A humbling experience

I don't know if anyone out there has ever had such a humbling experience as Chase and I just had. So we're in this new place with all these new ammenities and things to experience. We've been trying to take advantage of them. Yesterday, we ordered in Chinese for the first time EVER (and delivery was free, because we're so close to the Chinese place, hurray!). That was not so humbling. We actually felt pretty proud of ourselves (despite the fact that they gave us 3 fortune cookies, because of the amount of food we ordered...).

The humbling part comes in when we were eating leftovers tonight. I had some beef lomein, and Chase heated up a little beef lomein, a little chicken fried rice, and a little sweet and sour chicken. He put them all on the same plate - I told him to, thinking they'd all heat relatively equally. He put the plate in our spiffy microwave and discovered there was a "reheat" button. He pushed it and off the microwave went, doing it's thing. Then he read the display: "3 items reheating." Chase goes, "hey Steph, look, it says "3 items reheating." And I said, "How does it feel that our microwave is smarter than us?"

Now, I should defend our intelligence and say it's a really spiffy microwave. It's stainless steel with a bunch of buttons and a turnplate inside. The turnplate actually recesses into the door to give it that extra 1/2 inch of space. It also has a little vent above it (it's in the cupboards above the stove) and the vent opens when the microwave is in use, then closes when it isn't. It's really impressive... none the less, smarter than us.

On that note, I'll just put out the update that I survived orientation at Georgetown on Friday. It actually went quite well - though it was a LOOOOOOOOOONG day. I Metroed in, which is looking like it won't be too much of a problem each day. Then I hoped on the GUTS (Georgetown University Transportation Service) bus to get to campus. I met with the prof I'll be doing a research assistantship for (Mark Carl Rom, pronounced "Rome"), and have my marching orders. Then the orientation started. It was what you'd expect - details about programs, registration, classes, locations, and one thing that was suprisingly annoying: they kept giving us keys! We got keys to the dept. of govt, and their secondary offices. It was strange, and now I have a very FULL key ring!

We rounded out the day with an open bar (of course, right) at a reception for just those in my program - 15 students, plus 4 profs and 2 almuns of the program. It was good. I met all of my classmates, and they're interesting. One guy is from Australia and one girl is from London and another guy is from Canada (yeah... why they're in the American Government program... they like elections, I guess). I'd say about 10 of them are what I'd call left-leaning or left-wing, and about 5 are what I'd call conservative or right-leaning. Actually a better ratio than I'd expected. All in all, great people, lots of different interests and backgrounds, and I am anticipating learning a LOT from these people.

The profs are good too. One (Jeffry Burnam) worked in the Senate on envirnomental issues for like 25 years. Ironically, he's the republican. From what I gathered, he's something of a "Bush" republican in that he's more liberal on domestic issues, but strongly conservative on international issues. The second (Jim Lengle) is, I think, very left leaning. He's been at Georgetown for 32 years, and the first book we have to read for his class is "How Democratic is the American Constitution?" I'm expecting it to be...nothing like I ever read at Hillsdale! :) The third main prof (Lynn Ross) is, I think, a liberal, but female and a really interesting, energetic lady. I can tell she really wants to invest in us, and I'm excited to get to know her.

The campus was suprisingly easy to navigate, and I was lucky in that Dr. Burnam lives near me, so he gave me a (free!) ride home, rather than me having to ride the Metro. Plus, I got to know a bit more about him. It was very good.

Chase's first week of work rounded out well, with him meeting some of his clients. We went today to get him Frolf (frisbee-golf) discs. Who knew there are such things as "putters" and "drivers" in Frisbee? While we were out, I also happened to find 2 pairs of shoes (one pair of sandals and one pair of ballerina flats) for $6 each! Hurray! I got THE PERFECT case for my new comptuer, and we got a long ottoman/storage bench to sit in front of the couch. It's off-white wiht red, gray and brown stripes. It's PERFECT! Almost like God just saved those things in the stores for us today, and we got them all for excellent prices. I'll take pictures and post them maybe with the next update.

Fraz and Brook say hi to anyone who is committed enough to read this, and we all send our love!