6.15.2010 - Day 53

All is well. I haven't die or anything, I just haven't done too well staying on top of things :/ but I'm trying my best and I'm sure I'll manage to do better soon...

So, that leaves me with two weeks to report on. That's a lot to demand of one with not the best of memories. Where to begin?

In the last two weekends I've had fun with friends. Nguyen (Gwen) Doan of Vietnam, who I know from my first BYU ward, is interning in Philly so she came down for a ward temple trip and spent what time in the afternoon remained, before her bus left, with me. We didn't get to do much more than see the Whitehouse and eat at some cheap Chinatown restaurant. Next time she'll stay around for longer. This weekend Elizabeth Lee drove up from Virginia and we spent Saturday together. The most challenging part was getting her parked...the Barlow Center has parking down a side alley way, which opens up into a parking lot, but this entrance is easily missed and turning around in DC is not the easiest with the frequent one-way roads. She made it and we had a great time together. We went to a Jazz concert (free), a parade (free) and then dinner and dessert (not so free). She got to meet quite a few of my new friends here. I think we had a good time; lots of walking, but good none the less. I hope she comes back up!

Last Sunday I got to go to a few museums for free! Usually they charge but this weekend was a promotional weekend, so a group of 10 museums, which pride themselves as the Off-the-Mall museums, opened their doors and didn't charge admission. I visited the Textile Museum, the Fondo del Sol Museum and returned to see the new exhibits at the Phillips Collection. It was a beautiful way to spend an afternoon. In the evening I joined some friends for a family home evening of sorts. That was the best part of the day.

This Sunday I enjoyed an evening picnic with friends (Left to Right: Neil, Mark, Derek, Ashish, Dan and Lael). Ashish planned it and he supplied SO much food. It was all quite delicious. I had tofurkey for the first time ever :) It wasn't bad, not at all. We were out for a quite a while, and it was just so much fun.

This week its back to work. Last Monday I received the group from Europe. We had two Turks, a Swede, Portuguese, Italian, German, Fin, a Czech and two Danes. It was a good group. The speakers were very interesting. This was the first time I really saw disagreement among the group and between them and the speaker. It made for very interesting listening. I was spoiled both Monday and Tuesday as I got to listen to accompany the group all day both days. Thursday we finished the day with a farewell party for a departing coworker, and topped it off with a game of catchphrase! So much fun.

This week the other intern and I are to make 300 welcome packets for visitors and 100 for the English Interpreters/English Language Officers. So many copies...though I'm almost done making the copies for the EI/ELOs. But that's the easy part :S

Off to work!