Tuesday, March 3, 2009

The Zoo Part II and Other Random Bits of Life

Well, it's taken me a while to get around to posting the second part of my photos from the zoo. Since then I have also visited the Museum of Natural History and the National Holocaust Museum.

The Museum of Natural History is too big to do in one day, so I just plan to keep going back until I've made it to all of the different areas! Plus, it is very busy and I get tired of the million kids who are there on school trips and couldn't care less about looking at the exhibits.

The Holocaust Museum was also very busy, but luckily I was there in the off season when you don't have to pick-up time cards to the visit the main exhibit. It was very interesting, although after living in Switzerland and studying World War II and the Holocaust while I was in school there, I was surprised by some of the things I thought they very briefly passed over or did not mention that I expected them to spend more time on.

Besides visiting downtown DC, I have also been busy with the last trappings of the move. Primarily, getting a Maryland Drivers License and registering my car here. Getting my car registered here turned out to be more of a fiasco than I expected since they require a long and expensive safety inspection, from which they made me get several hundred dollars worth of work done on my car. The fan belt I was happy to replace as from what I understand that is a rather important thing and bad things happen if it breaks (yes- clearly I am mechanically inclined as I can explain it so well!). They also made me replace this broken piece of plastic on the edge of one of the rear wheel wells. Now, you have to understand my car is plastic and the broken part wasn't sticking out, it was just a big crack. This piece had also been broken for the past three years and the state of Hawaii had twice inspected my car and deemed it safe even with this piece of plastic cracked. But the state of Maryland- NO, they decided it was a clear safety hazard to have a cracked piece of plastic on my car. And could this piece of plastic be replaced while I waited? Of course not. I had to leave my car for two days and get a rental car because the stupid piece of plastic needed to be painted and the stupid paint had to dry. (Okay- I will concede that I am not ghetto enough to drive around with a different colored part on one piece of the car, so the paint part was necessary.)

I have also found a great church out here and I have recently started attending a Bible Study at the church and a small group in my area. I already love the ladies in my small group and feel so blessed to have found them. They are so much fun! They get together every Wednesday night, but they often get together on other days/weekends for impromptu things like to go out to dinner and a movie or to have a potluck and play boardgames. Over the past couple of years almost all of my friends have been from work, so it is fun to find girls outside of work but also single and with careers to hang out with.

Anyways, here are the pictures from the zoo:












Does this not look like the worlds largest Guinea Pig?


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