Just a Nice Day in America

Whhaaaaattt?

I know. Bizarre.  This is a side of the east coast I don't know. Beautiful weather?  I'm wearing sweatshirts and closed-toed shoes just because I don't know what else to do. It does rain randomly, which I'm really not prepared for at all (my refusal to buy rainboots has been an issue since maybe the 9th grade), which is obnoxious, but it hasn't been a serious problem thus far.

Anyway, so I'm sitting outdoors for the second day in a row at present.  Yesterday I went to the National Mall with my roommate, which is a typical touristy thing to do, but it was such a beautiful day, and it just seemed like the most logical place to be outside.

You can kind of see the cross in the mall.  Also, this is my only Google Imaged photo, the rest Katharina took (and I helped!) and are real photos that I sort of have the rights to!

I'm sure most of you know what the National Mall is, but just to recap, essentially the center of DC is built up around 5 major buildings: the Capitol Building, the White House, the Lincoln Memorial, the Jefferson Memorial, and the Washington Monument at center.  Feminist-types have pointed out that the way these are arranged forms a cross, and at the center of the cross stands a huge phallic symbol, but the most important thing to note about the mall is just that it's this big, well kept lawn, around which there are huge symbols of America that draw thousands of tourists daily.

So anyway, we left campus and hopped on a train and got of at Metro Center, which acts as a kind of nice midpoint for the city.  Where we got off, we stumbled in to the USA Science & Engineering Festival, which took over a bunch of streets near the National Mall with mobile science exhibits and other cool interactive science-y things.  We sat down and watched this presentation some guy was giving about energy production and conservation.  We only caught a very little bit of his presentation, but he was trying to explain the problem in a way that everyone could really understand, so he was very dynamic throughout the whole show, kind of similar to a show at a theme park where they try to keep you entertained.

Here's a photo of him talking to himself (via a pre-recorded video on a huge screen)

He was great, but not that great, so we left.  We thought about trying to find a nice place to sit, and so I suggested maybe we could try going to this hotel called Hotel Washington.  This particular hotel has a rooftop bar that had a supposedly great view, and when my mom was in town, we tried at least 2 or 3 times to get up there (but I kept getting carded, story of my LIFE here...). So anyway, we found this hotel and miraculously had no trouble getting up to the rooftop!

Huge letdown. Kind of a boring view, although the view of the Washington Monument was nice (but it's a giant tower, where in this city is the view of the Washington Monument NOT nice?).  I mean, yeah, cool, but not worth four attempts and three rejections to get up there.

Stupid bar.

So after this, we decide to just go to the mall like normal people. But since we were nearby, we went to go see the White House, you know, go say hello to the Obama Family.  Barack keeps texting me to chill, but I've been so busy, so I figured it'd be nice to stop by and say hello.

He seemed a little preoccupied though, so we didn't stay long.

Anyway, we spent the rest of the day on the grass at the mall.  Katharina took a bunch of pictures of American flags, I did some research (free Mall wifi, best decision to ever come out of Washington), and we checked out a couple more touristy things like the WWII Memorial and the Lincoln Memorial. Then, we got a little tired, so we decided to lay down...

All in all, a good day.

Today is a even more low key. I'm just sitting outside my dorm.  At Tufts, there exists this one albino squirrel who hangs out on campus, and when you see him when you're walking around school, you feel good because you know you've just experienced something rare and awesome.  On Tenley Campus (where I live now), there was one black squirrel when I first got here, which I thought was a really funny coincidence because of the Tufts Albino Squirrel.  Now, however, there is an entire family of black squirrels, including one baby one, who just ran by.  Adorable.