short trip

This past few days I've been away from home.
Last Saturday, I drove up to DC to pick up my friend from Bandung. He was our youth leader in my home church when I was in junior HS. Last Summer, I met him and his wife, together with their newborn baby, Aaron. That time, we had already set up a plan to go together to Chicago since he should have been able to go for a training there, sent by his company. But the plan was failed. So this time, they rescheduled the training and after he finished up in Chicago, he then flew to Washington (all paid by the company btw..... yaiks...)
We then drove to Lynchburg because he wanted to see my school. The fun part was, we had a GREAT lunch at ILMEE Korean Buffet at Annandale, near DC. A great place to eat, good for the value of money! They have everything there, including chinese buffet, beef/pork ready marinated bbq of course, and also the sushi buffet. They also have black (or should I call red) rice, and other strange stuffs! I think that was one of those 'fullest' meals I've ever had, much better than Bandung's Hanamasa or Miyazaki or watever....
In Thomas Road Church last Sunday nite, there was a piano concert by DINO Kartsonakis, the Greek 'geek' pianist. Fantastic concert, and he's sharing the Good News also while playing. So my friend came just right on time. After the concert, we headed up back to DC and spent two nights at our friend's place. He wanted to see DC's spotsy places, but too bad, the weather was more than freezing..... Anyway, we kept on going to downtown, especially 'Uncle Bush's house' hahaha... that one we surely can't miss. After taking some pictures, we just ride the train back to Gaithersburg, where we stayed. Now, he really has seen true "America"! (don't mention the weather also... brrrrrrrrrrrrrrr..)
It's been great to meet friends, old and new... We remember our funny experience in Solo (Tawangmangu) when we had a national youth camp (100% real camping) up in the hills of Gunung Lawu. There was a huge flood (oopss) struck the whole camping area and three of us didn't get even an inch of the evacuation hall, so we slept just with sleeping bags, in the (concrete) ground near the swimming pool, with 10' C temp. Early the next morning, we found out two snakes in the pool.......... haiyaaah... so they probably crawled on our sleeping bags while we were sleeping... (Oh, did I mention that we also took shower in the river because that 500 participant-camp had only ONE bathroom for men, and it was those bathroom used for construction worker.)
Overall, it was just a short visit. He flew back to Indo from DC airport today.
Hopefully when he got back to Jakarta Airport, things will get better.