NYC

This past weekend I went to New York City to spend time with my friend Jen who I had met on a bike trip the previous month. It was so great to meet her because I had heard a lot about her, been compared to her and I already knew we had a lot in common. Although I'll admit I had no idea what a connection we would have. She's amazing, but if I feel like if I say too many great things about her, I will sound narcissistic, since essentially we're the same person. But we had an amazing trip and I'm so glad I was able to spend some quality time with her before she moves to the West Coast.


Here I am with Jen and Lisa at lunch after our initial meeting and bike ride in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. I think it was right about now that we decided we had to go up to New York before Jen moved to San Diego. Unfortunately Lisa had a work emergency and wasn't able to join us in NYC. I'm still in mourning. Nevertheless, I went, and I'm so glad I did. This was my fifth trip to New York, but definitely my favorite. This was the first time I had gone specifically to visit a friend who lived there and seeing New York with a local is the only way to do it.

Highlights from the trip:

• People watching outside of Penn Station and seeing such treats as a very pregnant woman who was wearing a shirt that said "I'm single" on the front and "Call me" on the back
• Walking back to Jen's apartment in Harlem at 1:30 in the morning after grocery shopping and seeing police tape blocking off a large area and seeing a helicopter overhead with a huge spotlight patrolling the area. I ask "Was someone murdered?" Jen responds very casually "Yea, probably."

• Biking almost the entire perimeter of Manhattan. Although at times I feared for my life dodging cars, and had to bike in weather that was 94 degrees and very humid (after I wiped my face on my sleeve there was black exhaust covering my shirt sleeve). It was still exhilarating and I think the best way to see the city, we biked along the Hudson, through Battery Park, up Fifth Avenue and through Central Park. Here we are right next to the Stock Exchange on Wall Street.

• Front row tickets to the Broadway show Curtains starring David Hyde Pierce who we found strangely attractive.
  

• Eating this truly decadent dessert at Max Brenner Chocolate by the Bald Man and catching up with old friends living in New York. Jane a good friend since elementary school and Julie who I met in D.C. and recently moved to NYC for grad school.

• Sleeping out on the roof of Jen's apartment
• A random picnic in the primary room after church and an exercise where the boys in town for summer gave Jen their security sales pitch and she tried to convince them to vote for Obama.
  
• Waking up to a brunch Sunday morning that Jen had made of corn pancakes with strawberries and yogurt.

• This is as close as it gets to the beach in Manhattan. It was close to 100 degrees that day and anytime we saw even a tiny piece of grass there were people laying out. Hilarious.

Here are some other noteworthy recent events that I won't dedicate an entire post to.
Bowling at the White House. Strike. And I do have two fully functioning arms, even though this picture would indicate otherwise.
Mormon night at the Death Cab for Cutie Concert. We smuggled in KFC and Bobby hid his chicken snacker under his hat.
Another sign that Jen and I were destined to be friends. She would do yoga with me in the parking lot after biking in Pennsylvania.
Dutch Bike Dutch. This was the second time I attended this event that has become a D.C. favorite. A great activity no matter how avid of a biker you are. We drive up to Amish country and bike through the rural countryside. And I just have a bond with bikers, here are more instant best friends, Lisa and Tyler. And yes I know right now the song "primary colors are one, two, three" is going through your head right now.

Costa Rica in short

Yes we were robbed
No there were no weapons, my friend told me that if I wanted to be technical I need to say burglarized, but all I can think about when I hear the word burglar is the image of the McDonald's Hamburglar
Yes we came home early
No I didn't swim in the ocean while we were there
Yes I did laugh so hard I cried and my stomach was sore the next day
No I didn't find my one and only, but Courtney did
Yes after we were robbed one of our few possessions was three full decks of cards to play nertz with at night
No we didn't have an oven in the hostel, but that didn't stop us from making delicious brownies in the microwave
Yes we did find a disgusting monster of a crab in one of the rooms we stayed in. I think crabs are my least favorite animal.
No it did not escape alive
Yes we did fly over a tropical storm on our way home. The plane had some major bumps, people on the plane screamed, the scene from the plane going down on lost flew threw my head
No I didn't need to worry, we were flying on the premiere airline based in El Salvador: Taca.

Needless to say the trip was not all that we expected, but what I did expect was to have a great time traveling with two of my dearest friends from D.C. Sarah and Courtney. That made everything worth it and we were able to laugh and joke the entire time despite a few setbacks. And we had one unforgettable day in La Fortuna that included a horseback ride galloping through the rainforest at the base of a volcano and around a beautiful lake with our Tico caballero Jonathen who would pick flowers to put in our hair. Drinking Pina Coladas served in a pinapple from a bar that had seats in the pool, a zip-line canopy tour, soaking in thermal hot springs, and a dinner where I have laughed more hard than I have in months.

