It’s starting to feel like the period of arrival, and all the messiness that entails, is coming to an end. I’ve had a home for a week, I have a mattress arriving Tuesday, I have some clothes hanging on a clothes rack, a walked six blocks in the stifling heat with my new desk (it’s a card table. I won’t pretend it was some Herculean feat—just a little bit of a work. It’s a heavy card table.) I have a bookshelf, on which I have books stacks. All in all, my new home is starting to resemble a home, and not a temporary stopping place. I feel very lucky in the things I’ve picked up secondhand so far. By the time I get to Ikea next weekend (there is a real sense of relief when you get to a new country and the Ikea catalogue has all the same old items in it… some people might feel this way about a Big Mac, but for me it’s good old build-it-yourself-with-an-Allen-key furniture) I’m not sure there’ll be much left to do. And I finally bought some stamps, so I’ve embarked on my general letter-writing crusade.

A few days ago I went to the National Portrait Gallery—it felt like I was really taking a bit of a sprint through it. I was finding out what was there permanently to come back to later, and also taking a bit more time with a couple of temporary exhibitions ending very soon—including an exhibition of works from the British National Portrait Gallery. I found myself face-to-face with the John Singer Sargent portrait of Henry James that I’ve seen reproduced so often in my books. It’s always strangely moving when I have those experiences, finding myself suddenly in front of a painting I’ve known but never seen, and didn’t expect to here. In Firenze, it was the Bronzino portrait of Lucretia Panciatichi that James scholars have identified as that which Milly Theale encounters at Matcham. Here it was the master himself. I suppose it would be churlish in this instance to be disappointed that the Bronte portrait wasn’t also in DC—I’ve wanted to see that painting (that’s been through so much…) in person for years.

I have ventured out to a few farmers’ markets in the past few days—bought locally grown green tomatoes in Wednesday at Rose Park, and today I went to the larger Eastern Market. I plan to go to Dupont tomorrow—once I’ve had a chance to see them all, I can decide which will be the best to shop at.

Last night had a few people over—an impromptu evening where, no-one will be surprised to learn, I fed a few of my “orphans.” Gia, another Australian girl, came around with some cheese and crackers, as I’d bought a bottle of wine at Trader Joe’s earlier. Then Aga, a Polish girl here for a PhD in Economics, arrived and announced she was hungry. I was glad of a chance to get to feel more at home in the kitchen, and as I’ve already made a pesto a few days before, I made ravioli with pesto, cherry tomatoes, eggplant and spinach for us three. Soon after that Maryléne, a French exchange student who’s been staying with me while looking for a place, arrived home and joined in the cheese eating. Finally Sheena and Jeannine showed up as well. It was a nice, though relatively quiet, night. Gia, Aga and Jeannine went onto a party that was starting up at 10.30, while I went to do a little reading and then crashed.