Arrival!

After a long train ride and a rather hectic experience with GW Housing yesterday, Kayleigh and I are settled in our apartment!

Our trip began with a delayed train due to trees falling on the track as a result of the storms on Thursday night in Georgia. We waited almost three hours before we finally boarded the train and got moving! The ride was about 14 hours long, and, since it was overnight, we didn't get to see that much scenery. I slept fairly well throughout the night, though, and saw all of Virginia on the way into DC.

Once we claimed our bags at Union Station, we decided that we would not be able to navigate the Metro with them, so we hailed a cab to take us to our dorm. We were assuming that there would be a lobby area where we could leave our bags while we went to get our keys and check in. We were wrong. Apparently an access card is required to even get into the building. So, we were left with no choice but to drag our suitcases the four blocks to the SIWJ main office where we could leave them while we checked in. We went across the street to get our GW ID cards made, which we were not thrilled about, since we had been on the train for 14 hours and looked terrible in the pictures. After that, we walked another couple of blocks and got our keys and access cards to the dorm. At this point, we were too exhausted to drag our bags anymore, and Kayleigh had extra boxes that she needed to bring from the office, so we got a cab for a total of 5 blocks to our dorm. After hauling our luggage out of the cab and watching it drive off, we both tried to swipe our access cards only to find out that they did not work. Just as we were beginning to get very frustrated, a custodian who worked in the building came by and let us in. Our  keys worked, so we were able to get up to the room and put our stuff up before trekking back to the office to get different access cards. Needless to say, we were starving and exhausted by this point. We walked to a restaurant we had spotted nearby and had dinner, then came back and went to the rooftop of the building, which has an excellent view of the city. Both of us were tired, sweaty and sore, so we took showers and went to bed early last night.

Today we woke up early and went to the Starbucks downstairs for coffee since we don't have a coffee maker in the apartment yet (another of our roommates is bringing it when she gets in tonight). After breakfast, we ventured onto the Metro to go to Target for some apartment items we didn't have. We have a CVS very close to the apartment, but we needed things like hangers and a bathroom trash can that we didn't think we could find there. Plus it was good experience to use the Metro! We don't have plates and bowls at the apartment yet, so we just grabbed salads from CVS (yes, they do have those!), and ate lunch at our apartment. Kayleigh's Senior Capstone professor Dr. Walker has a son named Luke living in DC, and he got Kayleigh in touch with him a few months back, so we met up with him and one of his friends after lunch. We met them at the White House (which is about 4 blocks from our apartment!), and from there we went past the Washington Monument to the WWII memorial, the Vietnam memorial and past the reflecting pool (which is currently under construction and has no water) to the Lincoln memorial and past the Korean War memorial on our way back. Since we covered all that today, we're looking at going to the Mall and Capital tomorrow.

So far, I'm having the time of my life! Boot camp starts at 10 a.m. (way later in the morning than we were afraid of!) on Tuesday, and we'll be getting the full schedule of the week's events tomorrow, which I'll post on here.

I don't have a memory card for my camera yet, and my iPhone is being funny about uploading photos to Facebook, but I've uploaded a few and will upload more as soon as I can.