Here are a few pictures. Enjoy!
The small joys of traveling. The volcano in the background was expected. The delicious watermelon we enjoyed while watching a group of local teenagers perform capoiera in the park wasn't.

We joked about how in all of our pictures we were either wet from the rain or pool or else eating.

The horseback ride a relaxing afternoon at a beautiful water park were both parts of what was truly one of the best days of my life.The crab hunt. See how resourceful we are using a mirror to spot him hanging upside down under the armoire and nudge him out with a giant tropical leaf.

These are the crocodiles we were looking at when the heinous crime occurred. They might look like floating logs and you think I'm just saying they are crocodiles to make myself look not as stupid. The belongings we were left with. About ten magazines. some wet ones, three decks of cards, one Book of Mormon, two ipods, granola bars, some wet wipes and three decks of cards.

Life Lessons

Today I had an experience with a homeless man that touched me profoundly. I am not sharing this story to boast or say what a great person that I am. In fact, daily I walk by panhandlers and beggers and don't even notice or even become annoyed at their persistence in asking for a handout. I have found plenty of reasons to justify not following King Benjamin's council to "succor those that stand in need of your succor; ye will administer of your substance unto him that standeth in need; and ye will not suffer the beggar putteth up his petition to you in vain, and turn him out to perish". However, today something happened reawakened my idealism and reminded me of the inequality that exists in our society today.

I was walking through Lafayette Park on my way to lunch when I saw an older man rummaging through the garbage. For those of you not in D.C. this park is right along the back side of the White House. It is beautiful and well-maintained and full of security so it seemed a little out of place. Then I noticed that he was taking leftover soup from bowls in the trash can and pouring them into a cup that he was holding. I could not bear to watch this. I opened my wallet and I only had a ten and a twenty. I walked over and offered him the ten dollars and he shook his head no. I asked him why and he asked if I had a dollar bill. I told him I didn't this was all that I had. He held out his hand, and I assumed that he wanted the money, but he wouldn't take it. Instead he took my hand and kissed it. I didn't know what to do, I felt tears coming and I walked quickly across the street to potbelly's. I wanted to buy him a sandwich and get change for my ten. However, by the time that I had returned he was gone and I walked around the park, but was disappointed that I couldn't find him.

I know that there are no easy answers to these kind of problems. I was reminded of an experience last year when I was meeting up with some friends for lunch and as my friend Staci was walking to meet us she ran into a good friend and neighbor from high school asking for money on the street. He was homeless and had been living on the streets of D.C. for a few months. Obviously we all wanted to help him and Staci used all her resources and connections to find him a job and housing and reconnect him with his family. However, he wouldn't accept the help and he was mentally ill, it was really difficult to know what to do to help. Until all of us became disillusioned and decided you can't help someone who doesn't want to help themselves.

These problems are difficult and they have been addressed for years by politicians, activists, non profits and religious groups. There are no easy answers. I studied international relations as an undergraduate and used to really want to work in international development. Now my view has turned more inward as I have realized that there is so much that needs to be done in my own community where I can be more effective. But I ask you, where and how do you feel that you can or have made the most difference in your life?

Final(ly)

I know I haven't updated for awhile. But let's face it, I'm in finals, and my family came and visited a few weeks ago, which I will have to dedicate a post to as soon as I'm finished. I'm almost done and today, to get me excited for summer, I made a list of projects to begin next week while I'm at work with all my free time when the semester is over.

• Make a list of summer concerts I want to attend and invite interested friends
• Research a triathlon for August or September
• Plan a weekend beach trip to Rehoboth in June
• Plan my Costa Rica trip with Sarah and Courtney at the end of May
• Plan a Brazil foreign film night/screen on the green
• Research tennis tournaments
• Sign up to be on the event mailings and lunch seminars for think tanks and non profits close to work
• Expand my group project on greening Baltimore’s fleet and work with the city to present it
• Create a VA biking group
• Create an environmental group that looks at the issue from an LDS perspective

And although I'm not going to give the Corry's trip to D.C. the full post it deserves (now), I do have to give a shout out to my Mom. It was her birthday on Monday and although it's cliche she really is the most amazing woman I know. Even though she screened my phone call last night because I called during American Idol. I still love her.

She is the kind of person that puts everyone else's needs and wants before her own, in fact she always put our wants before her needs. She would pull all nighters with me working on school projects, be my partner in crime for party planning, invite me on bike or ski trips with her fun friends, plant tulip bulbs in the neighbors yards at 6:00 a.m. before anyone in the neighborhood woke up, she still sends me packages just for fun, and she helped found the "shadowlight foundation" which has brought Christmas to hundreds of families. Pretty much whenever I call her she's taking someone to a doctor's appointment, visiting, helping my sister with her horses, or doing genealogy. She's seriously an angel, my inspiration and I love her so much.

