Back in business, baby!

Three days after arriving, and finally I'm reconnected to the internet- it's a joyous day of celebration, e-mail deleting, and Facebook friend refusing.

The trip went smoothly, and the weekend was fairly lax. The apartment here's pretty cool (though we got shafted and stuck into the apartment meant for three, somehow...)- still, it's not exactly crowded and the high ceilings make it seem bigger. We're in a nice neighborhood full of restaurants, and it's relieving having the metro stop and a Bank of America right out the back door. Another great thing about Washington- anyone who reads the Onion, you can get the actual printed version free on any street corner- sweetness indeed. And if you don't read it, go here. The building has a roof deck for all my tanning needs and a sun room on top featuring books such as "Children of Satan," a jolly read with the friendly face of Dick Cheney gracing the cover. The entry system to the building is fairly sweet too- rather than swipe cards, we have ones that just need to be near the reader. That means I can keep it in my back pocket and shake my derierre at the door to unlock it- which, unless I'm mistaken, is the most convenient and fun way ever to open a door.

Food is always of utmost importance. Our neighborhood is full of Indian restaurants (at least 3, maybe more we haven't found) not to mention everyone's favorite burrito chain, Chipotle, and the oddly named "Eddie's Cafe: Chinese Cuisine." We snagged the $5 lunch special at the Violet Garden instead, an excellent choice if you like orange chicken (and, according to Chad, if you like very spice szechuan beef). It's a neverending quest here to find cheap places to eat, but we found a good one Saturday in Zorba's Cafe with some very tasty Gyros and feta pizza and today during lunch break at the House of Kabob in Dupont Circle.

The internship at the Middle East Institute gets me very excited. I went in at 10 today and was greeted by free donuts and Ma'mool, which were very tasty fig-newton like Arab snacks with dates in the middle. We went through the usual orientations- I learned about what I'd be doing this semester (media monitoring, writing press releases, assembling press packets and, in my case, making videotapes of MEI events). The interns I'm working with are great and we had a fun time during lunch and the subsequent get-to-know-the-city scavenger hunt, won by the team of yours truly. One task involved writing a haiku about a picture of Sultan Qaboos found in the institute. This one won my team some bookmarks:

Crazy cool turban,
Sittin', starin', lookin' stern,
What is he thinking?

Yeah, pretty sweet:)

Well, we've got a group orientation soon, and it'll be time to collect my second free meal of the day. The students here are great and I think we're going to have a sweet semester.

Random thought of the week: Looking at the Syracuse center down here, the Paul Greenberg House, I really feel like it's a national style embassy. It's a comforting thought that I'll have a place to run to if I run afoul of DC law enforcement- unless the RAs and DPS choose to extradite me. That would suck.

No luck putting pictures up here yet, we'll see about that. I'll try to get them up on Facebook in the meantime. I'll leave you with a clip from the excellent movie for which this blog is named. Enjoy!