Thai Temple, Teepee and Caged Houses...

What do you do when you are utterly homeless and desperate for a place? Search for options. Now these were options that we were honestly (to our hearts) given. We are safe to report that we are no longer struck with that ill-fate and no longer desperate enough to listen to anymore advices.

Option 1 - Use Craigslist.
The past two weeks have been an exciting time searching for accommodation. During our search, we have been touring around houses all over and some have been been very uninviting to say the least. A short description of what was 'cute little house in the suburbs with den with a view' turned out to be 'horrible, caged window flat above basement with a small 2m by 1.5m shelter overlooking a row of caged houses'.

Despite being qualified and trained in Karate and Taekwondo, both of us fled holding on tight to our lives. (no photos to show.. needless to say, we didn't even dare bring out our camera and heavily concerned that possibility of doing so would have resulted in a tug-of-war)

Second option - try living in a Thai temple in Washington DC should all fail.

A Thai lady at the World Bank had kindly suggested this when I told her that I had checked out of the hotel with no further options. You should have seen Jorge's face when I introduced the possibility of him sleeping on a wooden floor and waking up at 5 in the morning to do prayers. :) Personally, I would have done so in less than a heart's beat, just to see how the experience would have turned out for him. Suffice to say, the early morning meditation classes and vegetation meals were not enough to entice Jorge ..

Third option - Whilst site seeing, we found a cute Native American Teepee by the Capital.

Eversince childhood, I had been very fond of the Native Americans whilst watching movies about their adventures, and always wanted to try out a Teepee. I had finally got my break!! It even came along with a portable loo!!


'Picky Portugese' didn't like it. This was not going to hold by Jorge's ever high standard so we finally moved to a more civilised setting. Enter 1500 Massachusetts' Avenue...



Hurray, a home at least till the end of our internship. Our place comes with a fantastic view of the city too!! Also, amazingly enough, we found more Portuguese and World Bank folks living in the building.

Homeless in DC

£28k of MBA tuition fees, nine months of intensive drudging through piles of MBA workload and five years of prior work experience does not provide you with security! I had hoped that it would :)

Granted that we will be here for only six weeks, searching for a home has proven more difficult than anticipated. Never in a million years did I dream that I would be in Washington DC doing an internship at the World Bank let alone bear the thought of sharing a bridge with another homeless. The thought of waking up in the morning to work and then returning to a newspaper laid bed was severely daunting!

We had started our search from UK and had thought that everything could be sorted from abroad. Touring through Craigslist, we looked at accommodation in places like Foggy Bottom, Dupont Circle, Thomas Circle and Adams Morgan. (From the list, I really liked the novelty of having Foggy Bottom in my list of previous addresses) Nothing turned out unfortunately and as a temporary measure, we booked ourselves into a hotel just four blocks from the World Bank. It was the best that we could do so we just decided to take it from there.

Day 1 - We checked into the hotel after our eight hour flight. After touring around a whole list of houses and a Safeway, we returned back without a home but bagful of groceries to try out in the kitchenette made available in the hotel. In the cupboard, there was one massive pot, 2 tea spoons and no plates. There wasn’t really much but our creativity was still at high after a recent MBA Creativity Workshop, so we made do ...

Welcome to American food ala hotel cooking - a definite far cry from the food served in the colleges at the University of Cambridge.

Day 2 – in the hotel but food enjoyed in a restaurant outside. We learnt our lesson!! :)

Day 3 – “D Day” - It was our last day in the hotel as there were no more rooms available for the 4^th of July. I can’t believe we left for work with literally no accommodation! Our suitcases were packed and ready to find home at the World Bank if needed.