June 30, 2008 – Write From Karen

Need to catch up?

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Day Five – Wednesday

Did you breathe a sigh of relief when you read the title of this post? Go on now, you can admit it, you’re getting tired of hearing about our trip, right? 😀

I apologize if this has been boring for some of you, but considering I blog to journal my life, and our vacations are a big part of our lives (because we’re homebodies, for the most part, and when we get out, it’s a big deal to us), I, of course, have to chronicle our adventures and record my thoughts about said adventures.

That and if I don’t write it down? I’ll forget it in like two weeks. *sigh* I WISH I were kidding.

We had done so much by this time that we were sort of at a loss as to what to do next. I had mentioned something about the National Geographic Society’s Explorers Hall (NGSEH) being fun because the book described it as such:

It’s like walking through a couple of National Geographic TV specials. Located on the first floor of the National Geographic Society’s headquarters, this small collection of exhibits showcases weather, geography, astronomy, biology, exploration, and space era castles under siege, to imaginary monsters and manipulated photographs.

Doesn’t that sound like something a couple of teenage boys MIGHT be interested in, if only for an hour?

Uh, no. Either the person who wrote this review was on crack and IMAGINED all of these cool things, or the NGSEH changed their exhibit because when we got there? It was the entire history of China.

Now, nothing against China, or it’s history, but we weren’t expecting to see huge photographs of cute little China children or read about the history of trade relations with China. We were expecting … well, I’m not sure what we were expecting, but it wasn’t what we saw.

Oh sure, the model ships were cool to look at …

… but other than that? Snoozeville.

To top it off, this exhibit was on the ground floor of the NGSEH headquarters, which meant, it was swarming with business people … trying to go about their, er, business, and here we were, in the middle of them all, smelling like warm flesh, gritty from sweat and dressed comfortably (i.e. like tourists, i.e. sloppy and without one thought to fashion).

Can we say … AWKWARD? I couldn’t WAIT to get out of there. I felt so embarrassed and totally out of place trying to be a tourist and navigate myself through the sea of suits. I think we might have stayed for 20 minutes, tops. We zipped right out of there and back onto the streets faster than it takes you to fast forward through a National Geographic special (oh come on, you KNOW you do it).

We found ourselves back on the streets of D.C., in the business district, with nary another tourist in sight. I’m telling you, it was weird and we all felt pretty uncomfortable. And we were getting that snooty once over that people give each other whenever they are feeling superior to one another.

It was close to lunch by this time so we thought we would grab a bite to eat. We went to Potbelly. This was a new place to us, we had never even heard of the franchise before laying eyes on it, but we went in, ordered some sandwiches (which were DELICIOUS, btw. I had a tuna sandwich on toasted wheat bread – doesn’t that just make your mouth water??), and sat down to eat our meal. About ten minutes later, the whole place was crawling with suits. And our table was near the door, which meant we were literally surrounded by D.C. business people.

*sigh* I’ve never felt more self-conscious in all my life.

We quickly finished our meal and headed back to the Metro station. We hopped on, transferred lines, and hopped back off at the Archives Station (we really were becoming pros at the whole Metro system).

FINALLY. We were back in the land of tourists and I began to relax once more. We walked to the National Archives and got in line. The line wasn’t too bad when we got into it, but as per usual, the line increased about ten-fold shortly after we arrived. (This ALWAYS happens to us – we arrive someplace, it’s not that crowded and then *BAM*, suddenly the place is packed! It’s like, “Oh look! The M family has arrived! And they are so cool! We MUST do what they are doing so their coolness will rub off on us!” Seriously folks, it’s kind of creepy how everywhere we go, it gets busy. I’m sure it’s a coincidence, or is it ….? Sort of like how every time we go to a new restaurant, and we like it and we SAY we like it, it goes out of business three months later. Weird.)

So, we’re in line at the National Archives and we’re about to see the Declaration of Independence. The Archives hadn’t been on my list of must sees and I don’t really know why. I guess I was thinking the boys wouldn’t really be all that interested in seeing actual documents of our nation’s history …

Oh, how wrong I was.

Continue reading “D.C. Trip – Day Five (Final Day)” →

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June 30th Questions:

1. What’s the last thing you grab before you run out of the door in the morning? Are you pretty good at being on time? Or do you constantly run behind? If/when you’re late, what is usually the reason(s)?

2. What is the last thing you bought from a vending machine? Where were you? How much did you spend? Do you use vending machines very often?

3. What does the hand-soap in your bathroom smell of? What color are your bathroom walls? What color are your guest towels? What sort of decor, or theme, do you have in your bathroom? (Post a picture if you dare!)

4. What three words do you think of when someone says ‘body’?