Sunset over Alexandria

yes, they DO exist. Check the stickers...Argggg

Patriotic parking meters///

Everything is always a little bigger in the USA...

Private paradise - read the subtitles on those chair...

I know I know, enough of birds. But it really is like Bicho y Bichita, jejeje!

We got along great

Chatting up some hot birds in Alexandria, Virginia

In the days before JFK's simplicity rules, the family could "upgrade" from the simple standard issue tombstone to something a little more... extravagant. I was told by a ranger that obelisks were all the rage for a while, and celtic crosses...
Are you thinking what I'm thinking? There must have been 10-15 of these around, up on the older sections!

The "War Office" coat of arms at Arlington. Bellico...
View from the cemetery hill. Note the obelisco...arhm...Washington Monument.
The Arlington Dead. Since JFK declared it a rule that all stones have to be the same, things got much more symmetrical. It's spooky since there always newly slain soldiers coming in - from Kuwait, Afghanistan, now Iraq... Always growing.
Awe-inspiring memorials.

Super Stretch Limo. Mmm.

The society for animal welfare. If that doesn't convince you... In the back, Whole Foods, the local super-hip All Organic and Bio Supermarket! They also call it "whole wallet" - go figure.
Even gas stations in Washington, DC have greek style columns. They LOVE their columns. ;-)
Firefighters. Besides being heroes and all, they have such PRETTY looking trucks!
At Arlington Cemetery. Not even to visit the dead do you have to walk.

Ed and me, saving the world from Global Warming. Literally.
My current abode from the outside.
My street. Leafy. Pretty quiet.
Nice, and colonial.

Georgetown street view. This is the fashionable part of DC. One of them, anyway. Nice flowers, huh?
Mini - a "ZipCar". We just rented it for a few hours, at some US$10 per hour all included. Funniest thing, you don't talk to anybody renting it. They just stand there in a parkinglot - before you go, you select your car on their website, and then when you are there, you just hold your ZipCard to the window, and it opens. You use it, return it, close it again with the ZipCard, and that's it. They bill your Credit card for the hours you used it. Cool, no?
My AirBed where I snore. Good thing I'm by myself. :-)
The library of my current abode....

So I have finally returned to the USA. Who would have thought. Although I visited in 2002 for the last time, it was only a short stint and with all the post 9/11 craze going on hardly typical. Other than that, it's really been pretty much 12 years. That's a lot of time...

After having been here for two weeks, I still feel a bit in a haze. It's really weird. In many ways, one fits right back into US style of living. There are more Starbucks cafes now, but they still smell the same inside. There are still 24hr supermarkets, only the bio-food section is bigger now, and I actually live right across a Whole Foods 100% bio super. Etc etc

So in many ways, the US seems similar to what it was in 1994. Problem is that I am different. When I came to Boston back then I had just been 4 years that Eastern Germany had abandoned communism. I was hungry for the new, enthusiastic. Pretty oblivious to social issues. And ready to consume. I dived headlong into the American Dream and was sold heart and soul.

And now? I notice that it is much more difficult here to be a non-consumer. Businesses are incredibly good at selling things, they make it so easy and convenient to part with my money in style, I feel constantly tempted to buy things. And then I'm stopping and saying to myself - yes, but my old iPod still works. Looks tasty - but I am not really hungry. Great features, but do I need that in a cellphone? Etc. Sometimes it stops me, sometimes it doesn't. In Argentina it was easy to reject consumption - it was simply not much fun. Here it IS fun to consume, in fact, it's a very central pillar of life's philosophy - work hard, and then buy all those things you deserve. If you have to, on your credit card. I'm still waiting for mine, so I'm safe from the evils of credit for now. :-)

Washington, DC has many green spaces within short distance, and is really quite relaxed, especially when compared to the manic frenzy of Buenos Aires. I am walking a lot and am liking it, I've gone skating, both in the city (and survived!) and on a gorgeous bike trail through leafy neighborhoods (of which there are quite a few). I have also gorged on comparatively cheap ethnic food (there goes the weight reduction!). So in many ways, the city has been well living up to expectations.

I still find it a bit hard to fit in, people wise, though. For once, DC seems a strange mixture between multi-ethnicity and separation. It's more more "colorful" than BsAs, but it really quite seems like every group (latinos, blacks, asians, and whites) are pretty much sticking to their communities. There seems to be little mingling, I've yet to see a second mixed race couple (yep, did see one). Most mixing still seems to happen in the gay community (I live in Dupont Circle and am getting hit on pretty much every other day - hehe, that says something about my flirt value, doesn't it? :-)).

So far, I am enjoying bucket-sized (and excellent) coffee at Starbucks and Co, seeing the daily stretch limo (saw one yesterday that must have spanned a block, photo will come), and taking pleasure that, in comparison to the general population, I finally seem a lot less "gordo" :-)