Open Doors at Foreign Embassies

The last two weekends I embarked on a world tour without ever getting on a plane. The past two weekends in Washington DC many of the embassies held special open houses for the public. The nations of the EU held their open house on May 7 and nations of the rest of the world were open on May 14. Of course, not all were participating, but there were still more than you could possibly visit all in one day!

The first weekend here I went downtown with my brother Dan and his roommate Steve. We went to the British Embassy and had a great time. They had a display about National Geographic Magazine, so we took our picture inside the infamous yellow rectangle. I think we are not quite cultural or interesting to ever appear in the magazine, so this was our moment to shine. Looks to me like an issue you wouldn't want to miss!


Also, we met some nice English Gents in traditional costume.


I passed up the chance to to have my picture taken however with the large poster of William and Kate at the royal wedding. We toured the gardens and had a great time.

Last Saturday we got an earlier start to embassy day and began at the Thailand Embassy around 11 am. It was so cool there! They had all kinds of crafts, ladies carving soap into flowers, performers, food, and paintings. One of the paintings was actually painted by an elephant! It was very cool. The food looked delicious and as I hadn't had time to eat breakfast, I decided to buy some. The foodie that I am, I loved it. The hardest part was deciding which thing to get!


Next we went to the Ukranian Embassy, followed by the Embassy of Saudi Arabia. That was cool. Saudi Arabia and Thailand were both my favorite. I would have a hard time deciding between the two which was the coolest. It was a beautiful place and they fed us a full lunch! So yes, just after eating an entire plate of Thai food (although Dan helped me eat some of it) I had a full plate of Saudi cuisine. It was fantastic. I just figure the Thai food was breakfast, this was lunch. Never mind that it was only an hour or so apart! If I'd been thinking, I would have taken a picture of the food for this blog, but I am not yet in the habit of photographing everything. I've been told though that starting a blog would inspire me to take more pictures because I'll want to be able to post them and blog about what I'm doing. So we'll see.

We went up to a different area of DC and went to several more, including, Austrailia, Botswana, the Islands of Micronesia, and Trinidad and Tobago. Trinidad was very loud! It seemed that the only thing they wanted to show off about their culture was their ability to party! Check out this hat I tried on!