DC

Well, we're here.

It has been a busy and draining week. We completed our absentee ballots in Indiana, said goodbye to most of the wonderful people we were privileged to meet in South Bend, shed quite a few tears (well, I did), started and finished packing our first marital home into boxes, and then were on our way. We just missed meeting Baby Schacht, but we are hoping that they come visit us soon!

The movers initially gave us a five day window in which they would get our stuff to DC, which made planning somewhat difficult. But we were lucky--when they finished loading, they told us that our furniture was last on the truck and therefore first off. So rather than linger in South Bend as we had planned, we left right away on Wednesday. That evening, we stopped at a random hotel in some random town in Ohio at 8:45 so that we could watch the presidential debate. We figured that if we were going to get up at 3am in Venice to watch the debate, we had no excuse not to watch it when we were in the States. It actually was a lovely evening, reminiscent of my college experience--sitting in a hotel room watching politics and eating pizza from the box.

Thursday we drove to Charlottesville to see Rachel and Blake. It was a surprisingly beautiful drive--the leaves were changing, and the mountains of West Virginia and Virginia were quite striking. I had no idea that West Virginia was such a pretty place! We stayed in the O'Brien's lovely "hotel" and ate at our two favorite places in C'ville--the Indian restaurant and Sticks. It was wonderful to see them (happy first anniversary, by the way!). That is one of the things that I am most excited about with our move--we're only two and a half hours away from my childhood best friend. And, of course, Sticks.

Friday we got the keys to our new apartment. As it was empty and we had nothing to do after we blew up the air mattress, we walked around our new neighborhood, trying to get our bearings. Our neighborhood is quite convenient--we are a block away from a (vastly overpriced) Safeway, a Subway (the restaurant, not the metro), a hardware store, an Italian restaurant, a Mexican restaurant, a homemade ice cream shop, a gay bar, another gay bar, and more. We are also about seven blocks (or a 10 minute walk) from the metro. That is the plus of city living.

We spent Saturday waiting for our furniture and discovering the negatives of city living. I woke up Saturday morning and looked out the window, only to see a guy going through the dumpster below. It was the saddest thing I've ever seen. It really got to me.

Not to dwell on that, Saturday our things arrived. It was an adventure getting them here. The moving truck would not fit anywhere near our apartment, so the movers first had to transfer everything from their moving truck to a U-haul truck and then bring it in. The U-haul, however, almost didn't make it. It fit into the alley behind our apartment building with about 2 inches to spare. Then they discovered that they had to turn the truck around inside the alley, because the other end of the alley was not passable and they needed to be facing the other direction. After about an hour of inching forward and back, blocking all traffic, and getting stuck between two inclines so that the wheels were spinning on the pavement and the transmission was going out, they finally got the truck turned around with only minor damage--I think by sheer force of will. They then proceeded to carry our furniture (which had already been carried down two flights of stairs in South Bend) inside--one even moving the couch single-handedly.

When the movers left, we immediately got busy unpacking. It is amazing how much stuff we accumulated over the year in South Bend. Nothing fits in our new apartment--we actually have our canned food in a kitchen drawer, and all of our condiments are in the fridge, whether they need to be refrigerated or not. Currently the office is entirely piled with stuff we don't have a home for. I can't complain--we are very fortunate to have a place to live, and stuff to put in it. But we really need to downsize some more.

We met our next-door neighbor, who also was moving in when we were moving in--although his move was just from across dupont circle. A fellow lawyer, as I think most people in this building are. He seems nice enough.

On Sunday, my friend Lincoln came down from Baltimore to visit, which was incredibly nice of him. We took a long walk up to Woodley Park for some excellent diner food and got to catch up. I'm very mad at him for leaving DC and moving to Baltimore just as we got here =) but it will be good to be relatively close by.

It's been an exciting week. It's also been a hard week, though. This city is kind of overwhelming for someone who hasn't done city living before. Despite the five million residents of the DC metro area, it still feels pretty isolated and lonely when there are no familiar faces and nobody looks you in the eye--much less smiles. It's also a very difficult job market right now, particularly with the finance industry in chaos. (If you know of anyone in finance--or anything else interesting--hiring in DC, please let us know!) There has been quite a bit of soul searching done this week (really this entire year) in that regard. So at the moment, we often find ourselves feeling rather lonely and directionless in DC.

But, we are in our nation's capitol, two weeks away from a transformative election, and we have a roof over our heads and at least one job awaiting us. And, of course, we have each other. So we are incredibly lucky. We just need to keep reminding ourselves of that sometimes!

I hope you are all well. Come visit us in DC!