Bigger or Better: Life outside of Texas

Mark and I are more settled now. We finally have a couch, we have a decent handle on groceries, and I've figured out the routine of getting to and from work. But we're still new enough to realize that living here is weird. Example: DC roads are strange--intersections at tight angles, streets that drop off the map then pick back up later, and cars that use any available section of street as a makeshift parking lot just by turning on their hazard lights and jumping out of the car. Also, the cars that park in the right hand lane, making it necessary to merge left about every 4th block. And then this sign. I don't know what it's saying Because parking at the hospital isn't an option (price- and availability-wise), and because Georgetown declined to have a metro rail line extend their direction, I take the metro for 20 minutes, then get on a 20 minute shuttle bus provided by Georgetown University, then walk 10 minutes from the university campus to the hospital. The

On our Baltic trip, we saw loads of museums, but the ones that were most memorable were the ones we couldn't go in. Museum of the Occupation --We passed this building when we first arrived in Vilnius on our way to our hotel. We walked back to it that evening, because Mark loves military history stuff, but it was The outside of the Occupation Museum closed because it was Father's Day in Lithuania. So we tried going to it the next day, but apparently many museums in the area stay closed on Monday. Each time we tried, we walked a significant length to reach it, which made it all the more frustrating. Kiek in de Kök --Located in Tallinn, Estonia. From what our guide told us, this means "Peek in the kitchen," but it is not, in fact, a kitchen, but an artillery tower from the 15th century that is now a museum of the town's fortifications. We tried going there after first arriving in Tallinn, but since it was only an hour before it closed, the museum