Megan's Visit Part 2

Sorry for disappearing for a few weeks! With my move back home, the holidays, and my birthday, I've been a bit distracted. Anyways, time to update about the rest of my sister's visit.

The next day we decided to hit up some more monuments and museums. It was still rather cold outside, so we took the Metro to the National Mall and walked down to the Lincoln Memorial. We started out by the Washington Monument, and stopped by the World War II memorial on the way to the Lincoln Memorial. Then we began the long trek to see Mr. Lincoln. Despite being chilly, it was a beautiful blue-sky day outside. After our stop at the Lincoln Memorial we walked all the way back down the Mall to the Smithsonian Museums.

Megan wanted to see the American flag, so we stopped at the American History Museum to see the Star Spangled Banner. We also saw the exhibit of the First Ladies and their fashions, which includes a bunch of gorgeous inaugural gowns. Then we went to the Natural History Museum, which I had been waiting to do for quite awhile. It was amazing! We spent quite a bit of time there, and saw most of the exhibits and the Hope Diamond. The exhibits there are wonderful, and I was really impressed and wanted to back at some point (sadly, I never made it back...) Then we headed back towards my apartment. Down by Union Station is the National Postal Museum, and we decided to stop there quickly. From the exterior, I wasn't expecting much. However, once we went inside I was surprised! The museum was larger than I expected, and the exhibits were awesome! We spent awhile there and looked at nearly everything. Then we headed back to the apartment.

That night we wanted to go eat in Chinatown, to get some great Chinese food. However, we wound up at Hard Rock Cafe near Chinatown. I'd never eaten at a Hard Rock before, and it was a sweet experience. Talk about a great hamburger! We then did some souvenir shopping near Chinatown, which is a great place to go for souvenirs. Around F and 11th streets, if you are wondering, I believe. :)

The next morning my sister left at around 4am in the morning. I don't really remember that because I only woke up to say bye and then fell back asleep. ;)

Jen

Megan's Visit Part 1

Ok, I'm really not doing well with keeping up this month-Sorry! Time to post about my sister's visit....over Thanksgiving weekend.

Megan decided to visit me during Thanksgiving break, rather than going home. Pretty awesome, although she had to leave her little dog Cooper home. :( However, we had a TON of fun, although she darn near walked my legs off!

I picked Meg up from Reagan National Airport the day before Thanksgiving, and her first DC adventure was the Metro. She wasn't too enthused by the public transportation, but it's so much cheaper than a taxi, and very possibly faster. We stopped by the Pentagon City mall to grab some food before heading to my apartment, then headed onto my home-away-from-home.

We decided we were going to do a full-scale Thanksgiving dinner, and since 2 of my roommates also stayed in DC, we ended up making a bit more food than intended! My apartment came equipped with 4 pans and 4 pyrex dishes. We soon found out that we did NOT have enough dishes. We actually had to use a vase to serve the noodles. It looked more like a Beta fish bowl, but it worked pretty well as a serving dish! :) We ended up having turkey, stuffing, gravy, potatoes, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce, and sweet potato pie. I feel like there was another dish, but I can't remember. Anyways, it was AMAZING! Boy were we full...

That afternoon, Megan wanted to go somewhere, but she didn't know where. So I took her to the Metro and we went on a mystery ride. I wouldn't tell her where we were going, but we ended up going to the Wheaton station, in Maryland. At the Wheaton Metro station is the longest escalator in the Western Hemisphere. We went up it, and if I remember correctly, it took 2 minutes and 45 seconds to come back down. A looooooong ride!

The next day was devoted to some serious site-seeing. We started the day off by taking the bus to Georgetown to buy some delicious cupcakes. I got a lava fudge, chocolate hazelnut, and chocolate ganache. We also got a free maple chocolate chip one. Meg got a chocolate and vanilla, peanut butter fudge, and a pumpkin cupcake. YUM! We stopped back at the apartment to drop off the cupcakes so we could go to museums and whatnot. Then we headed to the National mall. We visited the Holocaust Museum, which was packed. The museum was interesting, but there were so many people there that we couldn't even see some of the exhibits. So we didn't stay there long.

Next we walked to the White House for some pictures. It was a rather cold and WINDY day out, or as Winnie the Pooh said, it was a rather blustery day! We then headed up to the Washington Monument because we had tickets to go up to the top! We were there about an hour early, and the wind was crazy! My feet kept getting blown off-track when I was walking. We about froze, but we actually go to go up a bit early, which was nice. Luckily, there is an elevator to go the 500 feet to the top. Of course, Meg is scared of long elevator rides and heights, so she was freaking out a bit. But the views from the top were incredible! Out of one of the windows you can see DC, Maryland, and Virginia. I shall have to upload photos.

Ok, that's a long enough post for now. I will update the rest later tonight or tomorrow.

Jen

Time for an Update :)

Hello again everyone!

Yes, I am alive. I have just not updated for awhile. Sorry!

