The weekend of my twenty-first birthday, I didn’t do much productive.

And that’s not because I spent the entire time drunk. I really didn’t. I went out the night of my actual birthday (which, miraculously, was a Friday night), and the rest of the time, I was mostly sober. I got a mimosa at Sunday brunch just because I could, and otherwise, I was completely tame.

But nonetheless, I didn’t really do anything productive — I didn’t do much homework (not that I had much during my DC semester), I didn’t work on any scholarship applications, I didn’t study for the LSAT. For once, I actually went out and had fun.

It took me until November for me to find friends to really hang out with in DC. The Notre Dame cohort was small; only about 17 people, and for a variety of unimportant reasons, it took me a while to connect with any of them. Despite spending every Thursday together in class for the entirety of September and October, and despite everyone being very friendly to me, it still took two months for me to find my crowd.

The turning point was the weekend of my 21st birthday. I invited everyone out for dinner to celebrate (not just my birthday — there were a few other people whose 21st birthdays were around the same time as mine), and something just clicked. After that, I went out to the Nats parade the following day with some people, and then I went to a café that evening to study with someone, and the following day, I went to brunch with the same group of girls.

If you’ll remember, I had the same thing happen to me in Rome over the summer. I spent several weeks being bored and lonely before I made a solid group of friends to hang out with, and it wasn’t until literally days before it was time for me to leave for good that I made friends with the people I was living with. It seems that I always manage to make friends wherever I go, it just sometimes takes a while.

That’s about it for today. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one with more updates on my life this semester in Washington, DC. Don’t forget to check me out on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Bloglovin, Twitter, and Tumblr! For business inquiries, shoot me an email at lensembledujour@gmail.com!

Jacket: Thrift (Goodwill)

Dress: Francesca’s