I just finished my tour of the Smithsonian Museum and I am here at a nice cafe looking at the Jefferson and Lincoln memorials and the Washington Obelisk. A retired Filipino general is having a tete-a-tete with me over a cup of Hungarian tea. The founding fathers of America had chosen Washington, D.C., this hallowed piece of land adjoining Virginia, as the center of political and military power in the world, not just in the USA. There are 177 embassies located here representing all countries with whom the US has diplomatic relations.
The Philippine embassy is located on Bataan Street in our own building at 1600 Massachusetts Avenue, Northwest, Washington, D.C. Our mission there is anchored on the three pillars of Philippine diplomacy, namely; political/military and security relations, economic and trade relations, and the most predominant pillar of assistance to our nationals. Our consuls solemnize marriages, process renewal of passports, register births, marriages, and deaths, and conduct overseas absentee elections there. The Philippine labor attaché also holds office there to serve the needs of Filipino migrant workers in the USA and other neighboring accredited countries.
Despite its current problems, America is strong, still the greatest country in the world, greater than Russia, China, and India. Its government is stable, its economy has problems but is still formidable. Its military power is still the greatest. But I am here not really for all those but to appreciate its culture, arts, history, and politics. Tonight, I have a ticket for a very engaging cultural show at the JFK Center for Performing Arts, and tomorrow night at the Washington National Opera. These shows I'm going to see will nourish my soul that was heavily burdened by the nasty politics at home, perhaps a well-deserved respite from the toxic atmosphere of partisanship and adversarial discourses.
It requires more than one week (and I do not have that much time) to complete visiting all the 19 museums and one zoo under the Smithsonian Institute here in D.C. I like most of all the National Museum of American History, but there is also a lot to see in the Museum of Natural History, the National Air and Space Museum, the Art Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, and the National Postal Museum. I also find much meaning in visiting the Lincoln Memorial, Jefferson Memorial, the National World War II Memorial (I needed to see it because my late father was wounded as a USAFFE soldier), and I had to find his name in the official list of Filipinos who fought under the American flag in World War II.
And I was truly amazed entering the portals of the largest library in the world, the US Library of Congress. I was told by a library assistant, a Fil-Am whose roots are from Bohol and Argao, Cebu, that the library housed no less than 147 million books. The US Copyright Office is also located inside the library. My tour guide, a Latino from Florida, told me that the District of Columbia or DC is bordered by the Potomac River with the state of Virginia in the south and the state of Maryland on the other side. This is the location of the three branches of the US government, the executive (White House), the legislative (US Congress), and the judiciary (US Supreme Court).
I have only one more day here in DC and I still have to visit the Pentagon, the Arlington Cemetery in Virginia, and the eternal flame in President JFK's mausoleum. The famous changing of the guard ceremony is also worth seeing again. In 1988, I visited Mount Vernon, the historic ancestral home of President George Washington. I want to visit it again before I fly to Orlando, Florida, to tour the Disneyworld again then head to the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Merritt Island. It will be hectic work and travel for 100 days.