Washington D.C. trip

Last week, I went to D.C. for a CME (continuing medical education) about osteoporosis, and Quoc tagged along. It was a really good conference and I learned tons (!) while Quoc explored most of the museums by himself. I joined him after the conference ends on Friday afternoon. At the conference, I met my friend Rani from medical school! What a small world. (Hi Rani!) Also, we hung out with Julie and Billy and stayed at their place (thanks, guys!). D.C. was very... efficient, diverse and much more interesting than I remembered. We ate lots of good food, and walked a lot. I think we both lost a few pounds each. My favorite museum was the Holocaust museum- it was really nicely presented and organized. The highlights of the trip are in the pictures below.

The lowlights of the trip are the troubles we ran into trying to get back home. There was a huge storm in NYC, where we had a connecting flight to Portland. So we delayed getting into JFK by 6 hours- got there around 2 am. The only other flight available was 8:30 pm the next day. So we frantically called everyone we know in NYC, and found Kevin, who's an ER resident and long time friend from San Diego who graciously picked us up, let us stay at his place and dropped us off the next day before his shift. (Thanks Kev!) The story isn't over yet. We lucked out and got put onto an earlier flight @ noon to Seattle, but the storm hit again and we were delayed for 3 hours. And... apparently, there was a volcano in Alaska that erupted which causes interference in our direct flight to Seattle- causing a detour to Utah (needed to fuel up). After waiting there, we finally arrive in Seattle around 7 pm. At this time, the Amtrak's last train out of Seattle to Portland was long gone. We had to cancel that reservation and decided to rent a very expensive car home. Fortunately, there was 2 other Portlanders in the same boat and we decided to drive together and share the rental fees. We got home around midnight and crashed.
Did I mention the last day of travel was my birthday? :) It was the most terrible travel experience I've ever had. But I think we made the most of it. We met lots of interesting and fun people along the way. For example, the whole plane was watching the Olympics' men's swimming relay, on the tar mat, waiting for permission to fly. At the moment that USA beat the French, everyone stood up, clapped and there was a roar of "yeah!!!!" throughout the plane. It was a really cool moment. Also, we're thankful for our friends who are so generous, as always!

Billy, Julie, Quoc, me and Rani @ Malaysian
Sunny and Rani @ Mai Thai
Kevin driving us to the airport before his ER shift.

More pictures to come when I'm a bit more motivated to upload more. It was overall, a great trip.