Places I've Been So Far

I absolutely loved  this TV show & computer game! So I found this nifty little widget online where you can make a map of all the places that you've been.  I started filling mine out, and I've been to four of seven continents (awesome), but only 3% of the countries in the world.  I think Carmen San Diego would have hit 100% on the map.  Time to increase these stats and turn some more countries green!  Hopefully, I will get a chance to go to some new places during law school since the only cure for the travel bug is, you guessed it, to travel!  Here is the link to my map that appears below: Create your own travel map - TravBuddy Encontré un "widget" en el internet y con eso, puedes hacer un mapa...

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Posted in: Belgium,Canada,Countries Visited,Ecuador,English,Español,France,Germany,Italy,J-Mad,Japan,Liechtenstein,Morocco,Northern Ireland,Peru,Spain,Switzerland,Travel,United States,Vatican City

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...

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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,...

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

Week Three: In the Summer Intern Groove

I gave my first Capitol Hill tour this past Tuesday to the brother of one of the Senator's regional representatives from my hometown.  The tour went pretty well and I saw the senator that I am working for for the first time so far on this internship in the Lincoln Stairway in the Capitol Building.  I even got the senator to stop and talk to us for a second or two in the stairwell.  I also saw Lindsey Graham from South Carolina with his Diet Coke and John Kerry from Massachusetts in the tunnels outside the Capitol Visitors Center.   That same night, I went to my first ever professional sports game to see the Washington Nationals play the Florida Marlins.  The stadium was huge and even though neither of the two...

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Posted in: baseball,Ben's Chili Bowl,Drill Team,Drum Circle,English,J-Mad,Malcolm X Park,Marines,Nationals,Pentagon,Rock Creek Park,State Department,Washington DC

Week Two: Summer Interning

The second week of internship was not as cool as the first week based on us not having very many projects to do.  I ended up assigning a memo for myself on a foreign policy issue that was being discussed in some hearing on the Hill during the week.  I was supposed to give my first Capitol Hill tour, which I was a bit nervous about because I really didn't want to get the tour group lost in the underground tunnels, but this problem never materialized because the group I was supposed to give the tour to never showed up.   On Thursday night, I went to a lecture at the Natural History Museum called "Blended Nation: Portraits and Interviews of Mixed-Race America."  It was a really cool event and definitely something that...

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Posted in: Clarendon,English,J-Mad,Marines,Mount Vernon,Race,Smithsonian,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...

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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

American History and Embassies

On Sunday, April 24th, I met up with my cousin and we drove over to Anacostia to visit Frederick Douglass' home, Ceder Hill. The magnificent house has been preserved in great condition and contains about 80% original items. The house also has a gorgeous view of Washington below, and from the front porch, one can see the Washinton Monument and all of Capitol Hill. After Douglass' death, his second wife and his children fought over the house, due to a lack of witnesses to his will. The house ended up in a public auction, where the wife borrowed enough money from friends in order to buy the house back. She donated it later to the National Parks Service in order to keep Douglass' memory alive.  Frederick Douglass was a boss though - he...

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Posted in: Anacostia,Arlington Cemetery,Ben's Chili Bowl,Civil War,English,Frederick Douglass,J-Mad,Memorials,U Street,Washington DC

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...

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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...

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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...

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

Cosmopolitan Cobra

The Daily Show - Poisonous Cobra Enjoys FreedomTags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook Apparently, this adventurous cobra has been found chilling in a corner of the Reptile House in the Bronx Zoo. But, by the tweets that the BronxZoosCobra posted on its Twitter, it sounds like the snake had a good time out on the town. Some of the BronxZoosCobra's highlights are as followsss: Does anyone know if the Whole Foods in Columbus Circle sells organic mice? "Indiana Jones, why did it have to be Indiana Jones?" "Give me your tired, your poor/Your coiled masses yearning...

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Posted in: Daily Show,English,J-Mad,New York City,snake,Washington DC

Noruz and Early Spring in the District

In the weeks since I last wrote, lots has been happening. On the work side, we were extremely busy with nationwide community service projects and hosting large conference featuring some pretty influential speakers. We are now gearing up for more events, and I am busy as ever writing articles, figuring out placement for the summer, as well as housing for the summer and fall. Through friends, I started taking a small, conversation-based Farsi class. It is really good to be practicing speaking again, as I haven't had much of an opportunity since graduating in December. The class moves quickly, and it's pretty impressive how good some of the American students are with the language. Noruz, Persian New Year celebrated...

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Posted in: Cherry Blossoms,English,J-Mad,Library of Congress,Maz Jobrani,Noruz,Shahnameh,Washington DC

Book List

I have been keeping lists of books to read and to buy in so many different places, that I figured I ought to consolidate all such lists here. As you can see, I keep finding interesting books faster than I can read. If you have any recommendations that I should add to my list, please post them in the comments section below! Books to Buy ANYTHING ever written by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. ANYTHING ever written by Richard Wright The Little Prince in every language that I can read (so I just need it in Farsi now) Shahnameh by Ferdosi (in English, Farsi, and Comic Book) Orientalism by Edward Said Imperial Eyes: Studies in Travel Writing and Transculturation by Mary Louise Pratt Power Plays Power Works by John Fiske Out of Place: a Memoir by Edward...

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Posted in: Book List,English,J-Mad

Film Festival Finales

Last week was the end of two film festivals in DC that I have been attending and blogging about. On Thursday, February 24, the North African Film Festival series came to an end and saved its best (and most timely film) for the night: Rachid Bouchareb’s masterpiece Outside the Law. In French and Arabic, it is a fantastically done film about three [fictional] Algerian brothers and their involvement in the Algerian independence movement both in Algeria and in France. A good film by any standard, it was nominated for the Acadamy Award for Best Foreign Language film this year. Although the discussion following the film was not as good as previous events, the film was one of the best that I have seen recently, and I would highly recommend...

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Posted in: Eastern Market,English,film,J-Mad,Noruz,Outside the Law,Smithsonian,Washington DC