The US Embassy

After lunchtime the group gathered to head to the US Embassy for a visit. We drove by many other embassies on our way to the US Embassy. Each embassy is designed to look like the architecture of the home country, with the US’s looking like a Virginia palatial estate. After going through security we walked up to the residence of the Ambassador. The Bush administration recently appointed a new ambassador, after 18 months of not having one, so we met the acting ambassador, Dr. William A. Stanton. We all sat down inside this beautiful house and had a nice discussion with Dr. Stanton and two of his colleagues. After that we had a time for tea and snacks before seeing a brief tour of the downstairs portion of the house. Now that there is a new ambassador appointed, Dr. Stanton is heading to Seoul, Korea as the number two man there in that embassy. Needless to say, he has lots of work to do there! We all had our pictures taken with him and also a group photo. I don’t have those photos because we weren’t allowed to have camera inside the embassy, so when I get the picture, I’ll post it here.