This past weekend was one of the most enjoyable ones since I have gotten to DC. Rather than sit on the couch and think about how bored I was since I could not play volleyball, I got out an explored the city. On Saturday, I went to the Holocaust Memorial Museum with Eve, a girl from my international law class. It is really easy to get there since it is one block away from the Smithsonian metro stop. We only planned to stay there for a few hours. However, I ended up staying there from 11 a.m. - 5 p.m. While we waited to go into the main exhibition, which comprises 80% of the whole museum (make sure to get a ticket, which is free, for the exhibit when you first get there) we looked at a smaller temporary exhibit on propaganda and at Daniel’s Story, the children’s exhibit.  Just the two smaller exhibits took about two hours to go through. The Holocaust Museum does a great job of making each part of their exhibits connect well with the other sections. I especially like how the end of the temporary exhibit addressed recent and current genocides to make people aware of how these terrible events are still happening.

Saturday night I actually made myself dinner and dessert! For anyone that knows me this is a huge deal since I don’t cook. I made a really simple chicken salad that was so delicious

and blonde brownies from scratch. Even the guys at my office liked the brownies!

Sunday, Eve and I went to the National Zoo.

   

It was really hot and sunny out, so most of the animals were hiding inside. We walked around for a while and managed to see lots of trees but not so many animals! Finally, we made it to the Panda House and saw both of the pandas inside. One of them was napping and looked so cuddly...

  

and the other was eating some bamboo. 

I also was able to see gorillas, a komodo dragon, elephants, coral, golden lion tamarins, and lions!

I am definitely going to go back to the zoo after work one day when it is cooler so that hopefully there are more animals outside.