This week we were rocking out in addition to rocking along. John took me to see Karla Bonoff, one of my very favorite singers, at the Birchmere Music Hall. I used to play her albums (vinyl) at KHDX, our college radio station – she is a beautiful singer and it was a great concert. She was the opening act for Christopher Cross, (yes, “Sailing”) who was surprisingly good. He has a great band with an excellent sax player, David Mann.
The Birchmere has open seating, and we were lucky enough to find a table right in the center with a perfect view. There was a very nice woman holding the table for friends and she let us take two of the seats – she had gotten there four hours early to get in line. It was definitely my lucky day!
DC is just gorgeous right now – everything is blooming: tulips, iris, etc. We went down to the Eastern Market this morning with our friends Cathy and Justin – we poked around for a couple of hours, then had a nice brunch. I bought some organic, free range eggs – yum.
Tuesday night we went out to dinner with two of the newbies going to Juarez – it was fun to yak with them and answer their questions.
The rest of the week was pretty low key with a lot of studying. Hebrew is going fine.
I haven’t talked much about FSI, but it is a fascinating place. It’s fun for us right now because we have so many friends there – people we were in A-100 with or folks we knew in Juarez or have met along the way. There’s always someone to eat lunch with, or say hi to in the hall. It’s very interesting because the teachers there are native speakers from their home countries – I think there are about 70 languages taught there in all. Just walking down the hallways, you hear snippets of conversations in all kinds of languages and see all manner of dress, from a bald man in an orange monk’s robe and sandals to colorful embroidered tunics and trousers from Pakistan. I never know what I’ll see coming around the corner. It’s fun.
We watched a couple of movies this week: “Flame and Citron,” “The Informant,” and “An Education” – all very good. I especially liked a supporting actress in “An Education” – Rosamund Pike.