Although we were in bed by 10pm each day, DC was a lovely city to spend the first 4 days of our trip in. We arrived in the evening on Sunday and were greeted by the Air BnB host’s cat, Pluto. We never actually met our host, but Pluto meowed at our door each morning to share our turkey bacon. The room was spacious and comfortable, and the area we stayed in was beautiful. I took a 3 mile run right after we arrived but ended up running the 1.5 miles back to the place in the pouring rain. It was still a nice run, and I took some pictures of the lovely neighborhood.
We ate chicken salad and homemade ranch with cut celery and carrots on the road, and that night, we had sautéed vegetables and turkey sausage. The next morning, we ate mango pineapple chia seed pudding, with a coconut milk and greek yogurt base. We also had turkey bacon, marinated cucumbers, and an iced honey latte. I also made us ground beef and pesto pasta to take for lunch each day. On the first day of the conference, I found a group of friends to sit with, and we had nice conversation. One of them teaches at Colorado University; another goes to Stanford. Others had just gotten their bachelors, masters, and even one phd. Everyone had different research and career interests, and it was nice to go through the conference with their varying perspectives.
My favorite part of the first day was hearing from Shelley Hearne, DrPH, MPH, professor at Johns Hopkins and author of a public health policy engagement book. We talked about how to find areas of common interest even amongst policymakers with different political stances.
Bella met me at the conference center for lunch in between her museum visits, and we biked to dinner after the conference. We found a happy hour pizza special and got 2 yummy slices of pizza before biking 2 miles back to our place. It was extremely humid, so needless to say, we immediately showered when we got back, and we were in bed soon after.
The next day of the conference was also really enjoyable. We decided to take the bus instead of biking, as we decided that there is far too much honking in DC. The second day was even better than the first. We heard from Justin Jones, who spoke about the importance of advocacy and representation in healthcare and politics. He was the only speaker to receive a standing ovation the entire event. We also got to hear from various experts, including Dr. Alexander from Johns Hopkins, who spoke about the importance of storytelling in public health, alongside lawyers, directors of different public health organizations, and an expert on AI technology and HIV. I was very excited to ask her a question related to my research. I made a lot of connections at the conference and look forward to presenting my research at the annual conference in November.
Once the day was over, we walked about a mile to a local indian restaurant to meet Bella’s mom’s friend, who worked in Health and Human Services for 30+ years. We had a lot of rich conversations about the field and various other things, and I also look forward to staying with her in November. She was extremely warm, welcoming, and excited to talk about public health.
We finally rode the bus back to our place and fell asleep super early. I don’t remember the last time I slept so early in the night, but I had 2 very full days. We were planning on looking at some museums the next morning but decided to try and evade some of the traffic and get on into Philly. We still hit tons of traffic leaving, but I’m glad we went on. My time in DC was incredible, and I can’t wait to be back.
PS: No one told us about the street sweep on Monday for which we did not see the sign, so we got a nice $45 parking ticket. A nice souvenir indeed.
Marie's whereabouts 
Leave a comment