IT SNOWED!!!!!

I woke up this morning, took a shower, and stepped outside only to be showered by white flakes falling from the sky. It snowed! Only for a little while, but in that time, it was VERY exciting.

I'm going to rewind a bit here. I didn't write last night, so I'll do a short little recap. We went to church at Washington Community Fellowship on Sunday morning. It's the church that the head director of ASP attends, and he offered to meet whoever wanted to go with him and walk over to the church (like two blocks away). There was a very large group of us who went with him, and the church was nice. It was pretty traditional and very small, but the building was beautiful. More then likely I won't go back, but it was a good introduction to DC churches.

After church, a portion of the group that went to church went to Armand's Chicago Pizzeria for lunch. They had an all-you-can-eat pizza and salad buffet for only $7.99, so we figured it was a good deal, and the food was good too! I met more people from WJC there, and everyone is just really friendly and fun.

We had our first "class" at 2 p.m. on Sunday, which was only for WJC. There are 15 of us in the program, which makes it very personal. We introduced ourselves, learned about the set up of the semester, had our first (short) lecture, and then were given our teams for our digital scavenger hunt.

We have been put into three teams of five. Since there are only three boys in the group, each group has one guy and then us girls were split up randomly. We were given a sheet with a list of six or so places to go in the city. We found out where each one was and got directions to it - the next step is simply to go to the places. But the trick is, at each place, we have to have photographic or video proof that all of us were actually there at the same time. At the end, we have to compile all of our photos and videos and post it on YouTube by Saturday night. I'll post the link once it's up!

But anyways, one of the things on our list was to eat a meal at a kosher deli. A genuine one. So after much intense research, we found one in Dupont Circle. We called to make sure it was "genuinely kosher" and headed out! It was a little place called Eli's, and it was cute. They offered pretty normal food, and a fairly wide variety of it. A couple people had burgers, I had turkey sandwich (which didn't come with any condiments on it, so I asked for mayonnaise, which might have made it not kosher...), and one person had soup. Considering we had no idea what kosher EXACTLY meant, we decided to ask. Our waiter brought out the "kosher supervisor," who is actually a rabbi. Every kosher restaurant has to have a supervising rabbi. This particular rabbi used to be a slaughterer before he started doing this, and he explained the special process of slaughtering the chickens, and how if there is any kind of nick in the knife that they find, all the chickens killed with knife have to be thrown out. They have a special type of salting, also. Then they don't mix meat and dairy at all and pork is a no-no. He talked for a really long time, but we got a video and some photos. It was pretty cool. He was nice.

That was pretty much yesterday. Today we had class this morning AND this afternoon, and then we were back on the scavenger hunt trail. My team and I went to the Titanic memorial. Bet you didn't know they had one of those, eh? It's pretty cool. I'll put up a picture at some point, but at this moment, I don't want to deal with all of my photos.

Fun Fact: The Titanic memorial statue was imitated in the movie "Titanic" with Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio. The "I'm flying Jack, I'm flying" scene, where Rose puts her arms out and her head back is exactly what the memorial looks like. The movie was made after the memorial was built, so the movie was referencing the memorial by doing this. Cool huh?!

So we went to the Titanic memorial, and then went over to the Capitol building. It was all lit up and we got to stand pretty close to the stage and look around. We figured it would be nice to see it up close at SOME point. It looked beautiful, but it was ABSOLUTELY FREEZING. So once we had scoped out the area, we found a Subway, grabbed a sandwich and headed back to the apartments.

The plan for tomorrow is:

1. Meet as a team at 6 a.m.
2. Head over toward the mall (about eight blocks from my apartment)
3. Get to the BACK of the crowds, find a decent spot in front of a Jumbotron, and wait.
   
4. Talk to people around me, find out their stories, and take lots of pictures.
5. Enjoy physically being at one of the most historic inaugurations ever.

We might try to find some sort of inaugural ball to rope-line tomorrow night or something. We're just excited to be here, covering this event from the backside, if you will.

It's highly unlikely that there will be any sort of cell phone service in my area tomorrow. Rumor is that they are shutting down cell service completely in the Capitol Hill area for a couple of hours. So, don't expect any cool pictures or anything before mid-afternoon or later.

But watch the inauguration! I am so excited about this, and I can't wait to see what it's actually going to be like. Aside from being cold, which is pretty much a given. Especially since it's apparently going to snow...

And I totally bought an Obama t-shirt from one of the street salesmen tonight.