Monuments, Yahtzee, Alphabets, and Rock

This has been the longest week of my life—none of which has really anything to do with Kristin.  Monday, the clean up crew arrived to begin work on our basement and since then, we’ve affectionately dubbed our basement “The Wind Tunnel” owing to the number of fans and dehumidifiers going down there, and I’ve been calling my house “The Pit of Despair” owing to the fact that I want to just cry whenever I think about the job ahead of us.

So I decided to put all my cards on the table and do my nighttime tour of DC early.  One of the few things Kristin was able to communicate prior to her arrival was that she really wanted to see famous tourist sites while she was in the US.  She specifically mentioned the White House and the Capitol, so Monday night, I bundled her up and off we went.  Of course, we got stuck in traffic on 395 which prompted a disgusted, “URGH!” from her and with which I most vehemently concurred.

We left around 8:30 and made it to DC just before 10, a new low.  We had a really nice chat all the way up—talking about her brother, about disability services in Iceland, about all kinds of really interesting topics.  But all was forgotten when we got there and she started seeing things and her camera refused to work.  It staunchly refused to take pictures at night that weren’t black!  I offered her mine, but she continued to play with hers and just told me what she wanted pictures of if she couldnt’ get hers to cooperate.

Our first stop was the Capitol building.  Some nice passersby came and offered to take her a picture on her memory card, but she declined in favor of me taking one on my little camera, so this is what I got for her:

I was really stoked about the moon Monday night—I thought it was a cool addition the pictures we were taking! :)

After that, we drove past the park in front of the White House, as close as we could get to it and I pulled over and she tried to get pictures, but again, nothing came out.  Consequently, we used mine, and my zoom isn’t that great and there were signs in the way, so our sole picture was rather disappointing, but I had to move along as the cops didn’t take kindly to me blocking the road they’d blocked already with traffic cones!

That accomplished, we drove over to the WWII Memorial to park.  Seeing it from the car prompted an “Ooooh!” from Kristin and she loved it, as I think most people do when they see it.  We worked hard on getting her a decent picture with the fountains and were finally somewhat successful!  We walked all over the memorial and I told her that now that she is a Virginian, we had to get her picture with the Virginia pillar, which she happily obliged me with.  I think I shall take all my exchange students there forever, it’s a fun way to really concretely (pardon the pun) put a sense of their own history into their minds. 

Afterwards, we began our trek down to the Lincoln Memorial.  I’m very glad that the lighting has improved a great deal down the path.  Several years ago, my AFS brother Franc from Ecuador came to visit and we did the night time DC tour and walked in utter pitch blackness down the same path.  I’m pleased that at least there are some improvements in the lighting so it’s not quite so scary to be out there now!  Along the way, I pointed out the WWI Memorial, a modest little memorial off to one side of the mall.  Compared with the grandeur of the WWII Memorial, it’s quite sad, but it was a nice study in contrasts for Kristin.

Before hitting the Lincoln, I told Kristin we would go visit the creepiest memorial on the mall, the Korean War Veterans Memorial, and she concurred with my assessment that it IS rather creepy!  We didn’t linger there for very long, as I think she was a little weirded out by the haunting statues that are there.

With that, we set off to the Lincoln Memorial and I met Kristin upstairs as I had to make a quick potty break.  We got some photos for her and she enjoyed the view.  There were some other tourists there (not that I consider myself a tourist, but whatever! haha) taking a photo and their picture taker was laying on the ground to get the shot.  Kristin informed me it would be a beautiful picture, so I willingly obliged and did the same for her.  The things I do for my kids!

Then we went back down the steps.  There is a new Martin Luther King Jr. memorial opening at the end of the month, so there are a lot of fences up around the place, but we found a place to go through and went around to the Vietnam Wall, which always is a sobering place to visit.  She was blown away by the sheer number of names occupying the wall and the significance of it and it was a quiet moment for us both.

On the way back to the car, we stopped off at the small island they built to commemorate the signers of the Declaration of Independence and then made our way back to WWII in a swarm of little insects, of which I have no idea what they are, but which annoy me half to death every time I go down there at night and get attacked by a swarm of them.  Kristin is quite squeamish of bugs, so it was a real trial to her!

We got back to the WWII and I messed around a bit with the black and white setting on my camera and got a couple of interesting pictures and then it was off to the FDR Memorial.

Much of the time when I bring people down at night, the FDR fountains are shut off, which really, really ruins it for me.  The FDR is probably my favorite memorial just due to the beauty of the waterfalls—the WWII is my other favorite because my grandfather was a WWII veteran!  I wanted Kristin to be able to see it fully lit and working, and as we walked up to it, I didn’t hear anything and expressed my aggravation.  But as we got inside, she said, “I hear water!” and sure enough, the fountains were on.  AMEN!  She saw the first one and said, “WOW!”, Kristinspeak for “This is awesome!”  She put her feet in and then read the sign, “No wading” and giggled “Oops!” 

We walked through and I encouraged her to climb out onto the rocks of another fountain—it used to be OK to do so when it first opened, but I’m sure some idiot fell off and that was the end of that.  However, I have many pictures of myself on those rocks and got one of Kristin as well.

