The first time I went to DC, I was a high school student partaking in an organized trip. The only thing I remember about that visit was that the DC Metro seemed so much cleaner and futuristic compared to what I new back home in New York City and that we’d visited DC’s International Spy Museum. In fact, that museum was why I wanted to visit the German Spy Museum during my trip to Berlin. This time, I was headed to DC to visit a friend I’d met back when I was teaching English in Ecuador.
While my friend was out at work, I walked all over DC taking in monuments I hadn’t had the opportunity to view back in high school. During my many years of travel, I’ve often felt a sense that I was “walking all over the world,” since simply putting my feet to pavement is one of my favorite things to do when I’ve landed in a new location.
I asked my friend if she’d be down to eat some East African food and thankfully she was. It was a bit of a travel ritual that another friend and I had whenever we went somewhere new together, so it was nice to enjoy it with my DC host as well.
My friend was also invited to a mascarade-themed party! And would you know it — my friend had a little collection of masks for me to choose from! I feel like back in my twenties there seemed to be a continuous stream of themed house parties. These days they are less frequent, but house parties are still my favorite kind of party 😉
A home for my words. 
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