Excerpt From a Letter to a Friend

Dear E

I arrived in DC on Thursday and now it is Saturday. Only two nights and I miss home already. It is part of my role to be a bright and shining individual who is positive in most things, but I know that you won't mind if I confess to be lonely here. I find it is very hard to be away from my own bed, my cats, my garden. On the bright side it is beautiful here. The sky is completely blue, clear and it is about 75 or 80 out. The seasons are so polarized here. I hear the last big snow bank only just melted two weeks ago in Baltimore! And yet the row house down the street has a rose bush with hundreds of blooms bursting forth. The contrast is a startling one.

I am staying in a little one bedroom apartment. It is quiet and (thankfully) does not resound with the ugly hotel sounds that I loathe. There is something about hotels that is simply too sanitary. It is as though they have washed the personality from them. At least here I can feel the intentions of the landlady, who by the way is the most lovely sweet blue eyed woman from the Czek Republic. She is in and out of the building constantly lugging bits and pieces she has retrieved from Ikea to improve her apartments. I receive daily offerings on my doorstep. Today it was as though Saint Nick had made a stop. I opened the door this morning to a set of stainless steel pans, some crockery, cooking utensils and an array of unlabeled boxes. The day before it was a Britta water pitcher.

Okay, enough of my ramblings. How selfish of me to assume you want to read all of these trivialities about my trip. Can you tell it is lonely here?

xoxo
Allie