A Day of Patience

Today was a valuable day for the new girl in the city. Though she still loves the District’s public transportation, she has come to realize that taking the Metro over the weekend requires a combination of patience and never-ending reading material.

Today was my first time volunteering through the organization Greater D.C. Cares. D.C. has a really great volunteering scene that’s super easy to get connected with. It’s as simple as registering on the website and signing up for a volunteer event.

For my first event, I chose something called Park View FUN Saturdays. Every Saturday, a group of volunteers and a group of kids living in Park View get together and enjoy 4 hours of fun – whether it be a field trip to a local museum, crafting, or playing basketball in the community pool.

My volunteer activity was metro-accessible according to the website, so I signed up for it knowing that I don’t have my own method of transportation here. Over the past few days, I’d heard from the locals that the Georgia/Petworth metro stop isn’t quite the safest place for a pint-sized chick to hang out. This made me nervous.

And I got to thinking. Isn’t it funny that I could spend 4 years in Orlando and rarely think about my safety driving alone on a road that looks like it belongs in a ghost town…and I spend 7 days in D.C. and suddenly I’m terrified of this metro stop that’s rumored to have crime?

I began my metro adventure by waiting 30 minutes for my red line train to come by. Apparently on the weekends, the metro typically undergoes some huge renovation, forcing the trains which normally run in opposite directions to run on the same track. Delays, delays, delays.

As I made my way through the underground world of the District, I began to notice that the closer I got to Georgia/Petworth, the more of a minority I became. And I began getting more and more nervous.

…This is something that I would like to condition in myself. Fear. I had absolutely nothing to fear. I made it to the Park View Kids Zone without a hitch, and met only kind, smiling people on my ways there and back. Though I remained vigilant on both journeys, keeping certain to hold my purse close and being extra conscious of my surroundings, I had no reason to fear the people around me. Why fear them? Because they might be of a different social status? (Not so much. I’m now in major debt). Because of their race? That’s silly. I’m currently reading “The Day Freedom Died,” by Charles Lane, a book written about the Colfax massacre. The mass murder of a group of former slaves who attempted to fit into a post-Civil War society. Reading this book has reminded me just how much I despise racism.

I never, ever want to catch myself being racist again. Being vigilant, yes. I should be vigilant everywhere that I go, no matter which circle, city, state, country, or continent I’m in. But being racist? That’s not an attractive or even human quality.

Because of a block party going on in Park View, not many kids showed up. But I did meet a few girls, particularly “Purple,” who I really enjoyed getting to know. Her birthday is only 5 days after mine, and she’s turning double digits this year!



After volunteering (and waiting another hour to catch the red line on the metro back home), I decided to take a little walk in the 108 degree weather. Every time I had to stop at a crosswalk, my black flip-flops literally started burning my feet. This incidence has never occurred to me in Florida. I am confused.

I walked around 10 blocks to a hardware store, where I bought spray paint for my newest art project: to fix a beautiful bookshelf to better fit my space.

The reason why this book shelf is beautiful is because it was free, from my generous downstairs neighbors in the process of moving out.



Now, I know spray painting indoors is discouraged, but there was no way I was getting that baby downstairs and out the back door by myself. So I opened the windows, cranked up the fan, held my breath, and got to work.



After finishing my three-hour-long spraypainting project, I successfully found my way to a nearby bar, where I helped my gorgeous downstairs neighbor celebrate her twenty-fourth birthday. Happy Birthday, Ashley! 



And here I am at 1:00 a.m., after a great day and night, showing off my awesome ability to walk home by myself at night without getting lost.

Here are some pretty things I encountered today:



A student brass band jamming out in public on Dupont Circle (check out the little guy on the right!)



I got to eat my first yellow cucumber!



This sculpture is awesome. It’s either a wombat (woo!) or a dog…but no matter which way your creative mind leans, the figure remains an adorable animal created solely from recycled objects.

And the next requires no words – just saw it walking towards the hardware store and had to stop and admire from afar.