Washington DC Updates

Just to catch everyone up, I came back from Germany two and a half weeks ago and now I've settled into my home for the next two years in DC. I'm living with a high school friend and starting graduate school in less than a month.

We've been planning on adopting a dog and yesterday we got a visit from a potential pup named Lucile:
She's a 1.5 year old beagle and simply adorable. So, if our testing period with her goes well next week, we'll be welcoming a new addition to the apartment family! This program we're working through is really great because you get to meet the animals and then you can choose to foster the animal for a week or two to decide if he/she will work with you and your living situation. And, if you decide to adopt but then something doesn't work out later, the organization will take the dog back again.

It's really sad, though, a lot of people have been bringing dogs back that they had adopted before - even years before - because they've been losing their jobs or homes and can't take care of the dogs anymore. So this organization and others like it have been really overwhelmed in the past couple of months.

Apparently there are a ton of beagles and hounds up for a adoption in the DC/VA areas because people buy them for hunting purposes and then if they aren't good hunting dogs, the people just let them go in the wild or drop them off at an animal shelter. Crazy.

And in other news, there are tiny little mites in the grass outside our apartment that had been biting my roommate on her legs. I had been fine because I always wear jean pants. My roommate had been walking by in skirts because she wears skirts to work. We had thought maybe she had an allergic reaction because her bites were so large and insane. But then yesterday they finally got to me, too. The buggers are really mean! My bite swelled up like crazy and itches. I found it when I woke up this morning and it's been driving me mad.