Weekend with Grandma and Lukas

The Holocaust Museum

Family Picture with Washington Monument in background


Gate to Chinatown

Lukas at WWII Memorial - one of the only smiling pictures

WWII Memorial

Me at the Lincoln Memorial

It was a very busy Saturday with Grandma and Lukas. We started off by waking up around 7:15am to meet for breakfast and then go to the Holocaust Museum. My roomate Hope's fried Ariel came with us as well. I had just met her the previous wednesday, and she is here nannying for the people I babysat for earlier on in the summer. Saturday was her first day off so she wanted to come and see the city with us!

So we got to the Holocaust Museum a little before 10am after nightmares on the metro where

three different lines were all having repairs on the same weekend - probably the worst planning on the part of DC Metro. So instead of taking 10 minutes or less for a metro to come, it would take 20 minutes or more. This problem became even worse on Sunday, where we had to wait even longer for the metro to come. I feel like I am going to have a lot of trouble coming back to Seattle where buses run every 30 minutes, because I am spoiled here with a metro coming normally every 3-5 minutes on the weekday, and every 8-10 minutes on the weekend.

But once we finally arrived at the Holocaust Museum we got in a very long line to get our ticket for the permanent exhibit and ended up getting a 10:30am spot which was perfect! It meant that we could see the other smaller exhibits in the museum and then go up to see the permanent exhibit. So we went to go see an exhibit I hadn't seen the last time I went to the Holocaust museum - it was an exhibit on other genocides in Darfur, Rwanda, and Bosnia. It was horrific, but it was also really interesting to learn about the genocides that I don't really know a whole lot about. Also at the end of that exhibit there was footage of the Nuremburg trials where they tried the high up Nazi officers in court to convict them of crimes against humanity. It was shocking how these people did not think they had done anything wrong! And it was also interesting to see the way that they used evidence in those trials.

After that exhibit we went into the permanent exhibit which I won't talk much about since I have already written on it - the only thing that was tragic this time is my person died, instead of survived. I was gased in an extermination camp and was from Poland which was where some of the greatest devastation happened. Grandma also had a person that died, but both Ariel and Lukas survived.

After completing the permanent exhibit we went to lunch in Chinatown which was really fun! We all ordered different dishes and shared - we had orange chicken, sesame chicken, chicken lo mein, and brocoli beef. It was DELICIOUS!

Then I had to get home because I was picking up Annie - a friend from church who was staying with me one night before starting a program at Georgetown University - from Ronald Reagan Airport at around 4pm.

After I picked up Annie we headed back to my apt for a little bit, grabbed some dinner, and then at around 9pm we went out and did the night monument walk so that Annie and Lukas could see all the monuments at night! It was pretty fun but I took a lot less pictures since I had seen it before! Also, if anything, it's amazing exercise, because it is pretty much walking for 3 hours!

So Saturday was an extremely full day, and I took it easy on Sunday and did laundry and ran some errands to get ready for the week! But I did have dinner with Grandma and Lukas before they left to head back to Seattle on Monday evening! It was so nice having family here and being able to show them the city and all that I have seen since I have been here! It also made me feel like a DC resident because I could explain a lot about the city and where they needed to go and such!