July 4th

All of us folks here at orientation got to load up and go to our nation's capitol for the Fourth of July! It was pretty cool. There were so many people!! Let me interject at this point that if you are wanting to come see DC and have a packed day of all the Smithsonian museums you can get, the Fourth of July is NOT the day to do that. While it was neat to be there on the anniversary of our nation's birth, it seems that all of our other nation's inhabitants think this as well. Luckily...Brandon and I have been to DC before and had seen most of the major sights. And, having been told by our supervisors that the day was not intended for sightseeing, we set out with a few goals in mind. We were instructed to group in 4s or 5s so lucky for us, we got to group with some of our friends who just happened to live in DC for the last 2 years. hehe

So we set out on our journey. Like I said, the goals of the day were not to sight see. Some goals to accomplish were to: visit China town, eat an ethnic food for lunch, ride the metro and get used to public transportation, try to recognize as many foreign languages as possible, bring a foreigner closer to Father, and to obviously share our story with as many people as possible.
The first item of the day was to make our way to the White House by way of the metro. Being led by a DC native, this was cake for us. It was so neat to see the White House. What's not so neat is all of the cooks that sit out in front of it. Nonetheless, Brandon was able to share with one! So after the White House we headed over to China town, which is basically one block of everything chinese. We looked around for awhile and then, haha, settled on Indian food just around the corner. It being the fourth of July and most sane people wanting hamburgers and hot dogs for lunch, there were absolutely no people in this restaurant. It was a wonderful buffet! I love Indian food! Quick story within a story...our friend asked our dark-skinned Indian-looking waiter if he was from India. He grinned and said, "No. Mexico." haha
After Indian food we hit a chinese restaurant to get a bubble tea (you'll have to come see us in china to discover what that is) and then headed back to the National Mall. (the area with all of the sights to see) We accomplished the rest of our goals in the Mall area and snapped a few pictures. It was a grrrrreat day!! We didn't get to stay for fireworks but they got rained out anyways. Here are some more of our pictures.

Gosh, Brandon...you sure have grown since I saw you last...

Hoards of people...

At Union Station. "Watch out for the Subway behind you Brandon!"