Week Five: Down to the Wire

This was my last week of my internship.  By this afternoon, I will be back in my hometown with two weeks before moving into law school and what is sure to be "1L" of a year (sorry for the terrible pun).

On Tuesday, we had a ton of spare time because it's the last week of our internship and because the Senate is in recess.  So, we wandered over to the Dirksen Senate gift shop.  Apparently, there is no sales tax there so we had some fun.  They had a lot of random and cool stuff, but at the end of the trip, I walked out with some postcards, a Senate key chain, and a Senate shot glass (original, I know).  

On Wednesday, I woke up really early to go to the State Department's Authentication Office to get one of my high school friend's application to teach English abroad apostilled.  I got there really early, but the office was already full.  There was another person about my age there getting her teaching application apostilled too, but most of the other people there were people who are paid to get documents authenticated on behalf of private clients who don't feel like doing this themselves.  I only had the one document to take care of for my friend so I was done shortly after they started seeing people at the counter.  I was able to catch the Circulator Bus back to work and made it only 15 minutes late.  Because I got up so early to get to the metro, I also realized that the Capitol complex looks really beautiful with the sun coming up in the early morning around 6:00am.  I met up with another fellow for lunch in one of the House cafeterias and it was nice to chat about law school and everything.  

After work, the interns from my office and I went to McDonalds for dinner and then to the Smurfs movie at Chinatown (by the way, that McDonalds is by far the shadiest McDonalds ever - the cops had to stand inside & outside the restaurant).  During our internship, one of the interns always would talk about her food cravings and one day she wanted McDonalds so she brought back a Happy Meal with a smurf toy in it.  The smurfs thing caught on in our little intern office and we all had our own smurfs.  The movie was obviously not that great, but it did explain why certain smurf toys that we each had were doing what they were doing.  It was also good to be able to see people relaxing a bit outside of work.

Since this was my last week in DC before going back to start law school, I met up with my former organization for a happy hour at Ozio's.  It's a pretty cool place with nice lounge areas inside and a lounge/bar/dance floor on the rooftop.  We had a whole section reserved for our group on the roof.  We had fun but when the DJ decided that after three requests from our group (we were the only ones dancing too) that he would not play our "theme" song, "Black and Yellow" by Wix Khalifa, we left.  However, we learned that Moby Dick's Kabob House closes really early at night.  We ended up wandering a few blocks to a new place called Friends Kabob which was just as good and open late.

Friday, August 12, was our last day of the internship. Early this morning, like 6:00am, I met up on the Capitol complex with another intern that lived nearby so that we could take pictures of the buildings in the morning when they look really pretty with the morning sun.  At 6:00am, it was already 70 degrees.  It was nice though because no one was around aside from a few security guards.


In the afternoon, I met up with another fellow and one of our friends to give a tour of the Capitol building.  It was cool because the other fellow worked with a House office and I was with the Senate so our friend got both sides of the tour.  We were able to go pretty much everywhere, including the hideaway office.  That afternoon, four other interns and I took our smurfs and did a Capitol Hill tour for ourselves and to take pictures.  A few times, tourists saw us and asked if we were part of the Cult of the Smurf.


After work, I went home to change and then headed over to E Street Cinema, a really cool movie theatre that plays a unique film selection, to see "The Devil's Double."  The film is based on a true story but also highly fictionalized with more "Hollywood" added to it, but was a really interesting, graphic story about Udday Hussein's body double.


After the film, I headed back to Clarendon to go to Liberty Tavern and Clarendon Ballroom for the last time (for this trip) in DC.  I even got to practice more Spanish with someone we met at the bar.  After we left the club, I hopped on the metro back to Capitol South to go home and pack up all of my stuff.  I had done part of the checkout before I left so I really just had to clean the room and throw things back into the suitcase.  I finished packing around 4:00am.  One of my friends in the building was flying out the same day I was but we had different flight times (her cab left at 6:00am), so right before her cab left, she stopped by my room to say goodbye.