Afterwards, we went down the short path to the Tidal Basin and she loved the view of Washington from the water.  She snapped quite a few pictures, and I just sat and relaxed and took in the view myself.  As we went back up to the memorial, the timer must have clicked off or whatever, because all the fountains stopped.  I was so pleased we had made it in time and she got to see it—she was my good luck charm!

I asked her how she was holding up and if she was tired, and she said she was quite hungry. I told her we had one more stop and then I’d get her something to eat, and we went over the river to the US Marine Corps Memorial.  She couldn’t believe how big it was—she thought it was much, much smaller.  She walked all around it and took lots of pictures.

Then we hopped into the car and went over the a local McDonald’s that was just closing, so that was a bust.  We then went to a 24 hour CVS and grabbed some food.  Kristin grabbed a chicken sandwich, half of which I found on the counter the next morning and she declared it, “not very good”.  So that kind of sucked for her!   I resolved to make a big meal for her Tuesday night and made a big pot of spaghetti sauce and pasta, of which she ate 3 helpings, plus 3 slices of Texas toast, so I’ve hit on a winner there, far more than pork chops :)

Wednesday night, her liaison came over to see her when I sounded the alarm about everything going on.  They had a very nice time, making pizza and playing with April’s dogs and I had asked April to try and find out how Kristin was really feeling about the situation with our house, but really she had no complaints apparently and April asked us to just relax a bit and let things happen.  But she also did talk to Kristin about the importance of coming out of her room a bit!

So yesterday (Thursday) was supposed to be her school registration appointment, but that got cancelled.  I feel bad for this poor kid—we were supposed to go up to Skyline Drive Wednesday, but that got cancelled because my friend got sick.  I was hoping she’d get to go hang out with this girl from the high school that I met via one of Penny’s friends, but that is postponed till next week because that girl’s mom is out of town.  We’ve spent a lot of time sitting around waiting for clean up crews and insurance adjustors and whatnot, and yesterday came home to wait for the clean up crew only to have them call and cancel at 4pm! 

So I was really feeling pretty grim, but it was then that Kristin decided to spend the day hanging out with us.  We went over to my friend Jacalyn’s house for a little while and then we came home and had lunch and I put Leah down for a nap.  Kristin and I sat and looked over the school website for a few minutes, and I had asked her several times if she wanted to check her email or her Facebook, but she always said no.  She was just kind of playing with the school website, so I said, “You know what, I’m going to go sit in the living room and read my book.  If you need anything, holler.”  And she said, “Can I upload my pictures?”  I told her to go ahead and go crazy, and she spent several hours online, I think emailing and Facebooking and whatever else.  During that time, my neighbor’s daughter called and asked her if she wanted to spend Monday going to lunch and doing some shopping, and she was so happy and decided to take her up on it.  So she has that to look forward to.  She watched Tangled twice with Leah, and even let me leave Leah here when I went to pick Mike up from the train.

Mike decided on the way home that we would play Yahtzee after dinner, and so we introduced her to the wonderful world of Yahtzee, which she lost, but which was a lot of fun and broke the ice in many ways.  Last year, I became very friendly with many host moms, as I’ve said, and one of them said to me yesterday, “Ask her what she needs to be comfortable.”  So as we sat down to play, I said, “Well, Kristin, it’s been a week now, and it’s been a hard week.  To be honest, all I’ve done this week is cry and I know it hasn’t been easy on you either.  So what can we do to make you more comfortable here?”  She said, “Nothing really, I am just fine.”  So again we thanked her for her patience, which she kind of shushed off.  Then all of a sudden, she jumped up and ran to her room and came back and said, “I forgot!  I brought you volcanic rock.” and gave us a pretty awesome rock.  She said, “I hiked all the way to the top of the volcano to get this for you” and my eyes must have gotten big because she started laughing and said, “No, not really, I drove up and got it!”  She started joking around with us a lot after that and it turns out she has a pretty wicked sense of humor!  Then she asked if I’d like to see the Icelandic alphabet, which I did, and she wrote it out.  I got her a copy of the Braille alphabet and some writing that she and Mike had worked on together and wrote out what it said for her so she had that, and we had fun making Mike and me pronounce words in Icelandic and her laughing about it, as well as us laughing about Icelandic names like “Brinhyldur” which is really not even close to anything common here in the US. 

It was a really lovely evening, a major icebreaker for us all, and really a balm to the soul after what we’ve been through.  I’m very excited to have done it and excited for the weekend.  Tonight I’m taking her to see Barenaked Ladies at Celebrate Virginia live, and being that she has never been to a concert before, I’m pretty excited about that one as I think it’ll be an awesome experience for her.  Tomorrow we will go to a “slumber party” without sleeping over at my friend Melissa’s house, which will be a lot of fun.  Sunday she wants to Skype with her family, which is fine, and Monday she will go out with Katie.  Tuesday is my birthday and we will FINALLY get to go to her school appointment!  And then we’ll see what the rest of next week brings.  I am very optimistic that this is going to work out just fine. :)