Forth! And fear no darkness!: Time to recover

The rest of the week (after the last blog post) was a relatively routine week. Thursday night our speaker was a member of the Department of Defense (the assistant undersecretary to someone). Her job, put succinctly, was to brainstorm with a couple other people every possible international affairs scenario and create a plan of action to take if that scenario were to occur. Which actually sounds like a fantastic job. She also used to fly in the air force (also fantastic), so she was smart, strong, and intimidating.

Friday evening was casual but a lot of fun. Paul and I went to make dinner with two of our friends from Davidson, Kaitlin Roberts and Roxana Boyd. Roxana is fortunate enough to be staying at her aunt and uncle’s for the summer (or great aunt and uncle’s?), which happens to be in a very nice apartment complex. Furthermore, she lives on the top floor, and her view looks one direction over the river and another direction towards the Washington monument. Needless to say, it is a very nice place.

Paul and I picked up some sauce and cheese and bread from the store and we made a variety of types of pasta. We had quite a good time cooking, sharing a bottle of wine, listening to music, and eating. I’ve learned that I am most helpful if I take care of the music and wine during the preparation process and stay out of the way of those in the kitchen (everyone else…), and then I did the dishes at the end (which I believe is a fair trade).

Eventually Paul and I mobilized because another of our friends from Davidson, Andrew Linville, was arriving from NYC on the bus that evening. Roxana and Kaitlin went to hang out with other Davidson friends, and Paul and I met Natalie and Evan Carter (not sure if he’s been mentioned on her before, but he is yet another Davidson friend who also is in DC this summer) at Capitol City Brewing Company to hang out near Union Station until Andrew arrived. The five of us went back to our apartment and hung out for the rest of the night.

Saturday was unfortunately not that much fun. I was supposed to play tennis with Dr. Menkhaus in the afternoon (he is the professor leading my program this summer), but I reacted poorly to a batch of eggs I ate in the morning (I think) and was unable to stomach food for the better part of two hours. Fortunately, thinking I was going to play tennis, Paul and Andrew had left to go walk around, so I didn’t hold them back (like I did Patrick during our time in Cairo), but I still had to cancel on Dr. Menkhaus. Eventually I felt well enough to walk to Georgetown to buy a book and tennis balls just in case I played on Sunday, and eventually I was able to join Paul and Andrew at Vapiano in Chinatown for dinner, but I still didn’t eat that much. As a result, I only stayed for a little while at Evan’s place that evening and went home early to read.

Today (Sunday) I felt better, well enough to attend a Nationals game at least (which they won 2-0!), but still not 100%. On the brighter side, in the past week I have finished listening to Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card (for anyone from East reading this, that’s the sequel to Ender’s Game which most of us read for Nickel’s class freshman year – I’m looking at you Sean), and I’ve also purchased the seventh Harry Potter to reread before the midnight showing on Thursday with Katie Lovett, and I purchased the sequel to Speaker for the Dead. Obviously, I’ve discovered that I really enjoy reading for fun in my spare time – more than just sitting on facebook for endless hours.

In the coming days I am going to try to finish a blog post about Speaker for the Dead – a post that will be more of an actual issue oriented blog post than any I’ve ever put up. I may also put up a blog post I’m working on for work. We’ll see. In the meantime, here are a few pictures!