When I took my cab (an EnviroCab - if I can, I prefer to take a hybrid cab), the driver and I talked a bit about DC and then got to talking about soccer and the Barçelona - Manchester United game from a few weeks ago.  He said that the entire stadium was packed for the game so he and his friends had to watch from a tv in a bar.  We started talking about club soccer teams and when I was talking about Real Madrid, he asked if I was part Spanish, which made my day (and made for a larger tip even though there's no tipping cab drivers in Spain).  Even though I am really excited to go back home to see family and friends and do some kayacking and play some tennis, I'm going to miss DC.  But, it feels like I'll be returning soon anyway.

Read more »

Posted in: Capitol Hill,English,J-Mad,Smurf,Washington DC

Week Four: Tours and More, Intern Extraordinaire

I kicked off the week by giving one of my former coworkers and her little brother who was visiting a private Capitol Tour.  Unfortunately, we could not get the key to the special hideaway office but we did ride the train with John McCain from the Russell Senate Building to the Capitol Visitors Center.  He walks really fast and is a lot taller than I thought he would be.  I also gave a tour for two of my friends in my building who moved out this week.  Another friend from my building works down the hall from my office, so the two of us gave a tour to the two of them.  It was kind of cool to give the tour with someone from another office because they tell us different things so she knew some things that I didn't know, like cat prints in the cement outside the old Supreme Court room.  

It's the middle of the fourth week of our five week internship and we are just now meeting the Senator for whom we have been working for free for the last three weeks.  Based on the articles that we copy on a daily basis that mention the senator, we learned that the senator's favorite kind of dessert is a plain chocolate chip cookie.  So, all of us interns decided to bake cookies to bring in for when we eat lunch with the senator but when we passed around the plate, the senator was the only one who didn't take a cookie.  Nooo!

At the lunch meeting, we had the opportunity to ask the senator questions.  The other interns were a little shy with asking questions so I asked two that related to foreign policy.  After I asked the second question, the senator said, "So, you're the foreign policy kid?"  I replied "yes," and the senator asked me, "so, then what is the capital of Sierra Leone?"  I replied, "Freetown."  I think the senator was a little surprised when I replied with the answer off the top of my head, but the senator explained that as a child, the siblings would ask their father that question whenever the father started going on and on about foreign policy stuff.  Then the senator answered my question.  

After the lunch meeting, I sorted mail with another intern.  Sorting constituent mail is always an interesting job because people send all kinds of things in.  Some people send in the normal things like petitions, letters about legislation or specific issues, or requests for military academy nominations, but there is a sizable number of people who just send in crazy stuff.  Like the random lady who sent in copies of her divorce settlement, including all of the pleadings, with a five page letter about how she basically did not like the judge's decision and wants her senators to do something about it (I'm sorry, lady, that you're going through a rough divorce, I really am, but honestly, what do you really think a senator's office can do about your situation?).  We also get a lot of letters from angry people who are venting in often less than coherent ways about their dissatisfaction with either their representative or the government as a whole.  Since we have to categorize mail to give to the staff members who handle each issue, the "government reform" category is often filled with the letters that we don't know what to do with.  So today, we received my all-time favorite letter: "BIG RICH FAT CATS DON'T DESERVE TAX BREAKS.  THEY PARTY, PLAY GOLF, AND TRAVEL A LOT."  And into the "government reform" pile that letter went.  And yes, it was written in all capital letters.

On Thursday, I got to go to an event hosted by my former organization close to the Hill.  They had a great turnout and it was great to be able to catch up with former co-workers there.  It was also nice to be able to give myself a self-assigned project that I actually wanted to write up and thought there was a need to write something up for it.  No idea if anyone back in the personal office will actually read it or not, but at least it's been passed along, I guess.  In the afternoon back at the senate office, two of the staff members who have been there for a while talked with us about what they do and what they like about working on Capitol Hill.  It was interesting and they certainly like their jobs, but I don't know if I could handle the frustration of working really hard on all of these important issues that I care deeply about only to watch any potential to make progress on them fall apart because of congressional bickering.  After work, I went to Adam's Morgan for a happy hour at Jack Rose Dining Saloon with my former organization.  It was great to be able to spend time catching up with everyone and meet new interns and fellows.  Later on in the evening, the group split up and I went with about half of the group to Lucky Bar near Dupont.