Here's Steph and my parents just hanging out in Dubya's rose garden.

Excuse me Miss, but what exactly are you doing?

This was the greeting I got from a D.C. cop yesterday when I was driving downtown looking for parking after I had picked up my family. He knocked on my window so politely I thought he was going to help me find a parking spot. No, he was knocking on my window to ask me why I had been driving on the left side of the road. I looked at him confused and said "but I thought this was a one way road." I looked to my right and saw a long line of cars being entertained by my mishap and confirmed that there was a double yellow line. I definitely put the car in reverse and backed up half a block to the end of the line my head bowed in shame. Arguably putting myself more at risk than driving on the wrong side of the road.

GRRRRRR

This weekend a couple of things happened that made me feel like I could justifiably be in a bad mood, and I tried hard to be grumpy and here's why:

• Taxes - as if the sucker punch of finding out that I owe the IRS a significant amount of money wasn't enough, technology decided to go ahead and kick me while I was trying to recover and my e-file was rejected twice and I can't figure out why. I just want to give them my money, why won't they take my money. I'm beginning to question the quote Jeanette showed me by Emerson: "The state is a poor, good beast who means best, It is a poor cow that means well by you, do not begrudge it its hay."
  
• New Laptop - I purchased a new dell laptop one month ago, and apparently I should have heeded Grayden's doomsday prophecy because sure enough the operating system failed on Friday and I lost all my data. The good news is that I did only have the laptop for a month so I didn't lose that much and most everything is backed up. The bad news is I only had the laptop a month and it makes me fearful of what is yet to come and of course the warranty is only 21 days. Dell's customer and technical support has been less than accommodating as well.
• Dogs - two of them, I don't really need to say anymore on this.
• Losing to Peter at tennis - it was the only thing I could hold over his head in our rivalry, that I had beat him, now I have nothing and he is the most competitive person I know.
  

I really want to just mope around and be grumpy about all of this, but several things have kept me from jumping off that proverbial bridge.

• The Corry's (Mom, Dad and Steph) are coming to D.C. this week
• I got an A on my midterm and school is over in four weeks
• Serendipitously running into several friends randomly in downtown D.C. the mall and Kabob Palace this weekend
• Roommates who offer to take me for a ride in the bug with the top down and buy me ice cream (but wait I was off sugar this week, it really was the perfect storm of bad events)
• Spring blossoms and warm weather
• This song that Kristjan introduced me to
  
• Haircut and a new dress
• I have a week in Costa Rica to look forward to next month with Sarah and Courtney.
  

Lo siento that I don't have new pictures, but everything is on my other laptop, ugh, remembering the positives, remembering the positives.

The world as my class room...

Recently I've been trying to take advantage of my downtown office location and attend more of the ubiquitous free lunch and dinner seminars and events that are held at different organizations downtown. There are opportunities for education, entertainment and networking in pretty much any field you're interested in. Here are some of the perks: you get to rub shoulders with people who you can name drop later (that's a joke, no one outside of small policy circles would know who these speakers are), yummy free food, learning new, albeit generally useless, facts that may impress your friends later, avoid homework and put myself in uncomfortable social situations.

The uncomfortable social situation one has been a good way to push myself out of my mini-BYU world that I live in because some of these events I have attended alone. I soon realized that it's really hard for me to talk to guys that aren't Mormon. I need to work on building a small talk repertoire that works better for a general crowd. This is how the last couple of conversations with guys I've met at these events has gone: Names, jobs, where we're from, if they're from the west we talk about how we miss the west and differences between east and west, school and then there is two seconds of silence, I freak out and say I've got to go. And by go, I mean go get a mini-quiche and stand alone in the corner and try to avoid further eye contact. Yes I am 26 not 16, but I'm working on this.

Last week I attended a movie and reception for the movie Illicit: The Dark Side of Trade. It was a fascinating film at National Geographic about the illegal trade, which is estimated to total one trillion dollars a year. No small sum, but it talks about the effects on us as consumers of sometimes tainted products and on innovation and creativity if intellectual property cannot be protected. Here's the trailer:

Last night I attended The Human Footprint. This visually showed how much an American will consume in a lifetime. The presentation was creative, but the dramatic effect faded a little after the first twenty minutes, we ended up leaving early. It definitely helps to reinforce the fact that Americans consume a ridiculous amount of energy and goods, but at the same time it can be a little depressing because there's not a whole lot you can do to change the fact that we have to shower, eat and cloth ourselves. But I think we can all take steps to decrease our consumption without negatively affecting our standard of living. Here's the trailer and a few visuals for this film.


I have also been attending lunch events at different think tanks and non profit groups in the district. I will not bore you with anymore details, but I will put in a plug for those of you living in D.C., come learn with me!