Kindergarten performance!

Today was a day that Rachel has been anticipating for weeks -- the day of her performance! All the kindergarten classes have been rehearsing a performance summarizing what they learned during the year. There were songs about Betsy Ross; skeletons (for Halloween), leaves falling (autumn), penguins, and a turkey tango. I turned to one of the moms and we both said at the same time, "THAT'S where all the songs come from!" She asked if Rachel had been rehearsing at home and I said yes, and she said she feels she knows all the songs by heart.

Drew and I both went, and at some point I started weeping -- it was when the kids were singing, "Here Comes the Sun." In so many ways it's an echo of how I feel about our lives here, how it's such an improvement over the last few years and how I lucky I feel to have found a welcoming community so quickly.

We hung around Rachel's class for a bit afterward; she got weepy when we wouldn't stay to help out at Field Day, but Drew said he had to work (and I did, too -- I am racing to finish a magazine story and I had two interviews today, one in the District). I explained to Rachel that I had volunteered to help out but they already had volunteers when I signed up. So I drove Drew to the Metro station, ran some errands, grabbed an emu burger and a salad for lunch at Westover Market, raced home in time to do a phone interview, then went to the post office to mail out some things, hopped on the Metro and headed to the District to do my interview with a 16-year-old boy and his mom (he is leaving for a summer in Israel this Sunday and this was the only time we could do the interview).

On the way in to the interview I met two kids who were spending the summer at George Mason taking classes -- they're both in college and the guy was just a charmer; he was from Alabama and made friends of everyone around him on the train. (He has a great career in politics or journalism should he want it). I told them the best way to get to the zoo was by exiting at Cleveland Park instead of Woodley Park because the walk would be downhill, not up. It was such a pleasant exchange and reminded me of why I love taking the Metro.

Until I left for home. For some reason, they were single-tracking the trains ahead of us, so I ended up stuck at one station for 20 minutes, which meant my carefully cultivated plans to pick Rachel up at tee ball tonight were dashed. Luckily, Kelly (Libby's mom and the leader of Rachel's Daisy Scout troop) scooped Rachel up and took her to their house and ordered pizza. I had planned a nice Shabbat dinner, but just decided to go with the flow and join them for pizza while Drew stayed late at work. I felt terribly guilty about being late, but Kelly pushed aside my concern and I ended up taking the whole family to ice cream at Toby's, the local ice cream place in Westover Village. Whenever we go there we inevitably run into someone we know, and tonight it was Alice, a PTA mom, her husband Bob and their two kids who are slightly older than Rachel. Bob works in the Federal Public Defender's Office doing economic modeling, and was fascinated when I described what Drew does. I gave him my card, and hopefully we can all get together soon.