On Friday, we kept it pretty chill at work but a group of us from the office went to a free evening show at the Kennedy Center.  They have weekly shows that are free to the public on a first come first serve basis and today, the show was a musical performance by an Afro-Colombian group, Sexteto Tabala, whose main singer was 70 years old.  The group was pretty good though and they had a lot of people dancing in the front.

Read more »

Posted in: Capitol Hill,English,J-Mad,Washington DC

Week One: Summer Internship in the District

After spending a few months back home, I flew back to Washington, D.C. on July 9th in order to start another internship for the summer.  I worked out a much better housing situation this time around (YAY) but since that room didn't open up for another day, I spent the weekend crashing on a friend's couch in Columbia Heights.  It was warm in the spring but July in DC is h-o-t and h-u-m-i-d.  We went out to a bar that night and met up with more people from MSU.  The highlight was the discovery that fried pickles are actually amazing despite how weird it might sound.  The next day, we went over to Chinatown Coffee (a pretty neat place where the cash register is an iPad) to do some work via free wifi then over to the National Portrait Gallery's courtyard to listen to the Roosevelt Institution's budget proposal.  We also went out to Silver Springs, MD to another friend's apartment to chill in the rooftop swimming pool.  That night, we went to a Silver Springs bar called Quarry House Tavern for their Sunday Night team trivia.  It was pretty fun.

Monday, July 11th, was my first day starting the internship on Capitol Hill with my state senator's office.  There were 7 other interns, all college undergraduates.  I was lucky when they assigned us Legislative Assistants (LAs) to work with because I got placed with the one who handles foreign policy and defense issues (among several other topics).  The staff seems nice and we jumped right into exploring the underground tunnels between the buildings of the Capitol complex.  I was able to drop my stuff off at the new housing before going into the office and the location is great - literally right next to Capitol Hill with air conditioning that is constantly set to "blizzard" and already is a dream compared to the place in the spring.  I met some people in my new building and after dinner, we all went over to Eastern Market and ended up at Good Stuff Eatery (the best burger & shake joint in the city - don't worry, I didn't forget that Ben's Chili Bowl is the best burger/dog/chili joint in the city).

Our second day of work kicked off with lots of seminars & orientation in the morning for the Congressional Research Service (CRS).  It's pretty amazing the resources that are available to people on the Hill.  The CRS issues non-partisan reports with good stats and figures on basically every topic ever and if, by some odd chance, there isn't already a report, their professional researchers/know-it-alls will get to work to help you with something good.  After work, I went to meet up with a friend from Spain at this amazing, authentic Spanish restaurant on 14th & Church called Estadio.  For the first time in a year, I was actually able to find my favorite Spanish drink, tinto de verano (it's like sangria, but more amazing) and authentic patatas bravas. And just to add to the place, there is even a huge mural of a shirtless Cristiano Renaldo in the women's bathroom (so this is a place for Madrilistas and not those annoying Barça fans, hahaha) as well as a mural of the 2010 Spanish National World Cup team.  

After work on the following day, I walked with a friend around the Capitol buildings and then all the way down the mall to the memorials and we ended up at the Lincoln Memorial.  We ended up walking about 5 miles from where we started.  Also, H.H. XIV Dalai Lama is in DC right now for the Kalachakra but the student "discount" tickets were about $450 for the week, so unfortunately, no nirvana for me this time.

