DC trip

It seems a bit anticlimactic to leave everything that you're used to and go to Europe only to find yourself bumming around Washington DC for the better part of a week. However, I ended up finding the four days in DC were actually quite helpful in setting the stage for the year and also in getting to know the other exchangees. We stayed at the 4H center, a hotel-like enclosure with air conditioning, a cafeteria, spotty Wifi and an arcade. Most of our days were spent either in meetings (which were generally helpful but sometimes dragged on a bit - you could feel the wind come out of the room when we were told at the beginning of a meeting at 9 AM that we would pause for lunch at noon) and in the dorm rooms, where we would spend much of our nights not sleeping and hanging out with the alumni chaperones. Although the alums had been on an exchange 2 years ago, none of them were much older than us. We spent the better part of one day on the Hill where we were supposed to meet with senators and representatives - the Minnesota kids managed to get glad-handed by a Coleman staffer but that was about it. At one point another CBYXer and I rode the elevators in a House of Representatives office building for a solid half hour. We had a tour of DC and Arlington, then we went back to the center.

After a very full four days, most of us were quite ready to be in Germany - for some of us, that would take longer than expected...