Behind the Scenes

You know one of the things I love the most about D.C.? The ability to indulge the Top Chef, Food Network, famous chef obsessed side of my personality. For example, Season 6 of my all time favorite show, Top Chef, took place here in D.C. So now, everytime I watch a new episode I am bound to recognize the grocery store where the chefs bought their ingredients and the venue where each challenge occurs. Going to Whole Foods is a whole new experience when you know that Top Chef contestants might have stood in exactly the same place!!!! Okay, wow I better stop. Now I'm just sounding like a crazed pre-teen Hannah Montana fan.

But last night I had the chance to attend a Smithsonian lecture with Greek chef Michael Psilakis. He is a Greek immigrant who owns three famous restaurants in New York City and has been credited with redefining Greek cuisine in the United States. He also received one of the Best New Chefs Awards from Food and Wine Magazine. So basically, I was in heaven. Oh and did I mention that Washington Post food writer Jane Black was the one interviewing him? And I had a chance to meet her after the program?? Ahhhh!!!! Anyways, during the interview Michael talked a lot about his new cookbook How to Roast a Lamb and told lots of funny stories from his childhood as well as from experiences he has had in the restaurant industry.

Apart from that I have also had some other neat D.C. experiences this week. It has been an incredibly busy and incredibly HOT last couple of days. Since we have our teacher workshop coming from Lansing, Michigan next week, Ann, Aislan and I have been trekking all over the city doing our "walk throughs" to be sure we have all the details down pat for when our 25 teachers arrive. Since we have such a busy schedule to keep to, we are trying to ensure that everything goes as smoothly as possible! So on Monday we took a taxi up to the Capitol Building and met with our contact up there. We will be taking a tour and hopefully visiting both the House and Senate galleries while we are there next Thursday. Since it was just the three of us this time though, our guide Rob took us through the behind the scenes, off limits to the general public part of the building. So we wove our way through the basementof the Capitol and ended up walking right out onto the front and down the stairs... right past the policemen with the huge machine guns. Oh and you want to hear something I found rather humorous? Apparently the policemen are highly suspicious of visitors rooting through the trashcans and you can get in a whole lot of trouble for that. I had shared my coffeee mug story with Aislan and Shannon and we could barely keep a straight face when Rob shared that little bit of information with us as we were walking along.

Yesterday we made our way over to the White House Visitor's Center and guess who we saw along the way?? The president!! We were standing in front of the Visitor's Center and then his entire motorcade comes zipping out of the White House. The security guard outside the building knew which car he was in and pointed him out to us, so we could just make out his profile. We figured out later that he had been on the way to sign the new financial reform bill at the Ronald Reagan Building. Which explained the closed off sidewalks and blaring sirens we encountered on our walk over there.

This afternoon my supervisor and I are heading over to the Natural History Museum to meet with an expert from the mineral sciences department to discuss a program we are planning for October down in Louisiana. It's really cool how much responsibility we are getting as interns at this point, being able to actually help plan and design our teacher workshops.

Tomorrow night Rachael and I are looking forward to a night filled with homemade pizza, her mom's famous chocolate cake and a viewing of the five hour Pride and Prejudice movie. I can't wait!