I’ve been learning (or trying to learn) Spanish for over a
month now. I think it’s going ok – I have good days and bad days – but I’ll have
an “evaluation” next week to see if I’m on track. It’s a bit nerve-wracking to know that I have
a deadline to learn a new language. To
get my mind off that fact for a bit, I’m going to use this opportunity to write
a blog post about all the fun stuff I’ve been doing this month BESIDES learning
Spanish.
First up… Pink Martini in concert at Wolf Trap. Andrew and I got a wave of nostalgia seeing
this Portland band. Wolf Trap is (oddly)
a National Park that also serves as an indoor/outdoor music venue just west of
DC. There is lawn seating, but there is
also a two-story covered area that seats 7,000 people. The band sounded great and played to a full
house… all during one of the hottest, most humid nights I have ever experienced. The band went on at 8:30 and temperatures
were still in the mid-90s. Storm Large
(the lead singer for this show) said it felt like she was singing inside
someone’s mouth. Not a bad analogy.
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| Smiling - and sweating - at Wolf Trap. |
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| The national symphony joined Pink Martini for this concert. It was fantastic! |
That’s not the only concert we’ve been to this summer. The military bands play free evening concerts
every week, and we saw the Navy band play big band music on the steps of the US
Capitol and the Air Force band play jazz at the US Air Force Memorial. We also went to see a Cirque du Soleil
production (Kurios) this past weekend.
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| The Air Force jazz band at the USAF monument. |
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| Looking up at the USAF monument... |
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| ...and looking out at the view of DC from the USAF monument. That's the Washington monument on the left, the Pentagon in the foreground on the right, and the US Capitol in the distance. |
Next up… get togethers with my colleagues. The group that went through orientation
together was a great bunch of folks, and several of us all live in the same
apartment building. We’ve taken
advantage of our proximity to have lots of happy hours, poolside barbecues,
dinners, Olympics opening ceremony viewing parties, and any other excuses for
shindigs we can think of.
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| A happy hour in our apartment... |
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| ... and a poolside barbecue with lots of my new colleagues and their partners. |
A handful of
us decided to expand our social activities to include a visit to see the “corpse
flower” at the National Botanic Garden. It
only blooms once every 4-5 years, and the bloom only lasts for one day. The blooming of this corpse flower was big
news in DC, and the botanic garden stayed open until 11pm the night it started
blooming to accommodate everyone who wanted to see it. When we got to the botanic garden around 8pm
last Tuesday night, the line wrapped around the block – and these are not
little residential blocks, people! This
line was probably at least ½ mile long and we waited in it for 1½ hours. Who knew there were so many “budding” botanists
here! (Insert drum rim shot and groan
here.)
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| Worth the wait! |
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| It's called a "corpse flower" because of the smell... but apparently we missed the peak smell because it was only every-so-slightly gross. |
The month was capped off with receiving my Presidential
commission officially appointing me to the foreign service. A pretty cool souvenir from my time in DC to
date!
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| A thoughtful gift from the President and Secretary Kerry! |
Andrew left today to head back to Australia for a few weeks to visit friends and family and to attend his XXth [REDACTED] high school reunion. But even though he'll be away for most of it, August promises to bring many more extracurricular
activities – Olympics to watch, museums to check out, visits from Portland friends, and shindigs with new friends. Even though
my focus is on learning Spanish, necesito hacer más que español!
