Straight from my wonderful weekend in D.C., I flew up to one of my favorite places in the world–New York City. I was only in the city for 2.5 days to visit my grandparents who have both lived their entire lives in Queens. I come from a long line of New Yorkers (a possible explanation for my distrust of strangers?), and my dad is actually one of the only members of the Lang family who have left the city.
Two weeks ago I flew into a city that I haven’t stepped foot in for about eight years–Washington D.C. I was there for the weekend to visit one of my oldest friends, Grace, who I went to middle school with (the last time is was in D.C. was on a school trip with her in 7th grade!). My descent into Reagan International Airport was quite scenic; we flew past the mall and all of the different monuments that the city is famous for. After landing I grabbed a taxi and was surprised to find that we had to pass the Capitol to get to Grace’s apartment, which was in the NoMa district.
The past few days at home have been exactly what I needed—peaceful, relaxing and sunny beyond compare. And it’s hard to complain when there’s air conditioning involved (I still don’t understand how Londoners survive the summer heat). I’ve spent most of my time either at the beach or in my bed, battling my jet-lag so that I don’t take 4 hour naps in the middle in the afternoon. Being reunited with my family and pets has been wonderful; I always forget how much of a homebody I am until I’m away for extended periods of time.
I’m going to pretend like this isn’t my last week in London and continue on with my post like everything’s normal…
Monday:
On Monday I had classes at the Institute and then spent the rest of the afternoon working on my oral presentation for my class which I, of course, waited until two days to start. I mean the weather’s been so nice lately that it was almost painful to think about shutting myself inside! But I knew that I had to get down to business and start working on my PowerPoint. 
MONDAY:
I had classes all day at the Institute and afterward met up for dinner with a friend at a restaurant on King’s Road in Chelsea. We’d seen that My Old Dutch Pancake House had a £5 special on Mondays and had been meaning to go forever but hadn’t gotten around to it until that night. I ordered the Apple & Cinnamon Pancake with ice cream and my friend ordered the Compote of Berries Pancake with cream. The pancakes ended up being very similar to crepes and they were absolutely gigantic; we laughed at the thought that we would be able to finish everything until it became obvious that they were too good to allow to go to waste.
