I’ve forgot to tell you about my friend’s super interesting blog. (Or maybe I have subconsciously ignored it because I am afraid that you will realize how unadventurous my life really is and stop reading my blog if you find out about this other blog!) My friend is living in Juba in South Sudan since a few months and is blogging from there. There are probably few places that are less visible on the tourist map and less written about in the Western media than Juba (no starving refugees in camps, no articles!), so if you are interested in learning more about the place, check out Undefinedjourney. Also, we who work in the development sector are sometimes blamed for being too privileged considering what we work for and though I know that this in many ways is true, this blog describes fairly well how it is to work as a foreigner in what is classified as a non-family duty station. The only negative aspect about the blog is that it makes me feel like I have ended up in Richard Yates’ Revolutionary Road and that it makes me completely restless! Perhaps it really is time for me to pack up my now perfect Martha Stewart home and go out in the world again!?

I started to bring lunch to work. Not because we don’t have good food in our lunch cafeteria. Actually, I have never been to a place with a better cafeteria than my work place. We have good-quality food from all over the world to affordable prices – it is great! However, with my aversion to air-condition, I have (as I wrote the other day) now taken the habit of escaping out to Lafayette Park at lunch. I used to bring something with me from our cafeteria, but already after a couple of days I started feeling so bad about all the trash it created. I have never been to a place where there is so much packaging; a lunch easily fills up quarter of an office trash bin. So now I make my own lunch at home and bring to work in order to avoid creating so much waste. As bonus, I get to use my little two-dollar cooler bag that I got at Whole Foods last year for the summer pick-nicks and believe it or not, I get so many compliments for it. Kind of funny!

Even though I had a lot of work this weekend, I managed to get away for a few hours to go out and pick strawberries. My friend J had taken the initiative to arrange a small trip out to Hollin Farms in Virginia, where we spent a couple of hours picking strawberries, beats, carrots, and beans. It was a beautiful day and it was lovely being out in the countryside for while. (The farm is 12 miles away from the nearest gas station according to one of their staff, though of course nothing here is more than a mile or so away from a freeway.) In addition to getting a high does of vitamin D out there in the field (proven by all the freckles that since cover my face), I now have a freezer filled with delicious compote – sans additives and other artificial ingredients!

For anyone who enjoys compote or warm berry sauces to the ice-cream in the winter, I can really recommend making it yourself. Super easy and all natural!

Being in the world’s richest country, where there is plenty for everyone, and yet seeing so much poverty around me, and hearing so much hate and condemnation from politicians, religious fanatics, and media profiles, sometimes make me feel like trying to make this world a better place is a lost cause. But then I step out on a day like yesterday, at the peak of the Pride Festivities in DC, and I see men and women breaking century-old gender stereotypes to truly be themselves. I see aging same-sex couples hand in hand, finally living in an time when they can be open about their relationships. I see people from all over the world, gay and straight, taking part in the celebration and decorating the restaurants around my neighborhood with the color of the rainbow. And I think that things are after all changing for the better and that there is hope for our world after all!

Unfortunately, I didn’t have my camera with me when the parade passed by, but the streets were filled with people who celebrated all day. All the restaurants on 17th street right next to me are decorated similar to the one on the picture above. The rainbow wrapped church down the street from me is however unfortunately an exception among the religious organizations here. 

It is Saturday morning and I have been up since 6:00 am. I have a Romanian exam in little over an hour. After that, I mostly have work to look forward to this weekend. It is three weeks left before our deadline and I have quite a lot to submit before the end of next week. I am starting to feel a little tired – it’s been an intensive year and I really look forward to a long vacation! Right now, it feels like the first thing I will do is to NOT set the alarm clock. I can’t even remember the last time I slept in….

My evenings this past week…

Since I didn’t have my camera with me to lunch yesterday and hence missed the opportunity to sneak take a picture of a member of Team Obama, I made a point of bringing it today. Unfortunately, there were no “famous” people there today (at least not that I would have recognized, which of course limits the possibilities of me spotting someone). But I got some nice pictures of what lunch in the park normally looks like instead. As the Southern entrance of the park was closed today, it is difficult to see the White House from where I took the picture. But since the Southern entrance is closer to my job, I usually sit much closer to the famous building. (And the tourists. And the demonstrators. And the crazy religious preachers. And the police. And the security people. And so on!)

Today when I went out for lunch at my usual spot in Lafayette Park in front of the White House, I ended up next to a large group of eight graders from Massachusetts who had a Q&A with Jon Favreau, Obama’s director of speechwriting. I probably looked more interested than some of the students since one of their staff members came up to me and told me what I was listening to and where they were from. A real Washington lunch! Unfortunately, I didn’t have my camera with me so no photo this time, but here is an article about Mr. Favreau from the NY Times. I also forgot to ask if he wrote Obama’s speech at the White House Correspondence Dinner this year!

Our other major excursion was to Alcatraz. As oppose to Sonoma, Alcatraz did have quite an impression on me the first time I was there and I remembered a lot from that one visit. But I still wanted to go out there again. The weather was rainy and grey, and quite appropriate for visiting a high-security prison even if it is just a museum. For some reason, prisons always give me the creeps even though I know that I can leave at any time. Even more modern, quite comfortable facilities seems like torture to me. When I was younger and visited prisons like Alcatraz, I would be shaken for several days after. It is like the thought of not having the freedom to really live and enjoy everything that life has to offer gets to me. (And considering all the escape attempts that took place, despite the fact that most prisoners only sat there for a few years, it seems to have gotten to the inmates too.) This time, it was a little better however, mainly because this time I had a proper look at the photo of the last prisoners walking out of there, before Alcatraz was closed. But I can still hear the prisoners’ stories from the audio tour and I don’t think it will be the first place I return to if next time I go to San Francisco.

Friday, Andreas and I took a wine tour around Sonoma and Napa Valley. We visited the Jacuzzi Family Vineyards (and yes, it is the same family that invented the famous bathtub), the Carneros Winery, and a third that I actually can’t remember the name of. We also had a lunch break in the town of Sonoma. Besides the fact that Andreas and I probably had the best burgers ever there for lunch, it was fun to stop there for me as I spent one month there when I was 18 years old. For some reason I didn’t have a camera with me that time so I don’t remember that much, and in fact, now almost 20 years later, I barely recognized anything. Except for the local cinema where my dad’s friend took me to see A League of Their Own. Or if it was Far and Away… Anyway, the wine tour was great! Despite having lived for almost six years in the wine producing countries France, Italy, and Moldova, I still learned new things about the production process. We also went through beautiful landscapes and it was nice to get out of the city for a day.