Tuesday, June 14, 2011

First Night in DC

So we landed on our plane last night, off an easy flight. It was much faster than I would have guessed, we were only in the air for a little over an hour. First thought when I got on the ground? The trees look different here.

We all met at the baggage claim, and while I knew of one other girl that was on my plane, who I met at the airport, apparently there was another kid from the program on my plane, sitting in the row behind me, but I had no idea. It was kind of funny when we realized it once we got off the flight.

After we all met up, we walked to the American Councils office in DC and watched a movie called Budrus, which was a documentary from the Arab viewpoint about the conflict of the Green Line and the Israeli defense fence in the area around a town called Budrus. It was a pretty good movie, but it was very biased towards the Arabs. I suppose that's the viewpoint we should be getting used to, but my Israeli friends wouldn't have liked it.

After that we went back to the hotel, went for a quick swim, and then pretty much went to bed. I'm rooming with just one other girl for orientation, and she's pretty chill, or "tight" as she would say. (She says tight a lot. It's chill). We should have probably gone to bed earlier than we did; we ended up staying up until one in the morning. But seriously, who would be able to go to sleep? We were definitely too excited.

So today, we've got a full day of orientation stuff, with everything from presentations from the state department to a visit to the national Islamic Center and a mosque. So I will definitely be wearing a headscarf at some point today; it's in my backpack. And the long sleeves and long pants are already getting kind of hot, and I haven't even gone outside yet.

Well, I kind of need to go. These hotel computers are at kiosks, where you stand and type, and the keyboard is at an awkward height where I keep making stupid typos. That's all right though, because I'm going to Jordan! But we're still in DC for another night, but that's okay. Bye!

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