Sunday 5/24 - Arrived in DC. Flight was nice, slept most of the way and read Angels and Demons the rest of the way. Still not done with it yet, I'm hoping I can find a cool park to sit down and finish it in. There were other Capital Scholars on my flight, so we split a couple of cabs to get to George Washington University where we would be staying for the next 8 weeks. Things about the dorm that I'm excited about: 2 bathrooms, full size refrigerator, spacious, 3rd floor, not smelly. All my roommates are cool, even if 2 of them are Republicans. Joaquin says I gotta try and turn them.
Monday 5/25 - Had the day off from activities because it was Memorial Day. My roommate Yazmin and I woke up early to go to Arlington Cemetery to see Obama speak. We got seated around 8:45 and then had to wait until 10:30 before the activities began. It was well worth the wait, and I'm glad I actually did something to celebrate Memorial Day instead of just laying out by the pool and eating hotdogs.
Tuesday 5/26 - We toured the CIA. The tour included the hallway to our conference/holding room and the CIA museum, which was actually really cool. It was funny because we had to be escorted to go to the bathroom (right across the hall) or the gift shop (conveniently located even closer). It was interesting to find out what the CIA actually does, and we got to talk to some ASU alumni about their current jobs with the CIA. Later that night, I went on a run with Todd and we ended up at the mall, and ran around the Lincoln Memorial up to the Washington Monument and back. Everything looks incredible illuminated at night, it's a totally different experience. The scenery here has inspired me to attempt to pick up running again (I'm starting a DC running club, and I brought my knee brace!).
Wednesday 5/27 - We toured the Department of State and the Department of Treasury, which was pretty cool. Except they didn't let us break for lunch. I'm convinced I'm somewhat hypoglycemic, and as soon as I walked into the Treasury I'm pretty sure the lights in there triggered a migraine since I hadn't eaten anything. So I had to sleep that of later that afternoon.
Thursday 5/28 - We went to the National Defense University to play a strategic game. It's silly to think about these people that just sit around and create "games" and play "games" all day. But the gist of it is that we were divided into 2 teams, USA and Mexico, and we were given a situation that we had to deal with. The situation was the growing violence of the drug cartels (which we managed to talk about at every tour, except the Treasury) and we had to come together and resolve the problem. Long story short, things got a little heated because of some instigating by the facilitator on team Mexico, but it was a lot of fun and I learned a lot.
Friday 5/29 - We went to Arlington, Maryland (pronounced Mary-land by our colonial tour guide) and got to meet with the Speaker of the House of Delegates of the Maryland legislature. They definitely have their priorities straight there, they managed to balance their budget and totally fund their public education system and have money set aside in a rainy day fund and haven't raised tuition in 4 years. Democrats do have quite an advantage though, out of 141 seats over 100 are Democrats. I had clam chowder by the bay and our waiter gave all the people who had never had oysters before oyster shooters (that included me). They were small plastic shot glasses filled with cocktail sauce and an oyster. This was probably one of the grossest experiences of my life, because I took all the cocktail sauce, and the oyster just slid down my throat, and the sauce was spicy and not tasty at all. But now I can say that I've tried oyster, but probably never again.
Saturday 5/30 - Went to go find my work, which is really close to a metro stop (I love the public transit here!) and my dorm is really close to a stop as well. Then we all were invited to the Alumni Association's softball game held at a park by the FDR Memorial. Free food and free entertainment is always good. I'm trying to learn how to network, I don't think I'm very good at it yet. Hopefully that will improve. They gave us all these cool Capital Scholars business cards, but I haven't given any out yet. But the FDR Memorial is my favorite memorial so far. It has all these impressive waterfalls, a statue of FDR and his dog, and all these FDR quotes everywhere. It's very modern, and it was very neat to walk through it all, because after every turn you expect it to be over, but there's something even better around the corner.
Sunday 5/31 - Some of us went to the National Zoo, saw a giant panda, some elephants, a hip-hop-opotomus, gorillas, other zoo animals. I've decided zoos are kind of depressing and not really that interesting, but it was something free to do. After the zoo we were really hungry, so we found the cheapest meal we could find, which was this weird place called California Tortilla which is totally Tex-Mex but a very weird place. Their soda machine said "A bad bub puts soda in his water cup," and had other strange stuff like that.
Monday 6/1 - Started work today! I was freaking out about being late because one of the trains on the metro had a mechanical failure at my stop, but the issue was soon resolved and I took a really really crowded train to my stop. It reminded me of being in Rome, except I wasn't as worried I'd be groped or have my purse stolen. Actually, lots of things about DC remind me of being in Rome, but maybe that's because they copied the Roman and Greek architecture here. Anyways work was fun, I got to watch the news and write a news brief for the previous day, then I was given a huge data entry assignment, then we stuffed envelopes. The day went by really quickly, which means that this week is going to be over before I know it, which means this summer will be over even sooner.
More work tomorrow. Every time I look at the clock I can't believe how late it is (it's 9:30 right now, but it feels so much earlier than that. I guess I still haven't acclimated to the time change).
The only thing that would make this absolutely perfect would be if I was getting paid. I'm still going to make a trip to H&M anyways.
Good night!
1 comment:
Yay yay yay! That is so exciting. You are working in the thick of the U.S. government!! Have a wonderful experience and keep blogging :)
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