So...the last few weeks have been incredibly busy, and rather unpredictable. I've been to Iowa, New York, and alllll over DC. To be completely correct, I have been to Maryland, Kentucky, Iowa, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Virginia, and back to DC. Why? Here goes:

I ended up heading back home to Iowa the week before Thanksgiving for my Grandma's funeral. Not a fun reason to go back, but it was great to see my family and get back home for a few days. And to see my little doggies, who were very excited by the surprise visit.

The day after returning from a whirlwind trip to Iowa, my TWC program went on a day trip to NYC. I've never been to New York, and I was pretty excited to go. However, a 4 hour trip one way is quite a bit of travel for one day. The trip there was uneventful, just long. Once we got there, we had an hour to grab lunch- I got some pizza. You know, New York and pizza just kinda go together. Then we heard from a speaker at the US Mission to the UN. Pretty cool stuff! Then we had a tour of the UN Headquarters, which was pretty cool. We even got to go in the room where they actually hold the UN meetings. :) Then we had an hour to grab dinner then headed out. Literally, our time in NYC was about 4 hours. Then began the horrid bus ride home!

We were riding along when, bang thump thump...apparently the tire blew. We drove around trying to find a tire repair shop, but sadly none were open/could help. So we drove on to Baltimore (on a bum tire) and switched buses. However, we had to wait about an hour for the new bus to arrive. A few of us were a bit hungry, and saw a McDonald's in the distance. So we walked there, and only the drive thru was open. So, we knocked on the drive thru window and ordered while standing there in the drive thru. :) Those fries were delicious!

Finally, the new bus came and we drove the hour-ish trip back to DC. Talk about exhausted! After about 10 hours of travel back from Iowa the day before (including by car, 2 flights, train, and taxi) I spent about 10.5 hours on a bus to and from NYC the next day. I am a bit traveled out right now!

I shall update about Thanksgiving later on in the week!

Jen

NEON Workshop

Last weekend I spent the whole weekend (Thursday-Sunday) working! Sounds dreadful, right? It was actually pretty awesome! The ESA was organizing a workshop for about 25 college and graduate students. It has been my main project at my internship for the past few weeks, so it was great to see it happen!

We held the conference in Chevy Chase, Maryland (incidentally the first time I've been to Maryland since I was about 8 years old) and it was nice to get out of the downtown part of DC. I saw many trees and forested areas, which was absolutely beautiful since it was fall. Don't get me wrong-the city of DC has tons of trees, just not forests. And being out of downtown was nice for a bit. However, we weren't really out of the metro area, and a few blocks away awaited crazy traffic, huge buildings, and the city atmosphere. :)

The workshop was entitled "The Future of Environmental Decisions" and was designed as an introduction to GIS (geographic information systems), which is a technology used in environmental sciences. Meghan, the other intern, and I actually got to be full participants in the workshop, and I learned a lot (I'm sure Meghan did too)! I hadn't had any GIS experience, and it was nice to have an intro since I must take a GIS class with Dr. Anya next semester, and it's rumored to be a very difficult course. My group explored whether land cover and urbanization had any effect on stream temperatures in the Chesapeake Watershed. We were unable to determine any correlation, mainly due to the fact that we had about 24 hours to put the project together. If you've done GIS, you realize how crazy a time restraint that is! :D

The students who came to the workshop came from all over the US- Florida, Texas, Puerto Rico, Arizona, Virginia, Hawaii, etc. Literally, all over. They were an AWESOME group of people! They made working all weekend a fun experience, and helped me to learn more about GIS.

On Saturday night the students were set free to explore the city! Teresa, Meghan, and I went with a group of students to a Vegan restaurant near Dupont Circle, and the food was incredible! I have no plans to become vegan (or even vegetarian) but the mac and cheese-yes vegan cheese-was wonderful, as were the dumplings, miso soup, and chocolate cupcake. You would NOT know any of it was vegan. Not even the chili-cheese fries. It was definitely a great experience!

Sunday was not the happiest day- I woke up first at 4:45am to see people off on a shuttle, then again at 5:40 and 6:35 (multiple departures). Considering I didn't go to bed til nearly 1am, I was TIRED! I came back to my apartment and slept for a few more hours.

Jen

Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear

On Saturday, in between committee sessions at Model UN (they gave us a convenient four hour break) I was able to attend the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear. It was an experience, that's for sure! I personally think it might have been the very definition of insanity, due to INSANE amount of people!! Estimates say that anywhere from 200,000-250,000 people came. To put that into perspective, the total population of DC (not the Metro area, just the District of Columbia) is a bit less than 600,000. Also, the ridership of the Metro system on Saturday was a record-breaking 825,000, compared to the average Saturday total of about 350,000.

We actually rode Metro to the Rally, which was difficult. The trains were packed, and by packed I mean we ran along 3-4 cars before we found 1 where I could fit in. My roomie couldn't squeeze in and had to wait for the next one. I was plastered against the door...literally. A very interesting experience! I couldn't hold onto anything, but as there was no room to move, I couldn't fall down!

