Now that I’ve recovered from my Obama experience, I guess its time for an update on everything else that’s been going down here in DC. I’m currently just enjoying the end of my very first ridiculously lazy weekend while being here. I’m not gonna lie, it feels good. I think I’ve finally reached the point of not feeling guilty by taking a day completely off…there is just so much to see and do here that any day I don’t take advantage of seems to be almost a disgrace. But not anymore folks, I am announcing my complete waste of a Sunday with pride! WOOOO!! Plus, I’ve been sick these last two days so the large amount of ingested Nyquil has also made it a little difficult to conduct any public appearances.
Anyways, there have been quite a few interesting things happening this last little while, for example the TWC International Festival. It included a table from pretty much every country that has students participating in TWC (Chile, Venezuela, Mexico, China, South Korea, etc). Of course, Andrew (one of the other Canadians interning here) and I represented Canada quite well, if I may say so. We even had those delicious maple flavored cookies, and made passerbys play quarter hockey. Good times. We also had to make a presentation about our country, so we kept it short and sweet by showcasing our bilingual packaging. Sounds pretty lame I know, but trust me, it was funny…we thought it was anyways. Also, there was FREE FOOD from all over the world, and it was on a Friday night so a bunch of us were able to continue our international-ness afterwards at a Chilean friends’ apartment – and by international-ness I’m pretty much referring to Chilean wine and salsa dancing.
Andrew and I just chillin' with our maple cookies at the Canada table
Also last weekend was my brother and friend’s last night visiting. Conveniently it happened to be the day that two other friends came into town from South Carolina for their spring break. We were all able to have a really awesome dinner at their parents’ house on the Navy Base….followed by some Trivial Pursuit and pub-hopping. It was a great night, and I was able to send off my brother and Jason the next day knowing they had a good time.
One of the most random things I’ve done in the last little while was join my friends and their parents on a day trip out to West Virginia. We ended up at the Charlestown Horse Races…not exactly an event I had pictured while planning my trip to DC, but so awesome. Driving through West Virginia was pretty weird, I’m not gonna lie. Some of the conditions the people were living in were not cool. The landscape was amazing, though, with the mountains and forest…I would love to drive through the area in the fall when the leaves are changing.
I didn’t win much at the races, not that I expected to; but I did think I was pretty clever by buying my bets in quarters, and then when I won I would get it back in dollar bills (plus the extra average 40 cents that I won). Pretty much I used the betting as kind of a reverse change machine, which completely bit me in the ass the next day when I went to do laundry, and had to make an hour trek around Bethesda trying to work up enough quarters for the machine. Charlestown Races definitely got the last laugh.
With my South Carolina peeps, Frank & Eric, at the CharlestownRaces (with our winning bets, of course)
Last Monday we had several different speakers with TWC. One of them was from the Woodrow Wilson Centre and discussed globalization. I really enjoyed his talk and he left a lot of time for questions, so I was able to get some in, which is always a plus. We also had another Presidential Lecture Series in the afternoon at the Department of the Interior. This one was about the Iraq war and US strategies. Compared to the first lecture we had a few weeks ago about China-US Relations, I preferred this one. I’m not gonna lie though, depending on your interests, it seems like you can get a whole lot out of these lectures, or very little. I’m feeling on the very little end at this point seeing as pretty much all of my interest and knowledge lies in Latin American/Western Hemisphere issues, which have yet to be addressed. I honestly don’t even feel like I have enough base knowledge about China or Iraq to deserve such a lecture from super important people who are masters on the issues. I’m hoping the third and final Presidential Lecture will be a bit more towards my interests.
My class and internship this past week both went really well. We are starting to prepare for our midterm, which will be next Monday; it will bean oral exam, which I’ve never had before so I’m hoping it will be alright. All week at my internship I worked on an article for the NAFTAWorks newsletter that is put out monthly by my department. The article is on air cargo/logistics in Mexico and how currently there are many improvements being done. Sounds a little boring upon first hearing about it (which is also what I thought), but after researching and learning more about it, it is actually very interesting. This seems to be the theme with my assignments at the NAFTA desk…not all of them, but many of them sound very daunting at the start, and by the end very interesting. I find myself still keeping up to date on my own time on issues that I was working on at the beginning of the semester. I emailed my article to my supervisor on Friday before leaving work, so I’m hoping that on Tuesday I can get some good reviews back from him.
I was able to spend a lot of time with my friends visiting from South Carolina all week, and we had some pretty good adventures. We went to RiRa (my favorite pub in Bethesda) on Tuesday night for quiz night, which was pretty intense. There were about 8 rounds of pretty tough questions…and we didn’t come out as winners. My roommate and I have decided to make it a regular outing so we’re gonna brush up on the Jeopardy and random facts to reach our goal of winning before I leave.
We also went to a Washington Wizards game on Friday night. The tickets were only $11 (on sale as an “Economic Stimulus Package” which I thought was kind of funny), and the stadium was definitely not as full as it is, for example, at a Calgary Flames game, so we were able to move down closer (to at least the $20 seats). The Wizards didn’t win, but they were only down by two at one point which I guess is kind of a big deal when playing the Magic…so it got a little rowdy for a while. My favorite part was the mascot “G-Whiz”. I thought it was clever. I also enjoyed the three of us doing the robot in an attempt to make it on the jumbotron, but alas, it just wasn’t our time to shine.
Now I’m back to the regular “no visitors” mode for a while, so I’m gonna try to hit up a few more conferences and catch up on some reading. There is one on Tuesday I’m planning on attending about Guantanamo Bay detainees. Should be interesting. I don’t have much else planned for the week, so I have no promises that my next blog will be compelling…but that also means it won’t be so long.
For those of you who powered through and read this entire thing…I salute you.
Paz amigos!
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