60th Stop: Washington DC, USA

What's in that big box?

After meeting up with my host Rob, we took a walk and had dinner at a Salvadorian restaurant called Las Placitas. It wasn’t the best ever but the company more than made up for it. Rob works in the House of Representatives as a staff writer for the congressional office. It was great talking to Rob, one story led to the next and there seemed to be quite a few parallels in our lives (teaching English in far away places for one).

On Thursday, I got a Library of Congress card and sat in the rotunda for a few hours... surfing the internet and checking e-mail! The mission of the Library of Congress is to serve the legislators, providing references, data, facts and any other things they might need to argue and vote on laws.

Later that night, I met up for happy hour at Masa 14 with a longtime friend from high school, Briana, who now works at the World Bank. In May, she’ll be riding a bicycle from NYC to Washington DC to raise money for climate change prevention. Kudos to you Briana!

Checking e-mail in the LoC

After a few drinks and appetizers (get the tuna wrap, it rocks!), we went for dinner at a Mexican restaurant. Thanks to the saleswoman from Cisco who bought us all dinner!

One more stop before calling it a night: meeting up with Meredith from couchsurfing.org to listen to some jazz at U-topia. Meredith and I had a lot to talk about. She works for the government, helping Pashtun and Farsi teachers write lesson plans. We discussed language learning strategies and swapped some good ideas... She recommended using Declan Software and www.quizlet.com. Thanks Meredith!

The Wordfast Pro training on Friday was full :-) Thanks to everyone who came and a special thanks to Gwendolyn Gurley and Renate Cords for making donations to buy some bednets!

One more night in DC and what luck, my longtime friend from high school and soccer buddy Brian and his wife Kristen were in town for a conference! That night we ate a delicious Ethiopian meal at Dukem  and then wnet back to U-topia for more jazz and wine. Great seeing both of you and hearing about your future plans to travel and work in some exciting places. I'm looking forward to our next adventures together... bamboo bike ride?

One last incident to report: early Saturday morning I took the shuttle to the airport. At one point, the driver went onto the wrong side of the road--on a divided freeway! Luckily, I was half awake and alerted her to the oncoming bus. We were all a bit shaken up, but even happier once we arrived at the airport and got out of that shuttle!

Thanks again to Rob, Brian and Kristen for hosting me and to Meredith and all the colleagues that attended the Wordfast training!

Next stop: West Palm Beach, Florida!

P.S. - Sorry for the crappy photos; for some reason I forgot to take some in DC :-(