Week Five: Down to the Wire ~ تخت سارا

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.