Washington, DC in the Cold

Before I ever stepped foot in Washington, D.C. numerous warnings used to hit my Facebook feed. “Oh, don’t go there — there’s so much crime!” “Washington has some scary neighborhoods.” When I taught in China, there was a popular exercise I did with students when I assigned groups an American city and they presented which monuments they wanted to see and how much they planned to spend on this once in a lifetime vacation to the United States.