Saturday, or, Everyone Loves Cherry Blossoms

I've been busy. I haven't even uploaded Saturday's cherry blossom pictures yet. But aren't Fatema's nice?

The day really was idyllic. The weather was perfect, just beautiful, with a clear blue sky and faint traces of clouds and a slight breeze. Not too hot, not too cold. Perfect nap-on-the-grass-forget-responsibility weather. We started off at the cherry blossom parade, complete with very impressive drummers, all sorts of dancers, a flying burrito (again, I refer you to Fatema's pictures), a few odd floats, and an a capella spiritual (I'm not sure how that's Japanese, or cherry-blossom related, or really related at all to the parade, but they sang one of my favorite spirituals, "Didn't my Lord deliver Daniel?" so I didn't mind the irrelevancy.) Followed by an outdoor fast-food sushi lunch that would have tasted better with more ginger and a Sapporo beer. I always enjoy sushi for lunch, though, even without the appropriate amount of ginger.

Now, you have to understand that the entire state of Maryland was at the National Mall that day. I think Virginia might have been there, too, and maybe West Virginia. So we followed the madding crowd across the green Mall, around the Washington Memorial to the Tidal Basin and took photos like a bunch of tourists while secretly taking pride in the fact that we live here, that these are our cherry trees and we somehow deserve them more than these tourists. What was originally a rather large group of girls from Fatema's dorm dwindled down to Fatema and me, but we ran into fellow CSISer Linda on our way around the long, long, paddleboat line. We winded around the basin and ended up at the Jefferson Memorial, where we sat on the grass, got sunburned, and discussed what we were going to do with our lives. When it reached 4 PM, we still hadn't decided what we were going to do with our lives, so we headed back around the tidal basin and to the sardine can, I mean, metro.

I have seen metros that crowded before, once in Cairo when the metro stopped for 45 minutes and the crowd on the platform gathered until there was no room for anyone else on the platform, let alone in the two women's cars. And once in Paris, during one of the entirely too frequent metro strikes. But I don't think I've ever been stuck in the metro, hemmed in by four baby strollers and three crying babies. I would have cried too, if I had been in their situation. In fact, I'm surprised some of the grown-ups didn't start crying.

I came home with that nice, gritty been-in-the-sun feeling, an oddly shaped sunburn, and tangled, windblown hair. I felt like a kid who had just come back from a day making sandcastles on the beach.