First Weekend

At the Gay Pride Parade in Dupont Circle

Late-Night Visit to the White House

Katelyn and my room

Kitchen

Dining Room (that we rarely use)

Living area

After making and delivering brownies for Omar and his suitemates to congratulate them on completing their 1st week of working in the 'real world', the suite girls walked down to crystal city, which is about 1/2 mile away and has all of the shopping/restaurants close to us. the area is really nice (i learned about it from my boss on our tour last week!) and we went to this great restaurant called Urban Thai that was small, inexpensive, and great food! we're trying to eat a lot of ethnic food since we don't get the opportunity in Nashville (and in my case, not in Louisville either!)

Then we took the metro to Dupont Circle, which is a really great area, and wandered around looking at restaurants, nightlife and sights. We ended up at the White House around 11pm, and it was really cool to see the White House at night. After that we crashed as we were all tired from the long week.

Saturday we all went to Pentagon City Mall (right by the metro stop) and looked around- it's 4 stories tall! All the DC people i've talked to say it's an 'ok' mall, but to someone from Louisville, this mall is incredible :) Then Michael Kariya came over to our place to watch the World Cup game (US v UK) and we hung out here and ate lunch. Then i met up with the other 3 suite girls in Dupont Circle for the Gay Pride parade! It's pride week, and the parade was huge! We caught tons of free beads, t shirts, candy and got to hear a lot of Lady Gaga music (of course). We even ran into quite a few Vandy people that we didn't even know were in DC for the summer! It was a great time and definitely entertaining. The highlight had to be all 4 of us leaping into the air to catch a blue noodle (the type you play with in pools) that we carted around all night long and plan to use in our rooftop pool very soon. Then we stumbled across this small diner called Luna's and ate there- and it was surprisingly good! All of the restaurants here have really cool decor and are so varied in their styles and I love it- especially after taking Modern Architecture last semester. I'm nerdily fascinated by it all, haha. Then we took the metro home and stayed up late just talking and had some VIEW friends over to hang out for a bit.

This morning we went to brunch at Freddie's, which is right next to the Thai place we ate at on Friday night, which is a gay restaurant/bar (there is no intentional pattern, it just had good reviews and has crazy decorations!) that has a great brunch buffet! We loved all the kooky decorations and had a good time. Now we're back in the apartment and Katelyn's mom is driving up from Baltimore (or down, i guess i should say) to bring her more things we've discovered we need in the apartment. I'm going to take the metro downtown and go see the Corcoran Art Gallery...it's not free but it's been on the top of my list of art galleries to see. it'll be nice to go by myself and just wander through. Later, we'll probably just eat in the room and have a suitemate meeting to plan out our week. We have tons of stuff planned for after work, since we're finally starting to get a hang of life here!

Highlights i'm looking forward to next week:

Monday- meeting up with Katelyn near the hill where she works and getting froyo and watching her office's softball game (but not playing because...come on, it's me)

Monday- Cara (our administrative asst.) is turning 25! We're going out to lunch to celebrate!

Tuesday- Megan, Katelyn's roommate from Vandy who also lives in Baltimore, just offered us FREE tickets to see the Dixie Chicks, Keith Urban, and The Eagles play at the Nationals Stadium!!!! I love Megan and this will be such a fun night!

Tuesday- oh, i forgot. i dont have to work tuesday!! The VIEW group is going together for Tennessee Tuesdays (breakfast w/ TN congressmen), a tour of the Pentagon and tour of the capitol

I'm posting a bunch of pictures, sorry this post is so long- here you can see what our apt looks like! More on facebook, and don't worry adults, the album is limited profile so you can ALL see it :)