Oakland Mayor Jean Quan is going to Washington.

The the city's new leader was invited by President Barack Obama's office to attend a state dinner for China's president Hu Jintao in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, Jan. 19. Quan said she plans to take interim San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee as her date.

"I'm very honored," she said of the invitation. "And if I get a chance, I'm going to ask (Obama) about our pandas."

Quan said she received a phone call on Tuesday from the White House asking if she received her invitation in the mail.

"All I know is that I got this frantic call early in the morning, clearly on East Coast time saying, 'Did you get our invitation to our state dinner?'" Quan said. "And I'm like, state dinner? It (the invitation) hadn't arrived yet." It did arrive later that day in the mail.

Quan said her husband is not attending the event because he didn't want to leave his patients.

Quan, who is good friends with Lee, said the White House may have not known about Lee being selected as interim mayor of San Francisco when they issued the invitations. Quan said that she found the dinner invitation to be quite unexpected.

"I think they were probably looking around and saying 'Oh, maybe we should have some prominent Chinese Americans, isn't there some new Chinese American mayor or something?''"Quan joked.

Quan has been to the White House, but she's never formally met a U.S. president before.

"I've been to the West Wing, I've never been (at the White House) for dinner," Quan said. "I (met the president) in a group of people where he's gone by and like, 'Hi everybody.' at some receptions, but no, I've never gotten to shake his hand and stand in the receiving line. So, we're pretty excited."

Quan said she won't have to go out and purchase a formal outfit for the White House dinner.

"Oh, I have some things" she said. "I actually realized that I'll have to spend some time this weekend choosing clothes. Normally, I just throw a few suits in a bag and run."

In other mayoral news, Quan discussed her recent staff appointments during a press conference today, including the ongoing selection of city manager. This week Quan's  office put out a recruitment brochure for the nationwide search for city administrator. And, Quan said the process has been slow going, hampered, in part, by the recent winter holidays.

"We're hoping to have a sizable number of people to interview by, maybe, the first week of February," Quan said. "But, I don't know if we've made much progress yet. We'll see."