The Ides of March

Wow, again it's been a while since I last blogged (but this post will more than make up for my weeks of absence). Not too much has happened - until this week, that is. I had my Block 2 exams last week. I did worse on the first one (neurosci) but better on the remaining two; overall still doing pretty solid. :-) After our last exam, my awesome lab group went out for lunch. After that I got a much needed haircut.

And then my Spring Break began!! :-D

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March 15th (Ides of March):

This Monday, March 15th, I flew out to Washington DC to visit Jackson, Dan, and Mandi (Jackson's girlfriend). Jackson and Mandi picked me up from Reagan National Airport, and we went to their apartment in/near Alexandria, VA, to drop off my stuff and chilled there for an hour or so. Then Mandi dropped Jackson and me off at the metro, which we took into DC. Monday was a bit cool, cloudy and drizzling every now and then, but the rest of the week was simply stunning.

We first went to the National Archives, where Dan can sometimes be found doing research for his (alas, unpaid) internship. The line wasn't too bad, and we got to see the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and all that without waiting too long. We also looked at the near-illegible Magna Carta.

On our way to George Washington University (GWU) campus, where Jackson is doing his PhD in political science, we took the "scenic" route and passed by some cool buildings and the White House.

I must say though, GWU's diag is far inferior to the diag at UM, lol. And their mascot should totally be the hippo (George Washington's "water horse") instead of the unoriginal and obvious George Washington.

We met up with Dan at GWU after he got off work. Upon meeting, Dan proclaimed, "A stranger arrives in the capitol on the ides of March. But Caesar's in the provinces today." (Meaning that Obama was out in Ohio that day.) I found that amusing. :-P

Then the 3 of us walked to Farragut, where we rendezvoused with Mandi for Chinese food. It's been a long time since I've had good Chinese food. There doesn't seem to be any really good Chinese restaurants near MCW. After we went back to their apartment, we played Warcraft 3 (WC3) for a couple hours before bed.

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March 16th:

Dan took the day off work (as well as the following day) to hang out with Jackson and me. :-) We had wanted to go to the Supreme Court and go on a tour or something like that, but we got up too late. So we decided to briefly walk through the Supreme Court just to take a look.

Then we went to the Capitol Building. Apparently they have a new visitor's center now in a part of it.

After that, we took a tunnel to the Library of Congress.

Leaving the Library of Congress, we walked along the National Mall, enjoying the nice weather.

At this point, we were getting hungry, so we went to the DC Chinatown (aka, the fakest Chinatown in the world). The transliteration of the signs were cool at first (like "Dunkin Donuts") but they quickly got contrite as almost every sign was a transliteration and not a translation. Ironically, we had Italian food at a place called Vapiano, which was right next to the Chinatown gate. That's how fake this Chinatown has become, lol. But the Italian food was pretty good, and I enjoyed the ambiance of the place as well.

After eating, we walked back towards the National Mall. We ambled through the Sculpture Garden, which is near the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History (where we went next). We talked about triceratops and T-rex's uselessly stubby arms for a little while, hehe.

Wrapping up our day, we took the metro back to their apartment, where we later ordered pizza and played some more WC3 (and talked about Starcraft 2 coming out this summer).

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March 17th (St. Patrick's Day):

This was one of the most epic days ever, and certainly the most interesting St. Patrick's Day I've ever had. We missed the bus to the metro station and didn't want to wait for the next one, so we walked the half an hour to the station. We then took the metro to the Rosslyn stop because we (and by "we," I mean "I") wanted to explore the Theodore Roosevelt Island National Memorial Park. Unfortunately it was closed, so we continued to walk along the Potomac River as far as we felt like, since it was so nice out.

We saw a bridge that spanned the Potomac River, and on the other side of the bridge was the Lincoln Memorial. So we decided to head towards the Lincoln Memorial.

Then we walked towards the National Mall (again), stopped by GWU campus for a drink (non-alcoholic, lol), continued through downtown DC, to DuPont Circle. On our way, we walked by K Street, where lobbyists have their offices and such. I saw the office for Autism Speaks and was about to take a picture, but decided against it. At DuPont Circle we had delicious cupcakes from a place called Hello Cupcake. I got a Bailey's Irish cream cupcake, to celebrate St. Patrick's Day. It was really good but I'm not entirely certain it was worth the $3/cupcake.

After resting our feet for a little bit, we took the metro to Adams Morgan, where we walked uphill through a rather nice (and affluent) neighborhood to the National Cathedral. Along the way, we passed by the Swiss Embassy. In their courtyard was this bright white tree, at which Dan proclaimed it was "the white tree of Gondor." I tried to take a picture but it was too far away. :-(

The interior of the Cathedral was really beautiful, and my camera doesn't do justice to the beauty I was attempting to capture. I also saw "the space window," but we didn't have time to locate the gargoyle that looked like Darth Vader. But, we did discover that on the side of the Cathedral was a "hobbit door." My argument that people must've been a bit shorter back in the day didn't convince Jackson and Dan.

The day was also full of cute kids all over the place! On our way to the National Cathedral, we passed by a little girl (not the little girl in the pic below) who exclaimed with utter conviction to her parents, "I would not like to be a squirrel!" And while sitting on a ledge outside the Cathedral to rest our feet, I saw a little kid dressed up as Superman, and that totally made my day. ^_^

After the National Cathedral, we walked back down to the Adams Morgan metro station and took it to DuPont Circle. We were going to eat at an Indian restaurant there before deciding it was a tad pricey for us. So we walked all the way through downtown DC back near GWU campus to eat at another (slightly less expensive) Indian restaurant, lol. All any of us had eaten until then was a bowl of cereal (or Pop Tarts) and a cupcake from earlier at DuPont Circle. So we were understandably starving.

Feeling full, we trudged (slowly) to the metro at Foggy Bottom and took it all the way back to Virginia. As with the previous nights, we played a couple games of WC3 before hitting the sack. While I would've liked to have gone out to a bar for a drink that night, I think we were all simply too tired and our feet ached.

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March 18th:

Both Mandi and Dan had to work early. Jackson and I took our time and slept in. We had a late lunch at a Chinese restaurant that Jackson knew about not too far away. It had northern Chinese "dim sum," basically what Jackson called delicious Beijing street food (it was indeed delicious). After lunch we explored the Chinese store next door for a little while before heading back to their apartment. Jackson and I played a game of WC3 before I had to leave for the airport.

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It was really good to see Jackson and them, as I haven't seen any of them in over a year (Dan and Mandi almost 2 years ago, I think). It struck me just how much I missed them (and all my undergrad friends), and how much I didn't want to leave. It felt like old times again from undergrad, with the WC3 and the joking and such, lol. How a good part of me still misses those days. I'm glad that, though things change and we move to different places and age, some things still seem to stay the same.

I can only wonder what the next decade will bring. How will things change by the time we next meet? Will we change with time and age, or remain recognizable as we currently are? Whatever happens, I look forward to that day.