i went to the district of columbia : day one

the luckiest thing happened. a girl from my mission called me back in february and asked if i would be willing to fly down to DC and be her wedding photographer at the end of april. umm..yes. yes i will. 

they were nice to not only pay for my flight but also let me choose what days i flew in and out. seeing that i have two good  friends who live there and how i've never been to DC before, it seemed appropriate to make this business trip a sight/friend seeing trip as well. 

beth picked me up from the airport late thursday night and it was wedding time bright and early the next morning. by 10 am i was already in love with this place. it is so green and foresty and beautiful. i have since seen areas in boston that look similar but i hadn't at the time so i was just dying over how good everything looked. i loved the grounds of the DC temple and thoroughly enjoyed walking around as they were being sealed. 

here is the happy couple. they are both originally from taiwan so it was very asian-esque. i loved being surrounded by so many taiwanese people and so many people speaking chinese! they even had a chinese buffet style luncheon and everything. the whole day was really nice and i enjoyed being a part of it. (you can go here to see some of the pictures from it, i finally got them up)

sara picked me up from their luncheon and we drove around georgetown (which i really enjoyed) to get to the arlington cemetery. she knows i love cemeteries and really wanted me to see the changing of the guard. 

we had taken a few unexpected detours so we had to actually run (literally, we were running) to make it to the last changing of the guard thing for the night. definitely still sorry for breathing heavy once we got there, you could have heard a pin drop it was so quiet! it was cool and somewhat disturbing to me that the only time those guys talk is during these little ceremonies everyday. i would go crazy! i would also hate to wear those awful clicky shoes they have but that is a story for another day. the grounds were BEAUTIFUL and i loved it just as much as she thought i would. i felt so sad we didn't have more time to walk around and explore but i guess that just means i'll have to go back!

we had just enough daylight to check out iwo jima which was nice to see in person. the east coast is so good at memorials. 

by that point i was so crazy tired that we decided to go home and crash..but not before making a walmart run (they are so rare in boston it is sad) to pick up many boxes of red hots, which if you did not know, are my favorite (and hard to find anywhere). i also got chex mix and raspberry sherbet in case you wanted to know/feel grossed out.