First in, best dressed ...

Hey everyone, it's John here. I'm one of the members of this exciting DC trip - so exciting that I (and Najla) were officially the first to get here out of everyone! Note: That does NOT mean we are nerds. We are cool, and have budding social lives ... honest!

The first thing to greet me as I got to the place a few of us are staying at in DuPont circle (a big thank you to Bruce's Dad, who rocks!) were the buskers [editorial note: this is an Australian word meaning "people who play music on the street for money" - not to be confused with Oreos!]. Man, there were buskers everywhere! Which gave me some ideas for the study trip on the off chance we run out of money ...



... the other thing that greeted us were the cherry blossoms. Tomorrow marks the official (beware unofficial substitutes) start of the cherry blossom season - gifts from Japan which have now been translated into great tourist highlights. Here are some of the blossoms adorning our road ...



... the road that some of are staying on is Massachusetts Avenue - where all the embassies are. They are HUGE. Like the Korean one ...



And the Egyptian one - wait, this is just the ambassador's HOUSE (Does not include the embassy, which is separate!).



... this makes our Schwab residence back at Stanford look less compelling!

Finally, a brief note on airports. Most of arrived at (Ronald) Reagan National Airport - which is beautiful.



(Editor's note: locals tell me that due to the cost of building such a nice airport is actually resulting in continued accounting loss for the airport owners to this day ... i think we get to learn more about that in 2 unit cost accounting in the Spring Quarter ...!)

cheers
john (and keith)