As we walked up to the Rally, we heard the National Anthem being sung, and the roar of the masses. No matter what the cause, those sounds are inspiring! We couldn't see the crowd at that point, due to huge governmental buildings, but we could hear the size of it. Then we turned the corner and were shocked! I think the crowd was larger than I or my roommate imagined.

If you've ever been to the mall, actually walked even a part of it, you can appreciate how big it is. Photos cannot do the size justice. The crowd stretched from the stage near the Capitol to almost near the Washington Monument. We tried to move closer to the stage, and got pretty close. However, only people with tickets could get into the area closest to the stage. We also couldn't hear much, but going and checking things out was a pretty neat experience! I felt bad for kids and babies who were brought along, because that just wasn't the right place for kids (crowds waaaay too big). And seeing the signs was pretty funny, for the most part. I took some pictures of signs, and will post later.

Being in DC during the time of this rally was pretty awesome, and I'm glad I had the chance to go. How many times in your life do you get to join 200,000+ people on that National Mall?

Jen

Model UN

This past weekend was the National Model UN Simulation in DC. As part of my program, I had the chance to participate. Our program represented the USA, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Sierra Leone, and Bosnia/Herzegovina. The other class from TWC represented Iran and Israel. It was quite an interesting array of countries to choose from! I ended up representing the USA on the General Assembly 2nd Committee, which dealt with globalization and development.

There were around 500 or so participants in NMUN (National Model UN) at the DC conference, from all over the USA and around the world! Our committee had 50 delegations (countries) represented, which was large for a committee. However, considering the topic, being the USA was pretty awesome, but stressful. There was the potential to be under attack for the USA's trade and development policies, but that only happened a few times. The large majority of delegations wanted the USA's support, so they were willing to work along with us. Overall, NMUN was an awesome, stressful, fun weekend. Long days, as we didn't get done until 10pm or so on Friday and Saturday.

Our committee ended up passing 8 resolutions on a wide variety of topics. The USA sponsored 2 of them, and was a signatory on 4. But we voted for all 8 of them. :)

The simulation was actually done very seriously. The rules were followed pretty much perfectly, which are pretty much the rules of the UN, in terms of the procedures and such. We had to be very specific about our wording and such. It was pretty interesting view of how the UN works. Some delegations also acted the part perfectly, reflecting the actual wording and attitudes of the real UN delegations of the country. As the USA, I had a bit more leeway in how I interacted with other nations.

We had a nice surprise at the end of the simulation. The USA delegation got an honorable mention for the best delegations at the simulation! It's awesome because nearly all of us were first timers for NMUN. Pretty good overall! I also had several people say they were surprised I had never done it before, and one person said I was like Hillary Clinton. Considering she's the Secretary of State, I thought that was a great compliment!

Observations About DC

Well, I have survived my test, which I had Monday night. I have no clue when I'll get my grade, but I feel I did pretty well. I ended up hand-writing 6 pages...man did my hand hurt afterwords!

I've decided to chronicle a few odd things and funny anecdotes that I've seen since coming to DC. Enjoy!

1. Pigeons will hit you in the face. So you best duck out of their way, because they won't move out of yours. That wasn't a pleasant experience.

2. People are typically somewhat friendly on the bus.

3. Someone will always smell on public transportation. You just get used to it.

4. Don't tell a longtime DC resident that you can't parallel park. They will laugh and think you are joking.

5. The city of DC is a sissy when it comes to weather. If it's not beautiful and sunny out, expect a much longer bus ride. Even if it's just raining.

6. Drivers like to use their horns.

7. 911 vehicles do not seem to have courtesy hours. They will blare at all times of the night.

8. Bikers are brave.

9. Grocery shopping is not fun when you have to carry it back to your apartment. And you don't realize how much you have purchased until you're halfway home.

10. You cannot get tired of seeing the Capitol, the White House, the Washington Monument, or any other monuments while riding around the city.

11. Parking prices are insane. As such, people who own cars are insane. ;)

12. Tourists stick out like a sore thumb, even those who are trying to blend in. How? They are the only ones wearing jeans in DC because everyone who lives here dresses nicely, even on weekends.

13. Don't breathe too deeply. Random sewer smells frequently overtake you as you walk along the sidewalk.

14. Drivers are pretty courteous to pedestrians. But if you do cross at the wrong time, expect to get honked at.

15. Nobody says pop (for soda) here. Weirdos.

16. Nobody who lives in DC grew up here. Everyone who lives/works here has moved from somewhere else.

17. The Metro runs above ground in some areas. FYI. It feels odd when you come above ground though.

18. The National Mall is HUGE. You do not realize this until you start to walk it, then reality sets in. :)

19. The sidewalks here are well equipped to make one fall. Fall count-4 times.

20. The weather here is freakishly warm. It was a high of 78 today!

If I think of any others, I'll post them in another post.

Jen