The internship has gotten much better since my first few days, and this past week I was working on some articles for the monthly NAFTA newsletter my department sends out. There has been some pretty interesting topics and I appear to be retaining random facts of Mexican imports/exports from some of my work: for example, South Carolina is the top exporting state of film cameras to Mexico. Who knew? And who remembers that? Apparently I do.
I've also been going out for lunch a lot with some other interns at the embassy. They have been really great at helping me with my Spanish, and want to practice their English too, so it works out well. It is getting pretty expensive going out for lunch so much, but being at the embassy in particular I feel like its necessary. The Mexican people (from my point of view anyways) are very interested in mingling with coworkers and getting to know them, and lunch is a very important part of the work day because of it. We get two hours for lunch, which is AWESOME, and means that I may actually go home knowing some people on a deeper level in comparison to the usual 1 hour max, eat at your desk and become bitter towards your job/life approach.
In addition to my internship hours, I've been going to a few conferences. One that I attended today was about the development gap between the US and Latin America. It was based on a book by Francis Fukuyama called "The Fallen," and he was one of the speakers. I swear he is probably one of the smartest people I've ever heard talk and was pretty amazing. The auditorium was packed full, but YAY there was still enough free lunch for all of us. But aside from the lunch it was a really good conference. I've enjoyed all the events I've been to so far at the CATO Institute, and am actually heading to another tomorrow on the drug problems of Mexico and the relations with the US.
Besides the internship and conferences and such, everything else is also going really well in DC. The long weekend was great, and I spent all day Saturday sightseeing with American Sarah who's in my program (she's known as American Sarah and I'm Canadian Sarah--for obvious reasons. Represent). We went up the Washington Monument and then to the Holocaust Museum on Saturday, and then wandered around Alexandria, VA on Monday. I figured the Holocaust Museum would be pretty empty on Valentine's Day considering the mood, but the line was still pretty long. It is such a great museum I couldn't believe it.
Just happy to be here...
View from the top of the Washington Monument. The WWII Memorialand the Lincoln Memorial
As for Sunday, I ended up going to visit some friends' parents who live here in DC. They live on the naval base so it was a really cool experience to get a tour from them of the area. We're not too big on the whole military, navy thing up in Canada, if you haven't noticed, so it was definitely all new to me. And a home cooked meal was also much appreciated as I seem to be living off of a lot of cereal and ham sandwiches at this point.
This weekend I've got a few plans, including crashing a Travel Expo that's being held in DC. It's basically a fair with a bunch of travel/tourism companies sitting at booths, and people come and plan their trips. Instead, I'm going to go with a handful of resumes and see if I can maybe get a lead on a possible job. I may get kicked out, as the tickets specifically say SOLICITING OF EXHIBITORS IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED...but hey, desperate times call for desperate measures. As long as it doesn't lead to arrest followed by deportation, I'm up for a healthy kick out.
Until next time, paz.
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