City of Brotherly Love

One of the hardest parts about being in Washington DC is not seeing my family on a regular basis. I used to go to Sunday dinners almost every week when I lived in Utah. Now that's 2,000 miles away, which makes for a painful Sunday commute.

Fortunately, a little bit of my family moved out to Philadelphia a couple months ago for law school: my brother Pete.As one of my other brothers, Dave, flew out from Utah to visit us East-coasters, I journeyed up to Philly to spend the weekend with both of them.

After Dave's bags arrived from the airport (they got lost in transit), we drove into the city and checked out Pete's school. We saw the law library and some of campus, and it seemed like a really nice place. Pete then took us downtown and we saw the LOVE and game pieces sculptures, as well as some of the nicer areas.After going home to rest for a bit, we met up with some of Pete's law school friends and went out to dinner and then to the oldest continuously operating tavern in Philadelphia.Stash and Rach (two of Pete's 1L friends) made us a fantastic breakfast, complete with hash browns, eggs, toast, pancakes, and bacon. We brought some fresh fruit, and we all enjoyed the deliciousness of our feast.Then we went down to the Philadelphia Museum of Art to run the "Rocky steps" and see all the fine cultural exhibits inside the museum. The steps weren't as long as I'd expected, but I guess Rocky had run all through the city before reaching them.We saw some very good paintings and especially enjoyed the John Singer Sargent section, dadaist collection, and 1850-1900 European art (particularly Cezanne, Renoir, Manet, and van Gogh).The Marcel Duchamp exhibit, which detailed his creative process and construction of Etant donnes was interesting, though anticlimactic, or maybe I just didn't understand how deep and artsy it is and all its symbolism. A very real possibility, I admit.

Before I took off for DC, my brothers and I headed to Jim's for some authentic Philly cheese steaks. I had mine "wiz wit", meaning with Cheese whiz and onions. Yummy in the tummy and we all downed ours in about 15 mins because we were so hungry.It was hard to say goodbye to my bros, knowing that it could be a while before I see them again, but I'm grateful that I was able to spend even this much time with them in Philly. Until Thanksgiving, dudes!