Neighbors

My husband and I live in a super-cute (my own bias, although many people have told me this) house in a "typical" MD neighborhood in the Metropolitan area of Washington, DC. To me, "DC Metro" means that a lot of its residents either work in Washington, DC or are directly or indirectly affected by the bustling and relatively stable economy of DC. Our house was built in 1935, and it has a "twin house" caddy corner to it because, as the lore goes, two sisters had these houses built around the same time. The twin houses do have a similar style. To me they're kind of in between Victorian and Cape Cod in architectural style. The roof slopes sharply in the 2nd floor rooms, and there are plenty of windows. Unlike Victorian homes, the house doesn't have a lot of embellishment. The rooms are spacious and bright.  

We can use public transportation (and walking) to get to work and back. There are some tasty restaurants around (especially of Asian and Latin American cuisines), and there are people from all economic and ethnic backgrounds. A neighbor couple invited us over to their house on Christmas Day. I thought it was so kind of them to open their house to others, especially "strangers," on a family holiday. Come to find out, we share a lot in common. The husband is Chilean and the wife is from California, just like us. The husband has been in the US for 12 years, just like my husband. Their other guests were also mostly from Latin America, and we spoke a blend of Spanish and English as we talked about our jobs in the international and academic fields, and places in Latin America that we have visited. There was even another woman that attended the same graduate school as me, but several years earlier. 

Our neighbors have origins in the Middle East, Africa, Europe, Latin America, and Asia. The houses immediately surrounding us have folks from India, Iran, Togo, and Chile. Just a typical MD neighborhood.