4th of July Weekend

The National Portrait Gallery with Cornelius Vanderbilt

Liz Furman's 20th birthday party!

"A Capitol Fourth" Rehearsal

Dinner with Mom & Laura!

I forgot to mention in my last post that we had a Young Alumni Panel on Wednesday night after work. 5 Vanderbilt alumni who all work in the D.C. area came and gave us a lot of advice on our internships, future goals, and what to do after graduation. Long story short, I made a big decision after that panel that I've been leaning towards for awhile. I decided that I'm definitely not going to law school, or at least not right out of undergrad. I'm not sure if it's what I want to do with my life and getting a few years of experience working in DC or somewhere else would actually help me figure out what I want to do plus will make me a better candidate for law school should i decide to go. i'm also considering public policy grad school- but everything after a few years of work in the real world. i don't want to become one of those people who is continuously putting off joining the 'real world' and want to use that to figure out what i want to do in life.

ok, rant aside:

thursday was fine at work, i hardly remember what went on as it's been awhile, but all bets will lead to nothing exciting happened at all. that night laura and mom got in town (yay) after getting lost on the way in from BWI, and i went over and visited with them for awhile. since we were all tired, we called it an early night. friday i was off work to spend the day with mom and laura, and we actually started our day off with visiting my workplace. it was great for mom and laura to be able to see where i spend 40 hours a week all summer! then we went to look at the monuments on the mall- and that took most of the morning! we saw WWII, Vietnam, Lincoln, FDR, and Jefferson. Fortunately, it was the coolest it's been since I've been here- in the low 80's, making it a pleasant walk around the monuments. I forgot how much I love the Vietnam memorial- it's definitely my favorite of all of the monuments/memorials. i'll spare everyone the time of me explaining why!

Then we met up with Katelyn & Jill at the Holocaust Museum in the afternoon. It was so moving- I remembered very little from when I went the last time we were in town. Even though I've read a lot about the Holocaust and have learned about it in school, there was so much information and the museum was very well done. It was certainly a troubling experience and it takes awhile to recover from after walking through. But I'm so glad a museum like this exists for people to remember and learn about this horrific event in our history. We went back to our apartments in the afternoon and rested for a bit, then met up and went to a cute restaurant called Veranda for dinner with my friend Michael Kariya. It was a lovely night with a cool breeze and we got to eat outside at the cute restaurant. It was a really nice evening! That night I said goodbye to Laura and mom and they left the next morning. It was a really quick trip but it was so great to see them!

Saturday morning our suite was planning on sleeping in to kick off the holiday weekend but were instead jarred awake at 830 am by a full high school marching band practicing directly below our window. After many angry phone calls to the Embassy Suites across from us (we live in an area that is completely saturated with hotels/apartments so this had to be bothering thousands of people) they stopped after at least 30 minutes of playing. Oh well, no sleep for us!

Saturday Jill's dad was in town, so she was with him. katelyn, katie and i went to Georgetown which was SO crowded but really fun! we shopped around, met up with jill and her dad, and got ice cream since it was pretty hot in the afternoon. that night, we went to the capitol for the rehearsal of "A Capitol Fourth". it was much less crowded than it would be the next night, and we got to see the whole show! David Archuleta, Daris Rucker, Lang Lang, Gladys Knight, and Reba Mcentire were all performing (although all of them didnt show up for the rehearsal) We had a lot of fun a camped out picnic-style and i have never felt so patriotic! We also met a really cool woman who was sitting next to us. she and her husband, though in their early 60's, own a skydiving business in Oklahoma and have each jumped 2000+ times! They were in the middle of a motorcycle tour of all 48 contiguous US states! Talk about awesome.

On the 4th Katelyn, Matthew and I went to Liz Furman's birthday party at her house in Alexandria. I have never seen such a patriotic gathering! it was tons of fun as michael was there, plus my AOII sisters kelley, veronica and jamie and two of my friends in sigma nu. it was a wonderful time, complete with USA fans, georgetown cupcakes and great barbeque.

that night we went to the roof of Katelyn's office to watch the fireworks. it was a great view and we had no trouble getting there or getting back. that was a relief as we had friends who spent hours getting home! jill's dad ordered us pizza and we watched the re-run of the Capitol Fourth show on PBS.

yesterday, katelyn matthew and i went to the National Portrait Gallery / Smithsonian Museum of American Art. They had a wonderful Norman Rockwell exhibit plus a lot of really great portraits! We got froZenyo after (our favorite!) and then came home in the late afternoon. katelyn and i put together an all-american dinner to celebrate the 4th weekend coming to a close- we had grilled chicken, corn on the cob, mashed potatoes, peas, and i made a peach compote to serve over vanilla ice cream for dessert. rounded off with iced tea and some country music in the background and it was a really nice dinner :)

now, back to the grind in the office. the air conditioning is hardly working today and with it being 100+ outside i'm nothing short of miserable- but hopefully things will make a turn for the better.