Day One.

Sounds so ominous. "Day One." Especially because I'm one-third into a really good book based on blogging…and now here I am. Who knows, maybe I'll become famous and my life will become the plot for a huge motion picture.

Nope.

Today begins my 11 weeks in D.C. and it's already been a bit whack. To start, my morning was an early 4 a.m. drive to catch my flights. On the first flight, I was stuck next to a psychotic woman. Not psychotic meaning she made chipmunk noises quietly the entire flight but that she was just a crazy person. She was on her phone the whole time we were in the plane before taking off yelling at her son — he was at home, leafing through her doors to find a particular jacket that she wanted him to have at the gate when she landed so she could wear it immediately.

The flights were nice, I bought a scratch-off lottery ticket (yay Minnesota being 18 to gamble!), and also got to sleep a little.

After taking a taxi through all the mess of road closures for Memorial Day festivities (ha, this is the capital…) I arrived at my humble, but quite nice, little dorm. I got everything up to the 8th floor — of course, by stairs as the elevators were broken — and then Jessi Gordon [my friend from high school] came over to shout and squeal hello to me and give me a little tour of the GW campus. Everything is really nice and there's some agreeable establishments just nearby. For one, a Potbelly's sandwich shop (delicious!) and a Pita Pit. My dorm is just a block-ish from the Watergate building and three blocks from the White House.

After Jessi went back to her dorm, I hung out with Beth Patten [another friend from high school] and her roommates. She lives just two rooms away from me on this floor and is a good friend so that's nice and convenient. Beth also has a really cool internship which she starts tomorrow.

The rest of my evening was solitarily exciting. I love spending time alone doing things I haven't done before. First, I took the metro to a stop about 20 minutes away from here to get some things I needed. But I was starving, so — first meal of the trip alert! — I ducked in to Five Guys Burgers and Fries. There's several locations but Clara tells me the first was in D.C. I'd never heard about it before, but it was really delicious. Here's what I loved the most: The fries are cut each day fresh, fried and served either plain or cajun style, and they have a dapper little blackboard on the back wall that tells you where "today's" potatoes were from. The fries I ate came from Indiana!

I hit up Target. This was a serious Target – which Clara had warned me. Here's why: Can't find what you're looking for? It's probably on the SECOND FLOOR. So, just push your CART on the little ESCALATOR CART RAMP CONTRAPTION and meet it at the top. Awesome.

Since then, I've been unpacking and hanging out with my rommmate Jasper. (The two other roommates aren't getting here until Sunday.) I'll be sharing a room with Jasper and he's super nice.

Well, the sun set a long time ago and tomorrow's my last day off before I start working so I'm going to get some rest. Hope you're all doing well! I'll try to update this every couple days.

Brian