We are now sitting at a Caribou Coffee store in Washington DC catching up on email, reading, and seeking shade from the furious sun. Just got a call from Lara, who is advising that we check out the National Building Museum which has an exhibit on Green-building, so we may do that later this afternoon.

Anyway, much more traveling and meeting up with family and friends these last few days! On our way from Newport, RI to Philly, we stopped in New Haven, CT for lunch with Eric and Jane. It was great that they could take some time off from their busy days to meet up with us :)

Then, we dropped off Mark and Edna in NYC and said our goodbyes. It was a fun 9-10 days together even through moments of driving frustrations (wrong turns, bad traffic), mini fiascos (Old Man of the Mountain, Quincy Market), and occasionally being rained out. It's rare to be able to pull off a trip like this with friends living in different places, and we enjoyed the many more moments of being able to share the beauty of Lake Champlain, the White Mountains and the Maine coast, learning about pottery, ice-cream making, beer brewing, and enjoying the cuisines of the various places we've been too (especially LOBSTER!)

It took us a while to get out of NYC, but we made it to Narberth by 6pm and chilled out a little bit before going to RYAH for a yoga session taught by Christine. There was only 1 other student, so it was great to get to much attention from Christine who is wonderful at describing what to do and adjusting us. It was a great stretch after so many hours in the car! Chris meanwhile, was busily (but happily) cooking away in his kitchen, making crab cakes and white asparagus. We were well fed and chatted until almost 2am! Poor Christine had a busy day ahead with an early morning meeting and Kaligi in town to lead a few Tri-Yoga workshops. Hopefully she got enough rest.

We made it into Washington DC around 1:30pm yesterday and Shuwen dropped Marc off at the World Bank before going to the National Zoo to visit the pandas and friends. Taishan (the baby panda) has grown a lot and Meixiang is possibly pregnant again. The zoo was busy with lots of parents spending time with their kids during the summer holidays. It has as fun to watch the kids run around being awed by the animals as it was to watch the animals themselves.

We met up with Lara (one of Shuwen’s roommates from when she lived in Rosslyn) and a close friend of hers for dinner in an up and coming neighborhood called Logan Circle. It was run down and considered somewhat dangerous a few years ago, but has since been ‘cleaned up’ and now has an increasing number of boutique stores and restaurants. We went to a Thai place called “Rice” which had a large and rather creative menu selection. Marc ordered the Shrimp curry that looked more like soup than curry (no cream of any kind in it at all), but tasted quite good – a little herbal, full of shrimp flavor and a little spicy. Shuwen got the Green Tea dumplings (very much like sui-mai) and the Papaya salad, which was very refreshing for this time of the year. It was a fun time together, catching up and sharing stories.

Ambrose & Yana’s place by Grosvenor is wonderful! They have really put together the apartment really nicely. We found our bed all nicely made, complete with complimentary pillow pickles (Ambrose had found 2 packets of dill pickles, one saying “Big Papa” and the other saying “Hot Mama” and placed them on our pillows). Since Marc loves snacking on pickles, it was actually quite the perfect thing.

Today, Marc had a morning meeting at the World Bank before we met up with Marc Rockmore for lunch. He is headed off to Ithaca near the end of summer for graduate school in Cornell. Good luck Rockmore!