Washington, DC 2012.

As most of you know, via Facebook, I spent the week of July 21st in Washington, DC for a NCCEP/GEAR UP Conference.  I'm going to go ahead and guess that most of you have no idea what that stands for, and enlighten you a little bit.  NCCEP, or the National Council for Community and Education Partnerships, is really hard to describe.  The name says a lot, but trying to actually explain what they do is more challenging.  NCCEP is a program founded in 1999 to support and advocate for GEAR UP.  More acronyms.  GEAR UP, or Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs, is the program I work for.  It is a federal initiative through the Department of Education that seeks to increase the number of students throughout the United States of America that are college or career ready by the time they graduate high school and that they persist in those goals.  Make sense?

And to confuse you even more, I work for an organization called College OPTIONS which is basically a department within UC Davis that is centered in Redding, CA.  I have no idea if OPTIONS is an acronym for something, but I figure it probably is.  I'll put that on my list of "more stuff to find out."  Currently, that list is about 4 pages long.  To be completely honest, I had no idea what NCCEP was or what it stood for until I attended the conference this week.  And I've been a GEAR UP employee for 4 months now.  That's bad, isn't it?

So, this conference alternates between Washington, DC and San Francisco.  Lucky for me, we were given the green light to attend this year's Washington, DC event, because I had never been there before!  Everything was covered by College OPTIONS/GEAR UP, the only thing we paid out of pocket was any tourist-centered activities we chose to participate in.  That being said, I'm pretty sure this was the absolute cheapest trip I could (and will) ever take to Washington, DC!

We flew in on Saturday night, arriving to our hotel about 11:30 PM.  The conference was actually held at the Washington Hilton, but we were last-minute attendees, so we ended up staying at the Embassy Suites in Downtown Washington.  Well, some of us stayed at the Embassy Suites, but some of us stayed at the Hilton.  It was kind of a mess, and something we'll need to sort out for the future.  Anyway, since we arrived at 11:30 PM (only 8:30 PM our time) and we had been on a plane since about 1:00 PM, we were STARVING.  Our hotel recommended a burger place a few blocks away at Dupont Circle called Black & Orange, and holy cow, it was amazing!  It certainly hit the spot at midnight.

The next morning we got up early, ate breakfast, and started out on the day's adventures.  We walked down to the White House, to the Washington Monument, the WWII Memorial, the Vietnam Wall, the Lincoln Memorial, the Korean Memorial, and over to Arlington Cemetary.  One of the gals with us, Terri, was wearing her pedometer, and by the end of the day we figured out we walked almost 10 miles.  It was intense!  That evening, everyone met up to get our registration booklets and eat dinner at Buca di Beppo, a super yummy Italian place.  Apparently it's a chain, but I had never heard of it before.  And between 12 of us, we ordered enough food to supply a small country for about a year.  It was ridiculous, and our waiter couldn't stop laughing.

The next day was the beginning of the conference, and all I can say is....intense.  The Secretary of Education was one of the guest speakers, along with Congressman Fattah, who was instrumental in passing the GEAR UP initiative in 1999.  I was so exhausted at the end of that first day that all I could dream about was going to bed.  A few of us went to a place called Rumors for dinner, which is a very cool steakhouse/pub type of restaurant.  The original owners still run the restaurant, and be forewarned, the owner will come to your table and describe every single thing on the menu until you close your menu to indicate you have made your choice.  Seriously, he'll keep going for 20 minutes.  We found that out the hard way.  But he was a super nice man, and actually brought a (complimentary) bowl of their homemade chicken noodle soup to one of the girls at our table because she wasn't feeling very well that day. Jewish Penicillin, he called it.  Definitely a place I'll go back to, and one I highly recommend to anyone else who might be passing through the area!

The conference on Tuesday was equally as intense, but I was determined to make time for sight-seeing that evening.  As soon as we ended the day, I booked it back to my hotel room to change into some comfier shoes and caught a cab down to the National Archives.  They closed at 7 PM, so I knew I would have to be quick if I wanted to take my time with the most amazing documents ever created.  I made it there at about 5:30 PM and someone must have been looking out for me, because there was absolutely no line.  I walked right on up, looked at one of the four original Magna Carta documents in existence, and then made it to the Rotunda.  The Rotunda!  Where the original Declaration of Independence, Constitution of the United States, and Bill of Rights live.  THE REAL DOCUMENTS.  I think I almost cried.  Seriously.  

Washington, DC is the ultimate Mecca-Holy Land for a history nerd like me. 

Wednesday was another busy day, but the conference was out after lunch, which left us with an entire afternoon to be tourists.  Between the National Archives from the day before and staring at real dinosaur bones, I was completely overwhelmed with awesome.  We took our time through the Natural History Museum and sped through parts of the American History Museum.  As long as I got to see the Ruby Slippers I was a happy camper! 

We got the whole group together for dinner at the Black & Orange (again) on Wednesday night, since everyone was heading their separate ways the next day.  A few people were staying through Thursday evening, but most of us were heading home on Thursday morning.  After a looooooong plane ride across the country and a looooooooooong delay at SFO (okay, only 2 hours, but we could have almost driven to Redding in that amount of time) and a 2 hour drive north, I made it home at 6 PM.  I had been up since 2 AM in this time zone, so I was a little out of it.  Lucky for me, I have a wonderful husband who had a bottle of wine and dinner waiting for me.  I think I'll keep him!


Until next time, DC.