Tuesday, January 02, 2007

visits to DC

Tawnia, will you please email/post the dates that you'll be coming to DC for your teachers conference next month? I need to get them into my calendar, and don't remember when you're coming. Also, are you staying with me and do I need to pick you up at the airport?

Aunt Debbie emailed me and she's coming for 3 days in 3 weeks. She's going to visit Kari up in New Hampshire, and her stopover was routing her through DC anyway, so she's going to stay for a couple of days. I'm excited to see her! We'll see what kind of tours we can get for her, even though Adam doesn't work on the Hill anymore ... we still have contacts over there.

We went to Philly today to meet with Adam's former boss, and see the sites. The "Independence Mall" is nice - it's very different from when we were there before. They built and opened some new visitor centers in 2001, and I was there in August 2000. There's a whole new building for the Liberty Bell, and lots of displays in a visitor center for Independence Hall. We also saw Benjamin Franklin's home and a couple of other things. The lunch with Carolyn was nice - she just had stuff ordered and we ate in a conference room at her office so that we didn't have to worry about Summer in a restaurant. She gave lots of advice to Adam about school and some possibilities for after graduation that has him thinking about different options. It was a nice day in general, and the visit with Carolyn was great. However, we do not feel particularly inclined to move to Philly, now that we've actually visited it and walked around a lot. The best word we can come up with to describe it is "sketchy."

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm sort of confused about your criteria. You wrote all about what a great time you had, and all the wonderful sights you saw, but the only explanation for why you don't want to live there is because it is "sketchy". What the heck does that mean? The buildings aren't all there? Some of the pavement markings have been partially erased?

For that matter, what are your criteria for selecting a place to live?

Eric said...

I read "sketchy" as a description of their feelings towards moving there, as in "unsure."

Frank and Evelyn said...

When we went to Philadelphia in 1996 we enjoyed Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell and other sites. We had taken the top rack off the van to get it into a parking garage and when we came out Dad found a place a few blocks away to put it back on. The buildings in the area had lots of graffiti and there were bars on all the windows. We didn't feel safe in that neighborhood.

Adam said...

Sketchy, as in not a place that you want to be in after 6pm. Philly has a few nice spots that are really small with large areas in between that I wouldn't want to be in at night, with or without my family. It's a dirty town that has wandering transvestite hookers on main street during the day three blocks from city hall. I'm not making that up. The history stuff was fun, but that's a really small area. If I don't feel comfortable walking main street at night, then I don't want to live in that town.

Anonymous said...

Oh, okay! Thanks for the clarification!

tawngap said...

Treen - I am going to be in DC Feb 21-25. I will probably just stay at the hotel and I'm pretty sure they will be getting us to and from the airport. But I definitely want to spend at least one evening (if not more) with you. I'll let you know more of the schedule as soon as I know.

Tawnia