My first few days with the American Pharmacists Association (hereafter referred to as APhA) has been a little scattered trying to get building access, figuring out who is where and what floor has what, and the alphabet soup is intense even for someone who thought they were pretty good with the all the pharmacy acronyms. The building access is a nuisance but necessary since the State Department rents out floors 2-5 of the new building. So I am uber safe in the building, but figuring out my access badge was more confusing than it needed to be, considering I was never told the code to use with the badge when I enter the building.

It’s been great so far, just attending some meetings, figuring out what I’m doing and what everybody else is doing. This is a crazy time (which makes it an awesome time) to be at APhA because our annual meeting is coming up at the end of my rotation, so this is crunch time. It gives me a great idea of what the most stressful time of the year is and what all goes in to making a huge meeting like this run smoothly. Great times! It’s also been great to reconnect with the APhA staff that I have befriended the past few years and get to see them more often than just randomly at meetings. This has been such a surreal experience as I get a wonderful view of the Capitol every day when I catch the Metro at Union Station. Last night when I was heading home after dinner with Nick Dorich, the Capitol was lit up and looked stunning. While today when I was heading home to eat dinner, there was a beautiful sunset painted across the sky behind the Capitol building. Beautiful.

This week has been great getting to know a bunch of the girls in my house and the other intern at APhA, Daphne. Daphne and I took a little walk at lunchtime since the weather was beautiful (about 65 and sunny) over to the Lincoln Memorial and Korean War Memorial. I love Lincoln. Every time I am at the Lincoln it stops me. During my run, at night when it’s lit up, during the middle of the day, whenever. But that might just be me, and my soft spot for tall bearded men.

So funny little story, I had to take this photo at the Korean War Memorial since it brought back fond memories (even though I was at a war memorial, I know). The memorial has all the countries that were United Nations members during that time engraved along the path and this one caught my eye...
I hope this shows up well, but this is engraved near the pool at the Korean War Memorial. Makes me thankful to be an American and so grateful to all our armed service members.

This week is shaping up to be a pretty fantastic first week in the nation’s capitol.