An Interesting First Day in D.C.

Most first-time visitors to Washington, D.C. spend their first day walking around The National Mall, visiting monuments, perusing the exhibits of the Smithsonian Museums, getting pictures taken at any number of historic sites, or taking a bus tour of our nation’s capital. My first day in D.C., however, involved absolutely none of the aforementioned activities and was quite unlike any other experience I have ever had. Overall it ended up being a great first day, albeit some minor frustrations due mostly to the confusing layout of the city. Here is a recap of my adventures.

I started the day in New Jersey getting dropped off at the MetroPark AmTrak Station by friend Joe’s parents, Howie and Sue. They are great people and by giving me a ride saved me from having to get up an hour earlier. I enjoyed a quick and peaceful three hour train ride that passed through the cities of Trenton, NJ, Philadelphia, PA, and Baltimore, MD before arriving in Washington, D.C. This short leg also included scenic vistas of Chesapeake Bay and helped me better understand the term megalopolis, as it passed through an almost continuous stretch of urban development, punctuated only by short breaks of trees and large expanses of water.

Upon arriving in Washington I had three main objectives to be accomplished for the day: locate a business to get passport style photos taken, find Farragut Medical Center for a short doctor’s visit, and go to the Embassy of the Republic of Yemen to obtain my Visa. The reason I needed to visit a doctor was to procure a letter/note stating that I am free of communicable diseases and fit for travel/living overseas. All three of these tasks were for the same purpose: obtaining a Visa for my upcoming move to Yemen. I could have mailed all of these things to the Embassy and received my Visa that way, but I thought I would take advantage of being in D.C. and take care of it in person (and avoid losing my passport in the mail!).

While still in Union Station, which, by the way, is an impressive and majestic building, I asked the first of many people for directions. This would continue to be a trend for me throughout the course of the day and allowed me to meet some interesting, friendly, and nice people of Washington, D.C. Nearly everyone I met tried to point me in the direction I needed to go and were pleasant in their responses. I have found this a great way to get a feel for a city and was pleased to have such a warm and welcome reception upon arriving in D.C.

I next headed outside in search of Farragut Medical Center and somewhere to get my passport photos taken. It was about noon when I walked outside and already the temperature was in the nineties. I had a general idea about which direction I needed to head and started walking West along Massachusetts Avenue. Nearly everywhere I went there were people around, many tourists like myself, but also many international businessmen/women and federal employees as well as some of D.C.’s approximately 5,320 homeless residents (I got this figure from the National Alliance to End Homelessness on www.endhomelessness.org). After walking for awhile, now on Pennsylvania Avenue, I started approaching a building surrounded by a seven or eight foot fence. As I continued to walk towards this building I realized it was The White House and found it almost comical that I had ‘stumbled’ upon one of the US’s most notable landmarks. This is one of D.C.’s interesting and unique features: everywhere you go or turn around there is a historic landmark associated with our nation’s history. Across from the White House I saw several protestors, one woman was protesting atomic weapons and another man had a sign outlining all the ‘evils’ he believed President Obama is responsible for, including the Rwandan genocide (a bit of a stretch I think).

Around the time I passed the White House I found a CVS pharmacy that offered ‘Passport Style Photos in Minutes.’ They certainly lived up to their claim and a few minutes later I walked out with my photos and one of my three objectives accomplished. The next item on my agenda was finding Farragut Medical Center (FMC). This proved to be a much more difficult and cumbersome affair, caused largely by the somewhat complicated street system of D.C. Rather than being a neat and orderly grid system, D.C.‘s streets resemble more of a spider web shape with avenues and streets going in all directions and meeting at intersections that look more like stars than they do crosses. In the time between leaving CVS and finding FMC I asked at least three people for directions (including a street vendor selling African dashikis, something I was looking for online just prior to the start of my trip; I bought one for $15) and walked past the clinic twice before finally finding it. By the time I got to the clinic I had been walking for a couple hours and was really hungry, which had made me quite frustrated and irritable. I should note that I was carrying all of my things with me this whole time, which consisted my backpacking bag and my day pack bag. I would guess this added forty or fifty pounds and definitely contributed to me being so hungry. As soon as I got in the clinic I ate my lunch: hummus and veggies. I probably raised some eyebrows when I whipped out my bag of lettuce and carrots and began dipping them in my hummus right in the waiting room, but I didn’t really care at that point. The doctor’s visit ended up being rather quick and I walked out of FMC with the letter I needed and my second of three objectives completed. One interesting thing worth noting is that the doctor who saw me is a North Dakota native who attended medical school at UND in Grand Forks. We discussed our own North Dakota experiences and she wished me well in Yemen.

At this point I had all the materials I needed to get my Visa, so I headed in the direction of the Yemen Embassy. Again, this was not an entirely straightforward venture and I had to ask for directions several times, which allowed me to meet a really cool guy named Cesar. Cesar was standing on the street doing some outreach for the organization he works for, which aims to provide education and other services to disadvantaged children. After asking him for directions we struck up a conversation and I explained to him why I was trying to find the Yemen Embassy. Cesar then told me that he recently got back from living and teaching overseas for two years in SE Asia. Prior to this he had worked with the Department of Defense in the D.C. area for seven years, but did not find the work he was doing to be fulfilling enough. He and I had a lot in common including a desire to travel and see other parts of the world, an indifference towards religion, and a passion for doing good and leaving a positive mark on the world. Cesar was really interested in my employer, Quality Schools International, and asked a lot of questions about the work they do. I was happy to talk about this and upon parting ways gave him my business card in the hopes that he will email me. This chance meeting was a wonderful surprise and provided a nice break from walking and hauling my bags.