The week went by pretty quickly and Thursday was there before I knew it.  After checking in with our supervisor, my project partner and I got good feedback that we were on track with our project that's due by Friday of our first week.  I signed up for a ZipCar membership so that my friend and I can get to a Lil Wayne concert, since neither of us have cars here and it's about an hour drive each way.  At least in DC, ZipCar has some really nice options, depending how much you're willing to pay per hour.  We went with the Honda Civic but before the membership expires, I want to try out the Mini Cooper, an Audi A3, and the BMW 328 xi.  

On Friday, July 15th, we finished our memo project 3 minutes before the end of the day, after proof reading and standardizing the formatting for our separate sections.  After work, I went over to Clarendon in Arlington, VA, on the orange line and checked out Liberty Tavern, which is a pretty cool place.  Clarendon in general is pretty awesome.  There are brand new, nice apartments right next to the metro and there are a lot of young people that live there.  The neighborhood is hopping all the time, the nightlife is good, and most importantly, the cost of living is much cheaper because sales tax is only 5%, compared to DC's 10% on everything, including food (jerks).  This is pretty much what Arlington is like:

For the weekend, I went to the Smithsonian Zoo in Adam's Morgan.  The zoo was pretty sweet, although not many of the animals for the Asia exhibits were out.  The zoo only had one tiger, but there were cheetahs that kept coming close as well as komodo dragons, gorillas, orangutans, and double-wattled cassowarys (which I love because of the name).

On Saturday night, my friend and I took the ZipCar we rented earlier in the week to Virginia for the Lil Wayne concert.  We got there just in time to park next to all of the limousines and see Rick Ross finish his opening act.  After the crew took down his set, Lil Wayne came on.  I really didn't listen to any of his music prior to this past week, but who can say no to a GroupOn deal for $10 rap concert tickets?  It was actually a really fun concert and we ended up with seats that were even better than we were expecting.  

On Sunday of my first week back in DC, I went and explored Georgetown.  We first headed over to the Old Stone House, the oldest building still standing in Washington, DC.  Unfortunately, there wasn't a tour, but I was surprised how big the house is on the inside, because it looks so small from the outside.  After the house, we walked down to Georgetown University's campus, which is beautiful, and then to The Tombs bars and the stairs where "The Exorcist" was filmed.  Those stairs were really steep.  To get out of the heat, we went to the AMC theatre by the water to see the final Harry Potter movie, which was pretty great.  After the movie, we headed up the street to Baked & Wired, this really good cupcake place (better than Georgetown Cupcake and with a much shorter line).

Read more »

Posted in: Ben's Chili Bowl,Capitol Hill,Clarendon,Congressional Research Service,CRS,Dalai Lama,Eastern Market,English,Georgetown,Good Stuff Eatery,J-Mad,Lil Wayne,Old Stone House,Rick Ross,Washington DC,ZipCar

April Adventures

Since the last post, April took off with a flying start and was a very busy, final month in DC. One of my friends from New York City came down to DC for the Cherry Blossom Festival. Luckily, there were still enough blossoms outside. We spent the weekend seeing all the different memorials and went to Tidal Basin area twice to see the blossoms. There was also a kite festival taking place on the National Mall by the Washington Monument.

On the final day that we went to Tidal Basin, we stopped by the Jefferson memorial. We happened to be there at the right time on the one not-rainy day that weekend, and there was a group setting up for a wedding. There were two guys with guitars under trees outside waiting for it to start. Because the bride and groom are not supposed to see each other that day until they are at the altar, the wedding party had set a privacy screen and a tiny plastic chair outside for the bride to stay behind until the wedding started.















On Tuesday, April 12, our Farsi conversation class decided to go to the E Street Cinema to catch one of the Iranian films playing in the Film Festival that month. We ended up seeing "Dog Sweat." It was a pretty interesting and well-made film. And definitely better than sitting in a classroom.

