First Trip to Washington D.C
Posted by: adonis49 on: February 17, 2009
First Trip to Washington D.C (#47 of my autobiography: Introspection) February 17, 2009
It happened that in 1992 my brother-in-law Victor was appointed military attaché to Lebanon. Victor was in Washington, DC for more than a month before he contacted me in San Francisco. He was arranging for the transfer of his family to the USA.
When the whole family arrived I was urged to join them; Adrea was barely four months old and the eldest kid William was about 13. I was asked to move with them in order to aid with the kids’ English, schooling and various arrangements. I wrote to Raymonde a letter stating that I preferred first to visit with them before I take a decision.
That was my first trip to Washington, DC and I used a map to initiate tours in the Capital. I took Joanna on several day outings because she was kind of depressed. Joanna, eldest daughter and second in the family of 5, later to be augmented with a sixth Chelsea.
Joanna was given the responsibility of caring for Adrea and she felt that she was not the preferred kid (read as much loved) among the five. Chelsea was to be born five years later when Victor returned definitively to Lebanon.
The next morning I went with Joanna on a discovery tour of Washington DC. Strong with a map, we walked for hours. It does Not take that much hours to tour most of the Capital, including the Congress, the foreign office… On my second trip I could wander leisurely every street once I got my permit in Real Estate.
Victor had rented a small apartment in a building at walking distance from the Lebanese Embassy. The apartment was expensive, about $1,200 a month, and he was paying from his own saved money before bureaucracy arranged for his salary to be transferred regularly.
It was summer time and there was a tiny swimming pool on the roof. I felt that the apartment was too small to accommodate another member and I returned to Frisco.
Raymonde urged me to join them on account that the schools are opening and she is not fluent in English and totally unprepared. I re-joined them a couple months later.
In no time, the kids didn’t need me in their English or schooling; they were fishes in a familiar sea; they quickly mocked my accent.
Six months later, we moved to Montgomery County at the limit of Washington D.C. and we settled in a rented large split house on Brierly Road.
There was a small forest in the neighborhood and tended by a bird association (Aubuston?). We applied to the swimming pool at walking distance but the neighborhood association, mostly Jewish, denied our application. Thus, we had to swim at a Navy complex a couple of miles away, close to the NIH.
Victor purchased an old car and his official driver Sami rented an apartment close by.
There are at least ten volumes of pictures and as many videos of my stay in Washington, DC and Montgomery County because Victor had purchased a camcorder in a visit to New York with the family of his brother Nicholas, already a Jehovah Witness family .
Nicholas’ family of three kids stayed with Victor’s for over a month and we toured many counties in the USA. We visited Disney in Orlando and the Jehovah Witness headquarters in the Brooklyn and upper New York States and their modern and large publishing business.
Adonis Diaries 
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