Michelle Obama to DC: Getting to Know You
By DARLENE SUPERVILLE
Associated Press Writer

AP Photo/Evan Vucci
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Michelle Obama said it: Washington is her home now and she wants to get to know it. She is making the rounds, meeting federal workers at Cabinet departments, reading to children, chatting with teens, touring a neighborhood health center, dropping in at Howard University and enjoying family night at the Kennedy Center. She's even splashed across the cover of the March issue of Vogue, with a headline that proclaims her "The First Lady the World's Been Waiting For."
That was just the first two weeks of February.
The first lady who had seemed to suggest she'd take her time settling in to her new role is off to a fast start - like a cannonball, in the words of Letitia Baldrige, who served as social secretary to Jacqueline Kennedy.
"We were taught that you have to get to know the community that you're in, and you have to be a part of that community, you have to get to know it in order to, you know, actively engage in it," Mrs. Obama told a teenager at Mary's Center, a community health center in the Adams Morgan neighborhood, who asked why she was visiting.
"And D.C. is our community now. It's our home," she said.
Her trips outside the gated White House compound serve several purposes, including giving her a chance to learn about the complexities of a city she decided against relocating to after Barack Obama became a senator in 2005.
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