That Saturday, the weather was raining again, so I went to the one place that I knew was guaranteed to have good weather - the Botanical Gardens. The rooms there are very cool, especially the Jungle Exhibit. The jungle room has a tropical rain forest in it, and there is a catwalk up above so that you can walk around the perimeter of the exhibit at the canopy level and look down. From the Gardens, I went to walk around the Capitol Building and spent a bit of time in the Library of Congress. Now that I've got my nifty LOC library card, I was able to get inside the Thomas Jefferson main reading room through underground tunnels and get into the room's alcoves. It's pretty much the closest thing to a Beauty and the Beast library that I've seen in real life. I want it.

On Sunday, April 17, I met my cousin and we drove to the National Arboretum. It is so beautiful and there are very nice trails for walking, biking, and driving. There is a bonsai tree museum part that has trees from the late 1800s. There is also what looks like a temple sitting on the grassy hill. Those columns are actually from the portico of the Capitol Building that was taken down in 1958 in order to make the expansions on the building. The reflecting pool in front of the columns in the National Arboretum is made of marble taken from the old wall of the Senate wing of the Capitol Building when renovations were being made.After spending some time both walking and driving around the National Arboretum, we made our way over to Annapolis, Maryland. We crossed the 5 mile long Bay Bridge over the Chesapeake Bay to get a view of the water and then turned around and headed straight into downtown Annapolis. Our first stop was a quaint ice cream shop downtown by the marina and Naval Academy. We walked around the marina area for a little bit and found a statue of Alex Haley, author of Roots.
We then walked into the US Naval Academy (USNA) and strolled around the campus. We walked around past the really nice houses that are homes to the families of the Deans of the USNA. Past this area, the USNA has a gorgeous chapel and a huge courtyard that has a statue of the figurehead of the USS Delaware.
The USS Delaware was one of the first ships that the US Navy built. It was scuttled by Union troops during the Civil War to prevent the Confederate Army from using it. When the Union soldiers returned to the wreckage, they found that the ship's wooden figurehead had survived completely intact. The bronze cast statue of the figurehead is now a good luck symbol for students come exam time.On our way out of Annapolis, we passed St. Johns College. It was originally named King William's School, founded in 1696 in the Maryland colony, and officially chartered in 1784. It is obvious that the area surrounding this school is pretty old itself by the architectural styles of the houses and the narrow streets. We also passed the Maryland state capitol building, which apparently is pretty cool. If I get a chance to go back to Annapolis, then I will have to make sure to visit these places.

Read more »

Posted in: Annapolis,Botanical Gardens,Capitol Hill,Cherry Blossoms,English,J-Mad,Library of Congress,National Arboretum,Navy,Washington DC

Last Spring Days in the District

interior of the Old Post Office

With my internship coming to an end, I spent the last few weeks catching up on things I wanted to see and taking family to some sites. When some relatives came to visit in the last week of April, our first stop was the Old Post Office on Pennsylvania Avenue. We went up the bell tower and saw the bells (made to be in tune to the bells at Westminster Abby) and went to the top for a 360 degree view of the city. After the Post Office, we walked over to Archives to look at the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights. From here, we went to Good Stuff Eatery over in Eastern Market by the Hill for lunch. Our next stop was a tour through a congressional office of Capitol Hill.

The tour kicked off with a stop to the Capitol Visitors Center (CVC) where there is a replica of the statue above the rotunda. The statue dominates the interior of the CVC. After the video, we went through the tunnels connecting all of Capitol Hill and right past the underground shuttle that the representatives use to get to the floors for voting when they are in session. The Capitol Building was also home to the first location of the US Supreme Court before it moved to the present location. We also made stops at the old House and Senate floors before being granted passes to the present galleries.

There are statues throughout the hallways of the Capitol Building. Each state chooses two statues. The area in the rotunda is reserved for statues of presidents, with the exception of one unfinished statue depicting the unfinished struggle for women's rights and another of Martin Luther King, Jr. There are also several paintings and a mural in the rotunda. The paintings along the lower level were all made by the same artist who painted himself into every historical scene as either a man looking in the opposite direction of every other character or with his face on a woman's body. The mural going around the upper level of the rotunda appears as if it is 3D but in fact is just a flat painting. Approximately 70% of it was painted by an elderly artist, until he slipped on scaffolding and was hanging by his arms for 15 minutes before being rescued. Two other artists completed the mural.

