DC finds and favorites

Find

Love Cafe
1501 U Street
amazingly awesome/adorable bakery

Teaism | A Tea House
locations in Penn Quarter, DuPont Circle, and Lafayette Square
refined taste, incredible concept, cool menu

International Spy Museum
the corner of 8th and F
you get to crawl through air ducts...enough said

 Favorite

 California Tortilla
7th Street in Chinatown
discovered it last year, awesome food

National Gallery of Art
on the Mall
always have excellent exhibitions, great permanent collection

H&M
1025 F Street (near Chinatown metro)
reasonably priced cool European clothing, what more do we need?
since they don't have one in NC, we go here

operation hellasgood07

So far, this summer is shaping up nicely.

I found my plane ticket at CheapTickets.com, for the amazing price of $951--which is half of what I paid last year to fly Delta (which sucked).  I get to fly USAir, my favorite, and not sit in the back of the plane.

I also found the guest house I'm going to be staying in for the first two weeks I'll be in Athens since the apartments are full.  Its $240 for 8 nights and the hotel is conveniently located next to my favorite monument.

Cara and V-nasty are planning on coming over a few days early so we can hit Santorini before classes start.  It should be the perfect way to orient them to the Greek lifestyle.

My friend Caitlyn will be studying with the Meredith Abroad program, so we're going to try and meet up somewhere, which should be pretty fun.

 Dad is coming to visit me for the week of July 4th.  We're planning on going up to Thessalonica for a day or two, which should be awesome; its one of the few places that I really want to visit that I haven't made it to yet.  I also want to at least show him an island, so we'll probably do a half day trip to Poros or Hydra since they're so close.

I also picked my thesis topic yesterday: The Changing Status of Women in Modern Greek Society, which will be coupled with a photography project documenting different images of women.  I'm rather excited to work on it, plus its the perfect excuse to invest in the new camera I've been eyeing.

Last week I hit up Old Navy's early spring sale and invested in a new bathing suit, a cute jersey sundress, a couple of tank tops, and another jersey skirt, so I'm pretty set clothes wise.  I also found an adorable set of stowaway totes in LL Bean's sale section, which are perfect for weekend trips and hauling souvenirs back home.

Now that every thing is in line, I just have to buy my ticket, reserve my hotel, and figure out how to pay for the camera.  And then I'm good to go.

Oh, and I should probably brush up on my Greek.

~RLM 

hellas

I wrote this entry last summer:

In exactly two weeks I leave for Athens, in search of something that I know I will not find.  I have known this for quite some time, and yet I am still going.  Perhaps I will find closure, although that is not something I really want.  I don't want to be over last summer, I just keep hoping that maybe, by some miracle, things will work out.

And I have to say that this year my motives are significantly less emotional and more based on the fact that I don't want to not spend my summer in Greece.  Well, that and I now have a fabulous internship deal worked out, which is my sole motivation in getting through this semester successfully.

~RLM 

so far away

I finally got some good photographs from my first summer abroad posted online.

You can view them on flickr .

I'll probably be putting more up when I get the time again. 

~RLM 

a dream upon a dream

I got this really awesome idea today, my "moment of brilliance."

I've been asked to write up something/work up a project about my experiences in Athens and compile a sort of guide for the Odyssey program students by someone at the main campus in Indy; my idea involved me working on the project in Athens for a few weeks before the summer session started as a sort of internship.  

If it worked out, it would be the coolest thing ever.

But it involves a lot of people thinking its the coolest thing ever too.

So now I'm anxious and worried that it won't happen, but also incredibly excited at the very tiny chance that it actually could.

Everyone last summer joked about me writing a tour guide  and it really is the most perfect combination of almost everything that I love, so fingers crossed.

~RLM