...to see a pair of college friends get married! I'm looking forward to some hiking, beautiful scenery, and much cooler temperatures than we've been getting in DC (along with swampy humidity. Remind me when this ends, again?).

I will be in Canada for Canada Day, but I'll be missing the fireworks here in DC for Independence Day. Wherever you end up on Monday, enjoy the holiday!

My friend Carlos hopped a train to DC a couple of months ago and brought his rock climbing gear along with him. So I took him to the gym where I spend a couple of evenings a week, and we climbed.p.s. Happy Mother's Day, Mom!

I've been home since the 30th, but scrambling to catch up with work and life in general. Luckily, I can finally stop taking the trippy anti-malarials (think hours of strange dreams every night), so I'm caught up on sleep, caught up on laundry, and therefore more or less back in the swing of things.

This is Malawi (road from Kasungu to Lilongwe):


And this was the sunset Thursday night as a coworker and I walked around Lilongwe:


Any burning questions you want answered in future posts? (Hint: ask me about my 17.5-hour plane ride!)

...if your name is Joanne, that is. One of you flunked that particular sleuthing session and the rest of you didn't even try! Tomorrow I fly to Lilongwe, Malawi to assist one of the trainers I work for with a week-long financial education training-of-trainers (TOT). I'll be providing administrative support, circulating during the training to give feedback and clarify instructions, and (shh) I might even get to teach a few of the basic skills sessions.

Just to shake things up in 2011, I've decided to start biking to work a couple of days per week (hopefully more, but it depends on what I have to carry to work and weather/road conditions). I don't actually own a bike in DC (had one for a hot second, but I hated having to constantly worry about theft and ended up giving it away) so I recently joined Capital Bikeshare. It's a network of bikes that can be borrowed from over 100 stations spread across DC, and then returned to any available station at the end of your ride.


I can grab a bike from the Bikeshare rack two blocks from my apartment, ride three miles southeast, lock it into place a half-block from my office, and never have to worry about it. And if I'm heading to Alexandria to rock climb after work, I don't have to worry about getting my bike home at the end of the night. The bikes themselves have easily adjustable seats, a rack-like basket in the front with a stretchy cable for holding bags in place, three speeds, a bell, and both a light in the front and reflectors on the back.

Couple this with the addition of bike lanes on a number of streets downtown, and my commute has gotten cheaper, speedier (yes - speedier... even the buses crawl in DC morning traffic), and a whole lot more fun. Although I think I may need to invest in a pair of earmuffs... my helmet doesn't keep my ears warm, and with the wind rushing by them, they get pretty cold.

This shot was taken last Thursday morning, as DC awoke to its first real snowfall of the year. That friend who told me DC winters consist entirely of "39-degree rainstorms"? Yeah, he moved out of town this summer.

I took a wander this week around my new neighborhood. Lo and behold, autumn has (finally!) decided to make an appearance in DC, and I figured I should enjoy it while it lasts.

The wander began here:



...since I now live across the street. (That's the National Cathedral, in case you've never visited. It's gorgeous at sunset - this picture was taken just as the light was getting low.)

Then I cut through the grounds of St. Alban's School to find the pumpkin patch I've been ogling from the bus windows every day on my commute:





By the time I was ready to head home, the light was getting really dim, but I managed to capture this little guy, lying forlornly on the grass. We still don't really have much foliage to speak of, but there are bright red and yellow trees here and there, harbingers of the (hopefully bright) autumn that's well on its way.



Happy fall!

I promised pictures and possibly stories from Minnesota, but I have a tiny little confession to make: I forgot to pack my camera. This seems difficult to do, since it's a fairly large DSLR that I usually travel with over my shoulder (rather than in my luggage) - but then again, it's actually pretty easy to forget to sling it over my shoulder and by the time I got to the airport, it was too late to go back.

So I'll just tell you that Minneapolis looked a lot like this:


Except that we weren't on a lake (just near several of them) and we spent a lot of time indoors, baking scones and watching movies. But you get the idea.

If you're ever in Minneapolis, I could steer you to a fun new/used bookstore and a coffee shop with really, really good iced tea, but the most I actually saw of the lakes was from the window of the plane.

Come to think of it, though, that was a pretty sweet way to see Minnesota. I'd highly recommend a window seat. ;)

Nothing much new in DC this August. This month marks my one-year anniversary of arriving here, and it feels much like it did last year - hot, humid, vaguely political. I've been staying busy but not doing anything too exciting.

But all of that changes come tomorrow - I'm flying to Minnesota to visit a former college roommate! (Her name is Karen; she owns a brownie pan that only makes edge brownies and she shares my deep and undying love of tea.) We plan to chill out, hunt moose, and make lots of delicious pancakes. (Minus the moose-hunting. There will be no moose-hunting. That was a lie.)

Pictures and stories to come! Or at least pictures. I'm not sure "we made pancakes and then watched movies all day" counts as an actual story...