Our next stop was over to Johnny's Half Shell restaurant for dinner. After some delicious seafood, we cabbed it over to the Lincoln and Vietnam memorials. My younger cousins were especially impressed with the Lincoln Memorial, dramatically reading the Gettysburg Address over and over.

The next day, we visited the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum as well as the Smithsonian Natural History Museum. We spent most of the day looking at the outer space, 1950s passenger plane, ocean, dinosaur, and weather exhibits. After a break from the museums, we went to Adams Morgan for dinner at Lebanese Taverna. We all enjoyed the delicious mezze dishes (sort of like tapas - basically, platters of food for everyone to share) along with a fantastic dessert. I will definitely be going there again.

On my relatives' last day in DC, we went to Ford's Theatre, the theatere where Abraham Lincoln was shot. Despite being closed for years and converted into an office building after the assasination, the theatre is now operated by the National Parks Service and has been fully restored. It still puts on plays in honor of Lincoln's appreciation of theatre and the arts. Peterson House, across the street from the theatre and the place where Lincoln died, is currently being rennovated so it was closed when we visited. After the theatre tour, we walked over to the Museum of American History to see the original Star Spangled Banner and several other exhibits.

Read more »

Posted in: Adams Morgan,Capitol Hill,Eastern Market,English,Ford's Theatre,J-Mad,Memorials,Washington DC

Kicking Off April

To kick off April, I met up with some friends and we took a mini-roadtrip out to Reston, VA, to visit Jackson's Restaurant, while another friend was working. The restaurant's food and drinks were amazing. After spending a while in Jackson's eating and waiting for our friend to finish his shift, we walked around Reston until we arrived at another local restaurant - Clyde's.

On Saturday, I took a trip to the Library of Congress to get my library card. Library cards are required in order to access different reading rooms in the Library of Congress' various buildings, including the main reading room in the Thomas Jefferson building. Since it was raining pretty heavily, I got some research done on ancient computers in the law reading room in the James Madison building (aw yeah, James Madison!).

After spending some time at the Library of Congress, I met my cousin at Union Station and we headed over into Eastern Market neighborhood for a quick dinner. We went to Good Stuff Eatery, a fun burger restaurant with fresh, cheap food and two burgers named after the Obamas. The restaurant also features weekday lunchtime specials of a burger, fries, and drink for $10. The food was some real good stuff and it is located right next to Capitol Hill.

We then went to Gallaudet University, federally established in 1864 for deaf and hard of hearing students. We had tickets to the University's annual dance show featuring the Gallaudet Dance Company. The dancers were from very diverse backgrounds and skill levels, but the show was amazing from beginning to end. Although the dancers spent a year preparing the numbers, they made the performances seem so smooth and effortless. After the show was over, we went to Dubliner Pub by Union Station, a small pub with pretty decent food and guitar music.

Sunday was Sizdah Bedar, so in keeping with tradition, I returned to the nearest park with running water - the Titanic memorial by the Potomac riverfront and tossed the plate of sabzeh into the river. The water wasn't really moving that day, so hopefully the sprouts have gotten somewhere by now.












Afterward, I headed over the National Aquarium, hoping to see some cool exhibits. The aquarium was really small, but it did have a fair collection of species considering the size. A few of the exhibits included freshwater fish that have been featured on Animal Planet's show, River Monsters with Jeremy Wade, specifically the Gar and American Snakehead fish. On my list of places to see (now that the weather is getting nicer) are the Smithsonian National Zoo and the Cherry Blossom festival.

Read more »

Posted in: Capitol Hill,English,J-Mad,Library of Congress,National Aquarium,Washington DC