"Attention all Metro passengers with baby strollers: do NOT use your child to block the closing doors. Thank you."

Anglicisms people laugh at me for, part 1:

• "Jumper"
• "Gran"
• "Ring" as a verb. e.g. "I'm going to ring this payphone and see who answers"
• "Post" as a verb e.g. "I need to post this letter"
• "The hash key" i.e. on a mobile phone
• "Mobile phone"
• "Toilet"
• "Posh" when applied to a person
• "Prat"
• "Properly"
• "Bah-throom" as opposed to "bay-throom"
• "Sick" as a... actually, what is that? As in "I'm going to be sick".
• Doctor Who

I am VERY ENGLISH, it is a constant observation. There is no way out of it, as soon as I open my mouth all these strange words and sounds come out that make me strange and quaint.

Something too much of this. This is taking me a million times longer than usual to write because I am in a food coma having eaten a very large amount of Ethiopian food, which is actually a very common ethnic cuisine in Washington. Ethiopian food basically consists of a lot of different types of meat (similar to curry) and vegetables (reminiscent of Chinese) and pulses, all put on top of this delicious soft pancakey type bread. You are then brought more of the bread and you use this to scoop up the food (sort of by pinching it with your fingers, but with the bread in the way... you know what I mean) and eat. It looks like this, if you're interested. Bloody brilliant but the sheer quantity of bread means that you get full really quickly. We also had some honey wine which was sort of a cross between desert wine and sherry. The meal was made exciting not only by the epicness of the food but also by the power cut which happened just as we'd finished; turns out this is a fairly common occurence in the city, and had happened to the restaurant for 4 hours the previous day, so they got out candles fairly quickly and everything went on as usual- the power came on about ten minutes later so luckily they didn't have another electricity free business night. On the way home we ended up stopping at an ice cream place where you can choose stuff to "mix in" to your ice cream, something which is reminiscent of being eight years old again and making "ice cream soup" in your bowl with three different flavours and chocolate sauce- oh wait, was that just me? Can't have been. Anyway, they have that here and its a legit way to eat ice cream. Brilliant but now all the blood is in my intestines and I cannot stay awake.

What else has happened to me in the last couple of days? I went on a "field trip" on Friday again, but as it was just me and one other girl we didn't really stick to the plan we'd been told to follow. I spent a fair bit of time in the buildings museum, which is this insanely large late 19th century thing modelled on Renaissance architecture which was actually originally planned as the War Pensions office by a... well, by an egomaniac. It spent a large chunk of its career first as a pensions office and then as a temporary space for lots of different public offices before getting closed down, almost torn down and then reopened as the buildings museum. The building itself is epic:

Unfortunately, the exhibits are all in this sort of vein:

Carparks: an artistic masterpiece. There was a very large carpark section. We all heart carparks do we not.

After this I went to an amazing small science museum and got roped into an infectious disease demonstration with a bunch of school kids (and also talked at by all of the staff for being ENGLISH oh so very English also I know lots about the history of vaccines thanks to the Medicine Through Time course back in GCSE history, so that won me brownie points too). I was supposed to be at the post museum, which I'm sure is *great*... but nope.

Then, home, playing Monkey Island 2 (finished it... fabulous game, obviously; loved most of the update but still uneasy about the way they changed Guybrush's model. The retconning of his character to fit in with the Dominic Armato loveable moron just didn't work as well, what with him actually being a MASSIVE DICK basically the whole way through this game, more so than in any of the others. I did really enjoy it though, especially as some of the puzzles in this one are much more tricky and less memorable than the SOMI ones, so I actually had to use their hint system a fair few times...) and then dinner and drinks and spilling wine all over Janina's wall and then out to Eden for another roof top party, which coincided with a rain storm hitting D.C. Danced through all but the very worst of it, and even that I only backed off from because my passport was in my bag and I didn't think it was a bright idea to get that soaking wet (especially as one of my most important visa documents got wet the other day and the stamp saying when I entered the country ran and is now illegible...). Brilliant night.

Yesterday a group of us (me, Janina, Stefan, Deborah, Enikő and Celine, to be exact... I know all those names mean so much to you, dear reader*) went to Philadelphia for a day trip, which was also fit. We were only there for 5 hours so we didn't see everything, and in particular we didn't get to go pose outside the museum steps where Rocky got filmed (this is probably a good thing for me actually... do I really want *that* quoted at me any more than it already is?)

Anyway, maybe it is just because I was only there during the day but I thought Philly was one of the best places I've been to in the USA. Big skyscrapers right next to pretty historic buildings which are themselves right next to charmingly run down streets full of small restaurants and shops and bums getting angry when you don't listen to them... yeah, I am under no illusion about how charming I would find those districts after dark, fear not. Crime capitals of the United States are not to be over romanticised. Not even when they are also regular capitals of the United States, like this "home" of mine is. But I'm an Urumqilik, I've seen my fair share of run-down but awesome places** and I love them all as long as a certain amount of personal safety is present. We saw the Liberty Bell and some halls and a random square full of chess pieces and dominoes and ludo counters and ate Philadelphia Cheese Steak.

PICATURES (will be uploading lots to facebook as soon as I have enough decent ones to make an album worthwhile... which will be a LOOONG TIME.)

This photo is like one of those old school portraits where everything included is symbolic in some way. I think. (luckily, the jeans which spent the entire day halfway down my arse because I didn't have a belt on are out of shot...)

I am listening to Bruce Springsteen AS WE SPEAK.

Cheese steak. Delish.

Notice that everything is grey. This is actually a GOOD THING- it rained all Saturday morning which made for a long bus journey there, but it had stopped by the time we got there and the rain meant that it was cool enough to be comfortable walking around. High 70s is such a relief when you're spending your life at 90+ (By the way, UK heatwaves? PSSSSH. I laugh at you both because here is hotter and because we have air conditioning.)

And here is a professional lying down game man.

And courtesy of Janina, who is a far more adept photo-taker than I (mostly due to her ability to get people to take photos for us at every opportunity), here is The Crew:

L-R: Hungary, Netherlands, UK, Puerto Rico, Germany, France. We should form some kind of intergovernmental organisation.

Work is fine too. Frustrating. Have still found nothing new. I despair of ever finding something new.

And now, far earlier than normal, I go to bed... oh by the way I'm ROWING at 6.15am tomorrow and every day next week. WHY DID I THINK THAT WAS A GOOD IDEA? I just don't know.

*That's reader literally in the singular, I suspect. Hello mother.

**Not Huntingdon.