Buy Some Snow Pants and Simmer Down.

This whole starting a new life in DC thing is going swimmingly. Sure I have no friends my age, but who needs friends that you can see. I've gotten approximately 1,000 angry e-mails and phone calls about how cold and snowy it is in Denver. It's like they're all surprised that it can get chilly there. You know what I have to say to that? Buck up! You live a mile above sea level! It's Colorado! And this is like the mildest winter in history. Y'all need to buy some snow pants and simmer down.

In other news, I've done more with my three days in DC then I did with a year and a half in Denver. I suppose not having school or a job to worry about helps. (Let's worry about how I'm messing up my future later) I joined a shiny fancy gym, which my mom calls "the dork gym." The dork gym will be good for my self esteem. Last night I volunteered at a soup kitchen with some other folks from All Souls UU church. Tonight I searched for and found an H&M (not totally the same as working at a soup kitchen, but rewarding in different ways), and saw a documentary called The Boys of Baraka.

The Boys of Baraka was excellent. There was some bangin' Krumping (see also Rize) which is one of those things that I'll always want to be able to do but will never really attempt. But really, how cool would it be if I was a Krumper? So cool. So the documentary follows a group of 12 year old boys from Baltimore who get sent (voluntarily) to a school in Kenya for two years. This program is supposed to give them a better chance at graduating high school in a system where 67% (can you believe that?) of African American males drop out before finishing. So they end up loving it and then the program gets shut down because of that whole bombing/violence/war thing, and you see how the kids have changed. I really liked it. I feel like it did a good job of balancing the realistic and the hopeful. Weirdly, it made me want to work with kids. I guess like everyone I come out of those things knowing that there's more I could be doing for the world. Hopefully this Guatemala thing will lead me into something good like that. The school is going to hook me up with organizations I can work with while I'm there and after.

That should wrap it up for now. I'm going to learn how to put on make-up tomorrow. As you can see, I'm having no problem balancing the cool things with the totally shallow. Which is good I guess since it was pretty much a constant string of the totally shallow in Denver.

That's all for now!

Comming Attractions: Erica goes to Church, Erica joins a radical knitting group