I left San Jose on Saturday night, 8PM. It was an eerily empty airport - actually kind of creeped me out, horror movie-style. But I connected smoothly in LA and had an easy (is this possible?) red-eye out to Washington DC. Met up with Candice at the airport and we took a limo to the Capitol Hill Liaison hotel - right near the Capitol building. It was around 8AM when we checked in (and 90 degrees - eesh!) and they didn't have a room ready yet, so after changing, Candice and I decided to walk around the mall. We ended up going to the Holocaust Museum, since neither of us had been there before.
The museum is dedicated almost entirely to the Holocaust, and is really good but very disturbing. It discusses several aspects leading up to the war, gives various perspectives, and has pictures and case studies. After a while it got to be a bit too much for both of us and we had to walk fairly quickly through the whole second half. I think the most disturbing part was the room of shoes - the musty, leathery old smell was really haunting.
From there, we walked to the Museum of American History and had lunch - then we just went back to the hotel to rest. After a nap and shower, we met up with the rest of the TITP group for the welcome and intros. Along with the 24 teachers, there are two IIE staff (MarDestinee and Mike), 2 from Toyota (Rhonda and her boss JL), 2 videographers (Dave and Scott), and a journalist (Osha).
At 6:30, we walked over to the US Botanical Garden for a reception - it's a beautiful space, and we met several other Toyota and IIE staff, plus a number of people from the South African Embassy.
It was lovely event, sponsored by Donald Payne, the congressman from NJ, who came to speak to us. Too bad I was so dang tired - by then I was totally exhausted.
The next morning, we checked out at 7:45 and went to the Toyota DC office for breakfast.
We ate up on their rooftop deck, which had a nice view of the city and Washington Monument. Then we went down into the offices for a talk about Toyota's environmental initiatives, plus a South Africa overview given by the Deputy Chief of Mission from the ZA embassy.
Lunch was on our own, paid for by the stipend they gave us at the beginning of the trip. It was raining pretty hard (but still very warm and muggy) so we went around the corner for a quick lunch then hid in the Toyota building until it was time to go. At 2, we headed out to the airport, checked in as a group, and waited through the 2 hr delay (ugh!).
It was a 7 1/2 hour flight to Dakar, Senegal, an hour or so wait on the plane, a disgusto anti-bug spray, then another 7 1/2 hours to Johannesburg. But we finally made it!
Now we're in the Grayston in Sandton - a very nice hotel in the fancy part of Joburg. We're all completely exhausted... off to bed...
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