail in the direction of home, but get off at a stop in between and see what's there. What we learned: 1) Really the only thing open on weekend nights after museums and everything close are places to drink and munch! So many eateries... 2) Apparently when you get pestered by random people on the corner of G and 8th, it's simply because people want you to love the US. But the Navy memorial was beautiful at night, seen here with the fountains. We just happened to be the only ones there.

Boarding at another metro stop, the crowd members on our heels to catch the next train were rejoicing over a wondrous Nationals victory over the Giants. As one rowdy young man shouted something about Strasburg right in my ear, I turned to give him kind of an amused expression and received a factually incorrect shoutout to the crowd: "Hey I think we have ourselves a Giants' fan here!" And I got an "After you, Beautiful" as Tschuna and I attempted to slip into the soon departing metro cabin. The people you meet, the things you see and hear in the city will never cease to surprise me. I'm also not quite sure of how polite to be in a huge city, never mind a city I'm just getting used to. It pains me to walk down the street and not acknowledge other human beings at least with a closed-lipped smile - too impersonal and desensitizing to the power of human connection, but is it too naive? I have yet to figure out that balance, as evidenced by my puzzlement in this dilemma after I received the comment "You've got a cute smile" upon passing a man outside a metro station. Don't worry, we're taking care of ourselves. Approach to acknowledging strangers is to be determined...

The following day included the opportunity to hang out with family I had not seen since I was about twelve, thus a slightly awkward experience simply because I am a little bit shy and weird, but they are super nice people. My mom's cousin and her family made the two hour trek from Virginia just to spend a couple hours in Chinatown with me avoiding only the second real rainstorm I've witnessed in DC (much different than 10-minute freak showers). The Chinese restaurant we ended up at was amazing - too much service and too much food! I kept one ear pasted to conversations amongst the extra personnel and realized they were occurring in Mandarin, Cantonese, and Spanish, one waiter would hardly let us put our glass down from a single sip without pouncing to refill it, and the group menu option allowed us to try different appetizers and 5 different entrees it seemed we did not even make a dent in! So after touring the American Art Museum with them, I was dropped off back at Georgetown with enough Chinese leftovers for a week's worth of lunches as well as a better connection to East Coast family.

Me and my cousin Alex

An incredible sculpture to which I first exclaimed, "Wow, that looks like it is made out of tin foil and cardboard!" only to be told those indeed were the crafting materials and to wonder why and how this made it into the Smithsonian.

Group photo! Uncle Phil and Aunt Kathy, Cousin Alex and her boyfriend Will.


Saturday night lent itself to a TFAS night at the Nationals game: too much good food (common theme in DC?), mediocre baseball (we were ahead 5-3 for a good chunk of the game... but lost 10-5), and entertaining conversations about pretty much everything other than baseball with others in my program. While I realized I had never been to an outdoor baseball game (though I fully cannot wait to go with my guy friends to a game at new Target field), Tschuna's epiphany was that she had never been to a professional sporting event, thus DC introduced her to a new facet in the entertainment industry and the concept that baseball may be boring (her conception) but going to a game is about the atmosphere and the fun with friends.



On Sunday morning after visiting TFAS's fundraising booksale and carwash (the latter for moral support only unfortunately), my friend Bernice and her roommate Lana and I happened upon a most glorious Farmer's Market in Dupont Circle. I managed to resist the temptations of pastries, quiches, and other goodies, but spicy and sweet varieties of sausages that could be plucked so daintily by a toothpick, peach and apricot slices, and about ten varieties of dip ranging from sweet chili to guac to chive from an incredibly knowledgeable Asian nutritionist were worth slightly spoiling a lunch appetite. The unfortunate circumstance for me was that I would have loved to purchase some of the scrumptious fruit strewn about the market in various stalls, but I would not be heading home for a few hours and had no way for refrigeration in the meantime. But while we were there, the samples of course were the best part.






For lunch I had the wonderful opportunity to catch up with my Carleton friend Becca, whom I had not seen since March as she studied abroad in Spain spring trimester! We have the fortunate overlap for about a month, following which is the time frame when we will not overlap again until January following my study abroad program. Over more awesome food, this time our first taste of Lebanese courtesy of Groupon's deal of paying $15 for $30 worth of food (so our bill at the restaurant totaled only $1.65!), we reminisced about Carleton and caught up on life before wandering Dupont Circle and then parting ways at the metro for our separate plans for World Cup final viewing.


I had to keep quite detailed records in order to remember what I had crammed into which day, and many apologies for the long-windedness. Thanks for sticking it out!

Love,
Kathryn