City Living

It has been a crazy last few weeks and I am sorry I have not blogged recently.  We returned from spring break this past week and picked up where we left off: working hard at our internships and in our classes.  Spring break was wonderful (I went to Florida!) but I was excited to return to D.C.  My excitement to return to my internship and the D.C. program allowed me to start thinking about some of the unique aspects of our everyday lives here that I have not shared with you.

A view of the sunrise over the Potomac River.

As you can imagine, living in Washington is quite different than living in Williamsburg.  Instead of walking to class, we take the metro to work.  The yellow line, the metro route I take, allows me to travel over the Potomac and take in beautiful views of the Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial and the Jefferson Memorial.  With the recent time change, the sun now rises while I am traveling over the river into work.  The view is truly magnificent and is a great start to the work day!

Another great perk of living in a metropolitan area is the proximity to stores, restaurants, and even the airport.  Over spring break, my cab ride to the airport took five minutes and my metro ride was literally 1 minute (it’s the next stop), unlike the 50 minutes it takes to drive to the airport back at school.  The convenience of having everything we need close to us is important, especially since our schedules are so jam-packed with interning during the day and going to class at night.

A view from our balcony. You can see the Potomac between the two buildings in the background.

Yesterday, Cristina and I went to the dry cleaner.  We decided to continue to walk through the mall where the dry cleaner is located right across the street from our apartment building.  We walk through this mall everyday to get to the metro, but we never realized what was on the other side of the mall, past the metro station.  We were pleasantly surprised when we found many more shops, salons, restaurants, a drug store and even a grocery store!  We wish we had known about it sooner.

It may not have been as exciting as exploring the city (I will discuss our D.C. adventures in upcoming blog posts), but it was interesting to find out more about what our neighborhood has to offer.  The weather is beginning to improve and a bunch of us cannot wait to explore the running trail that starts a block away from our apartment building.