A Tourist in my Pocket

Next month marks my third anniversary as a DC resident, and my adoration for this city grows with every year. The only thing I love more than exploring this city is when people from back home come to visit me. Showing someone else the wonders of DC is like seeing it again myself for the first time. I often walk alone through the city and feel like the luckiest person in the world to be able to live in such a wonderful place. Last week I walked to the zoo. How often does the average person visit a zoo? Once a year? I can walk four blocks and pay the elephants a visit any day of the week. There is so much to see and do in this city and I hope I never take any of it for granted. Having visitors is always a great way to share my enthusiasm for the city.

This week I have a new guest staying with me. His name is Flat Stanley, and he comes from a second grade class in Illinois, not far from where I grew up. Stanley belongs to the daughter of a dear friend who I have known my whole life. He arrived yesterday via USPS (a very reasonable alternative to air travel in this day and age.) He's very quiet, extremely polite and doesn't have much of an appetite. He's still a bit envelope-lagged from so much travel, so this weekend he will rest up and on Monday he's going to come to work with me and I'll show him around the city. We have a lot of fun stuff planned - we'll visit the National Zoo, Union Station, and as many monuments as we can pack in while he's here. Of course we will have to have a photo-op in front of the White House as well. Poor Stanley really wants to meet the President. I tried to explain to him about the Secret Service and since I don't know the Salahi's, there's no way we can just drop in and visit the President without a formal invitation. He told me he understood, but he seemed a little disappointed. Hopefully a visit to the National Postal Museum will take his mind off of it. After his long journey through the mail, the Postal Museum seems like the ideal place to begin his adventures as a tourist in DC. I am looking forward to showing him around the city and taking lots of pictures before I send him back to his second grade classroom in Illinois next week.

As you can see from his big smile in the picture, Stanley is very happy to be here. He is especially enjoying my copy of Strange Bedfellows, by Russell L. Peterson. He says he wants to learn a bit more about politics before he starts to explore the nation's capital. He finds the book to be a fascinating and well-researched study on the relationship between "infotainment" & political comedy and the political process. He's surprisingly intellectual for a second grader.

When in DC, do as the tourists

I took a late lunch today and walked up to the Farmers Market in Penn Quarter. While the walk itself is only about 10 blocks, it's not a straight shot. The walk across the mall can be like navigating a racecar driving video game. You're going really fast, but you have to zig and zag across the sidewalk just to stay out of someone's photograph. Within one block I saw four different photos being taken right in front of me and at least three different languages being spoken. The best was the woman getting a photo of her friend with the capitol building in the background. When she had the camera on her, the woman smiled and said "whiskey!" She had a huge grin on her face.

That's when I stopped and decided to take my own picture. The photo itself isn't that impressive, but it is all part of why I am so in love with this city. I can walk a few blocks from my office on any given day and this is what I see. Just in one lunch hour I took in the capitol building, the Washington Monument and WWII Memorial in the distance, the Navy Memorial, Archives and the Smithsonian buildings. I moved here in May of last year, and after 16 months I still find this city as breathtaking as ever. I am truly, madly, deeply in love with this city. Sure, it's not perfect and it's expensive as hell. But there is nowhere else I would rather be right now. Thanks to the whiskey tourists for reminding me not to take it for granted.

The real Bush has a shorter tail

Just a couple of pics from my walk by the White House today. It was bizarre. This is a protester in front of the White House. The strange part was this mother and her kids. They were visiting the U.S. and the woman was thrilled to have her kids pose with this Bush/devil person. With a thick accent, she asked her kids, "Do you like George Bush?" (Pronounced "Jorj Boooosh") They jumped around giggling and yelled, "YEAH!" and she ushered them over to have their pictures taken. It was the same reaction a family has when they run into Mickey Mouse at Disney World. She thanked him repeatedly and walked away with a big smile. It was strange. Was she excited to run into a protester? Was it cool to see someone in a Bush mask to put in her vacation album? Was she just glad to photograph someone who hates Bush? Maybe she's just really into torture. I can't imagine what she was thinking, but the photos are too weird not to share.