Once I left Cesar I continued to head north on Connecticut Avenue in search of Wyoming Avenue, on which the Yemen Embassy is located. I knew I was heading in the right direction when I saw a sign that said Embassy Row, named so due to the large number of foreign embassies located there. Not long after this I made it to Wyoming Avenue and began to see various embassies representing nations from all over the world. To best describe Embassy Row is to compare it to the streets of University towns where fraternity and sorority houses are located except that the houses are more stately and the greek letters are replaced by signs denoting the nations represented. As I walked down Embassy Row, scanning the different buildings in search of a sign for Yemen, I found it fascinating to see so many different nations represented: Algeria, The Republic of Macedonia, Sri Lanka, Syria, and many others.

One might assume I had no more problems with my Visa experience, but the fun was not over yet. Since I could not remember the embassy’s building number off the top of my head and did not feel like digging in my bags to find it, I asked a couple walking down the street if they could point me in the right direction. They were very nice people and offered to look it up on one of their Blackberries as we talked. The husband asked me what was taking me to the Yemen Embassy, so I explained that I would be moving there in August to teach for a time. I then asked them where they were headed and was excited to hear that they are moving to Algiers, Algeria to work for the US State Department and were presently going to the Algerian Embassy to take care of business prior to their move. We visited for a few more minutes about this commonality before wishing one another well in our respective destinations. Now that I knew the building number and had viewed a map of the area, I thought I was home free. But the confusing twists and turns of D.C.’s streets got me again. I made the mistake of taking a left when I should have taken a right and started walking down Tracy Plaza. As I continued to walk down this street I saw a building with numbered 2419, the same number of the Yemen Embassy. There happened to be two Mexican men doing yard/landscaping work out front so I asked one of them to take my picture in front of the building, doing so because I was so excited at having found the ‘right building.’

I then knocked on the front door and began to suspect I was wrong when no one answered. I continued to knock and wait for a couple minutes, before calling the Embassy to further investigate. When my call was answered I explained that “I am standing out in front of the building, but the door is locked and no one is answering.” The woman at the embassy was nice enough to walk outside the building to look for me and was probably just as confused as I was when there was no one standing there. In a last ditch effort I walked around to the back of the house through an open wooden gate and asked the yard workers, now working in the back, how to get into the Embassy. The men, looking surprised, then informed me this was not the Yemen Embassy but was in fact someone’s home. At this point I was feeling somewhat frustrated and wondering if I would ever find this damned embassy. I was also getting tired of lugging around all my bags and I found it harder to trick myself into thinking it was preparation for climbing Kilimanjaro in a few months.

Nevertheless, I walked back the way I came and again called the embassy. I explained to them that I had taken a wrong turn and described the location I was calling from. They were then able to steer me in the ‘real’ right direction and soon I was back on Embassy Row and standing in front of the correct 2419 address. I then walked into the Embassy and was greeted by Ali Mohammed AlSalahi, whom I had spoken on the phone with earlier and who was staying late just to help me. I began to explain to him why I was applying for a Yemeni Visa and presented all of my application materials to him including my recently procured passport style photos and doctor’s note. He then asked me to provide the $91.00 fee to cover the Visa expenses. Since I had run out of cash earlier in the day, I asked if he accepted check cards. He told me they did not and that only cash was used. Having no other options, I asked where the nearest ATM was located and explained that I would have to walk to one since I did not have a vehicle. He told me the nearest one was back at the bottom of the hill I had just walked up on Connecticut Avenue, about half a mile away. Feeling much lighter now without two bags attached to me, I walked/ran back down the hill to the Rite Aid Pharmacy, grabbed the cash I needed, and walked/ran back up the hill to the embassy. In the time I was gone Mr. AlSalahi had finished my paperwork and he and I exchanged the goods we each desired: for me, my passport with the newly attached Yemeni Visa and for Mr. AlSalahi the cash for the Visa application fee. I thanked Mr. AlSalahi for staying late for me and he wished me well in Yemen. He also gave me his business card and told me I could contact him if I had any further questions.

I then walked out of the Embassy and after nearly five hours of walking/wandering around D.C. I had finally accomplished all of my objectives. As might be expected, I was pretty wore out so I contacted my cousin Julie to let her know I would be heading to their place (she and my cousin Dave were hosting me in Silver Spring, MD). On my way back to the Metro station I passed a small art gallery and stopped for twenty minutes to take in some of the art on display/exhibit there. I then rode the Metro to Silver Spring and was ripe with excitement to finally see my cousins and relax. The rest of the evening proved to be wonderful: the three of us enjoyed a delicious supper made by Julie and finished the evening by enjoying some great wine, including some Mead (a honey based drink made similarly to beer, but much better) that was made by a friend of them. As I went to bed that night, I reflected upon the events of my day and finally had a chance to realize what a ride it had been.