Brian and Jen visit

Easter weekend my cousin Brian, his fiance Jen and their son Connor came down to DC. They live in New Jersey, which is just a few hours away. I hadn't seen Brian since I was in Middle School and he was in High School. That was the last time I lived on the east coast and the last time he lived in New Jersey. Both of us have lived in several other places in the mean time.

They came down on Saturday afternoon and checked into the hotel (yes- a Marriott). I took the metro down to where they were staying and met up with them and then we all headed downtown to the waterfront for a seafood dinner. After dinner we walked down the waterfront to the Washington Memorial then down the mall to the Capitol.

Easter Sunday I met up with them at the hotel for brunch then we headed down the street to the Zoo. It was pretty busy, but it was a really nice day. Here's some pictures of us at the zoo. I thought I had a picture of all three of them, but it turns out I was always using their camera, so I have to get Jen to send me one from her camera.

As you can see, we managed to catch the Pandas eating. If you have been to zoo's with Panda's before you are probably aware that it is not easy to capture a panda doing anything except sleeping and sometimes they aren't even sleeping in a place that you can see very well. Thus, you will have to forgive me for posting multiple Panda pictures. I restrained myself and did not post all 12.

And this guy looked so harmless and cute...

These two anteaters were by far the cutest animals I saw all day. The baby was just a couple of weeks old and he was just riding around on Mama's back.

And here's one of me, Connor and Brian.

Spirit to Serve

A week and a half ago Marriott had it's annual Spirit to Serve our Communities Day. This was the tenth year that the company has done this. In case you do not know someone who works for Marriott and have not heard of this, let me enlighten you. Our company is very service oriented and one day a year is dedicated to as many people in the company as possible going out in their communities and serving. Wondering how many people that is? Marriot has more than 300,000 employees at 3,200 properties worldwide.

We do a lot of fundraising and serving throughout the rest of the year for charities like United Way and Children's Miracle Network and local food banks, but this one day is special. When you are on property like I have been for the past 5 years, not as many people can go at once, so it stretches out over a week or two with various different activities.

Being here at corporate this year has given me a whole new perspective on it, and I liked it a lot. There are a lot of employees at a large hotel- several hundred, but at corporate there are several thousand of us. On May 13th about 2,000 employees from corporate went out into the DC area and served our community. It started that morning with breakfast at the associate entrance, music playing as we walked up, and everyone in jeans and their Spirit to Serve t-shirts. Everyone gathered outside the associate entrance for a quick rally and Mr. Marriott gave us a pep talk. Then we headed over to our buses- there were 20-30 buses in 4 lines across the parking lot waiting to take the first round of teams to their service site. Not everyone left the building, some people stayed at HQ and did service projects in the building like making sandwiches for a homeless shelter in the kitchens.

The Global Revenue Management Team went to the CHI Center (except for a handful that went with the Fairfield Inn team to a Habitat for Humanity site). The CHI Center serves handicap people in our community by helping them find employment in the community if they are able, providing employment at the center for people who are not able to go to a job site but can still do things like stuff envelopes and put mailing stickers on them or other simple tasks like this, and some are so severely handicapped that they come for daycare. They also help their clients to find living situations appropriate to their abilities and check on them periodically to make sure everything is well at home. I was very interested to learn about the center because my friend Kelly in Minnesota used to work for a similar type of organization (from what I understand).

We mostly worked outside on the grounds weeding, cleaning windows, washing and cleaning buses, picking up trash, etc. We did get to see some of the clients when they were arriving in their buses (and some of them were very curious about us!) and we also saw them at lunch time. In order to keep from disrupting their routines we did not do much work inside the building. Despite the centers lack of organization in preparing for 40 volunteers, it was a good time.

If you are interested in reading more and learning what some of the Marriott teams in other countries did, check out this story.

Cherry Blossom Festival

Back at the end of March/early April DC had its annual Cherry Blossom Festival. I thought it sounded really fun and headed down there at the peak viewing time. I had visions of strolling along the path by the water and the Cherry trees and enjoying the sights. Indeed, there was water and there were Cherry trees, my vision just didn't take into account the other 5 million people who would also be there.

I was told there would be a lot of people there, but as I came to find out, my understanding of "a lot of people" was insufficient to accurately describe the situation. The best way I can describe it is if you've seen one of those photos of a beach in China where you can't even see the beach or the water because there are so many people- that's what downtown DC was like. It was nearly impossible to take any pictures with that many people around and honestly, I find it nearly impossible to enjoy anything with that many people around.

Here are a few photos I did manage to capture: