As busy as TWC interns are during the week (and considering how early most of us have to wake up), you'd think we would just want to sleep in all weekend and do relaxing things like bum around, watch movies, and be on Tumblr all day. This would normally be the case, but the thing about Washington, D.C. is that there's never a dull moment in the city, and the fact that we're only here for 15 weekends gives us the motivation to get out there and do it all.

When I had just been accepted to be an intern for The Washington Center, everyone that I told from back home said these exact words to me, "There's so much to do in D.C.! Did you know that the museums are free?" Even though I did not know that before applying, I had about 25 people tell me the same thing and started wondering what else there was to do in D.C. besides visit museums, if anything at all. While I have found various other activities that have nothing to do with history, still life, or outer space, I figured I had to do the tourist thing and go visit all the museums and monuments at least once while I was here.

Saturday morning, my friends and I decided to visit two of the several museums D.C. has to offer. Interestingly, one of them ended up being one of the few you actually have to pay for; but it was the International Spy Museum, so it was totally worth it. My friends and I got on the metro and headed toward the Gallery Place stop on the Red Line. I found out later that the director of this museum is an ex-CIA agent named Peter Earnest...gotta love irony. Once we got into the museum and paid for our tickets, we were taken to a room with a number of alternate identities that we could choose from. I picked Angelena Falcone, a 21-year-old Italian woman traveling to Vietnam on business (...a good spy probably wouldn't have told you that). We learned about all kinds of ordinary-looking items that are actually secret weapons (sword canes, umbrella guns, and the like), as well as camera glasses and voice-recording suitcases. We climbed through a secret air vent and watched other museum-goers as they walked around and read about how to change their appearances in a bind, and laughed at how oblivious they were until we realized others had been doing that to us probably since we had arrived. We also learned that D.C. is the place with the largest number of spies in the world; so watch what you say and do around here. I wish I had some cool pictures to show you, but if they let us take pictures in the spy museum.....well, that wouldn't be very spy-like, would it?

The second museum we visited was a lot less pleasant, but I believe it was one of the more historically important things I'll experience in my time here in D.C. In the afternoon, we visited the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Just like at the Spy Museum, part of the tour includes receiving a different identity at the beginning of your time there. You receive this information in the form of a passport book containing the story of a person who actually lived through the Holocaust. On each floor of the museum, you read and turn the pages of your booklet, until you discover your person's fate at the end of the tour (my woman survived by escaping and hiding out in Russia with her husband during and after the war; some of my friends' people were not so lucky.) Each part of the museum corresponded with different historical events: before the war, during, and after. I won't go into a lot of detail because there's no way I can put the feelings and emotions evoked by the pictures, stories, videos, and objects into words. I will say, however, that it's a learning experience that most young people should take the opportunity to be a part of, if they can.

On a happier note, nighttime brought adventure and loads of fun to our Saturday. AJ, a friend that I met here at TWC, has lots of friends that live in this area, so we took the metro to one of his friends' apartments on U Street. We met a few more really cool people and decided to take a cab to a neighborhood in the NW with a great nightlife. After a few hours dancing and having a great time with our group of about 9 or 10 people, we realized that it was almost 3 a.m. and that the metro closes at the very same time that the bars and clubs close (...whose idea was that, honestly?) Instead of running in our heels and dresses to the nearest metro stop 20 minutes away, we decided it would be way easier to take a cab home. The not-so-funny thing is that just about everyone else on that whole street decided the very same thing at the very same time. My friends and I were standing outside in the freezing cold for about 45 minutes trying to beat other people to hailing cabs that didn't even want to take us home because it was too far away from where we were. Talk about a total nightmare. Long story short, we made it home at about 4 a.m., safe and sound, but we definitely learned our lesson, and now I'm imparting my newfound wisdom to you: TAKE. THE. METRO. HOME. or use one of these handy cab websites before 3 a.m. on a Saturday night.

Despite this long blog post, the weekend is not over yet! Stay tuned for the rest of my weekend adventures for the Sunday-Monday post coming soon. (I'll post lots of pictures next time, promise!)