Much Needed Vacation

April 25th found me leaving my first internship for the LAST time. I had such a fantastic experience at the elementary school. It must be in my blood. I have MANY teachers on my Dad's side of the family and I never thought that I would do well in a school setting due to my low levels of patience. I was surprised to find myself looking forward to seeing my kids everyday and helping/watching them learn and grow. There may be hope for me yet!

April 27th found Chris and I driving away from our apartment for our FIRST EVER solo vacation since our honeymoon. First up on the itinerary: Pittsburgh; home of University of Pittsburgh, and amazing amounts of food. Chris completed his undergrad in Computer Science at Pitt and was very excited to share this part of his life with me. We happened to pick the WORST weekend ever to visit because every building on campus was on lock down due to 100+ bomb threats in the past month. Only students with valid student IDs were allowed in buildings. Bummer! We made due by stuffing our faces with all of his favorite foods :) Our first day we had a beef bulgolgi bowl (beef, veggies, rice), an Uncle Sam's Ultimate Cheesesteak sandwich, a double scoop of ice cream, two types of pizza (Mineo's was better than Aiellos), and no less than THREE pieces of pie at Gullifty's (Fresh Strawberry Cream with a Truffle Layer, Oreo Cheesecake, and Chocolate Mousse). Our last order of business of the day was visiting the Duchesne Lift. The lift is basically a cable car that gets pulled up the mountain over the city. We saw beautiful sights and even braved the cold and wind to visit the platform outside.

 Unfortunately, it was really cold and the flash was startling and bright :)

With many leftovers we began to make our way to our hotel a bit outside of town. We put our trust in GoogleMaps and began snaking our way around the beautiful slums of Pitt. Graffiti, broken windows, and over-grown lawns surrounded us as I began to voice my growing concern over the location of our hotel. Google announced that our hotel was on the left however a glance to the left revealed NO BestWestern but a dark alley with broken down cars. Right now might be a good (yet still inappropriate) time to mention that I had been looking for a bathroom for approximately 2 hours and my plight was becoming rather grim. Super tender mercy, I was not crying or yelling but laughing (nearly hysterically) by this point. After a little bit of re-programming, we found our hotel a little ways down the road and found ourselves safely to our hotel (which was not in a shady part of town). We settled in and watched Catch Me if You Can til 2am. 

Day 2 began with a fantastic hot breakfast and was followed by even more food. We made our way to "The Strip District". The Strip District is a fantastic street market mixed with high-end food stores. Perfect! We spent our morning shopping and ended up with $30 of sample chocolates/cocoa rouge, two scarves, gourmet popcorn (cinnatoast, kettle, cheese/caramel, and chocolate/caramel), dried mango, pizza roll, and baklava. With one quick visit back to Chris's old stomping grounds for a savory breakfast crepe we were on our way to Washington DC. 

DC has been a whirl of games, museums, temple, church, walking, eating, games, walking, eating, games, walking, and a little bit of sleep thrown in. Here are some highlights: 


We went to the International Spy Museum on Monday. We took a GPS guided spy hunting tour. They send you on a fictional spy case that requires you to use their silly GPS to "scan for spy dust" and "scan for fingerprints" and use memorial plaques to crack Russian codes. We had fun goofing off and sneaking around a couple blocks but wouldn't pay to do it again :) Luckily, we did catch our bad guy and we received a top score for our work.  The museum was super cool but unfortunately they don't allow pictures inside :(

We loved seeing the rocks and gems at the Natural History Museum. There was a lot of hype about the Hope Diamond. It was pretty, but I enjoyed some of the other gems much more. This exhibit is A MUST SEE! The museum also has an amazing mammals exhibit with lifelike taxidermy animals. Another favorite.