Trekking About DC

Summer's end

 The last few days I have been keeping myself busy meeting new friends, visiting family, playing tennis, and trekking about DC.  At U Street and 13th we found an amazing borough that has an entire city block of Ethiopian restaurants.  Ethiopian food differs from most other African cuisines because it combines Italian propensities with Mediterranean, Arabian, and East African spices.  (Try the sour Injera bread with lots o' dipping side dishes and you will not be disappointed.)  Around Clarendon we found a local pub hotspot, Harry's, and a Mexican restaurant with bangin' guacamole in Ballston.  In Falls Church is Eden Center, a Vietnamese food haven with loads of restaurants carrying pho, boba tea, and market stalls selling jack fruit, durian, lychee, and the small sweet bananas that I get a hankering for every few weeks.  Durian is a pointy, long-developing east Asian fruit that is likable to rotting flesh or extraordinarily stinky cheese: my great aunt Leeta had a taste for the fruit after living in Indonesia for three decades.  She regaled us with tales of tourists getting kicked out of hotels for opening durian in their rooms and permeating the filter system with its uncanny pungency.  Mmmm.... not for the light hearted. 

DC Religious Sites

National Cathedral, DC

 Anyhow, it's good to back on the DC stomping grounds, especially while the weather gives off its last warm rays of a still straggling summer.  The DC metro, amazingly, is spotlessly clean, at least in comparison to NYC subways.  This is mostly due to the more recently constructed infrastructure and the strictly followed rules of no eating or drinking on the metro--I heard someone got kicked off once for (gasp!) chewing gum.  In NYC, conversely, I sat on subway cars that exploded into all-out food fights, with french fries turning into teenage rocket launchers.  Needless to say, I am thrilled to be back in a city where international food predominates and mixed fashion, religious fusions, and multiple languages litter the open spaces with a frenetic hybridity that begs the onlooker to stretch her own sensibilities. 

An architectural dream: lots o' chiseling

 

I am also curious to see how my own sense of style, speech, dress, and demeanor will shift to match new community expectations.  I am looking forward to representing America abroad, as well, which should be an educational experience.  Having to explain your own cultural norms and mythos (like a big old dude being magically transported worldwide overnight to children's households by flying reindeer) always puts things into perspective.  Just because I don't know about it, or am not used to it, doesn't mean that it isn't meaningful for a large majority.  That's one of the reasons why I find cultural relations so fascinating: norms and the expected are constantly questioned and evaluated.  Who says hot pepper fish and rabbit stew isn't a great breakfast snack?  (Well, besides the rabbit and fish?)