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 I can personally relate to.  It is part of a broader exhibit called "Race: Are We So Different?"  That second exhibit was pretty cool and geared to be eye-opening for younger children especially, but it still has a lot of great information for everyone in general to see.  

Heading into the weekend, I went back to Clarendon to hit up Spider Kelly's and the Clarendon Ballroom.  The Clarendon Ballroom is a really cool club with cheap cover (only $5) and the best part is that it is colder inside than outside, which never happens for clubs.  Spider Kelly's is right next door and has a few billiard tables, shuffle board, and old school video games.  

Saturday morning, I went to Mount Vernon to see George Washington's estate and the Marine Museum in Quantico.  Mount Vernon is huge and the organization that owns the estate also bought up the land on the other side of the Potomac River so that the view from the Washington house is the same now as it was when the Washingtons were living there.

The Marine Museum was really cool.  It was basically a history of the Marine Corps from the Revolutionary War through the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.  It showed how the corps has changed since its early days and all of the different campaigns that the corps has been involved with.  At the end, there is an interactive exhibit about what boot camp is like as well as a target range where you can pay $5 and shoot a laser-equipped M-16 rifle at targets.  They have a computer that prints out your 10 shots and tells you your shooting percentage.  I surprised myself and got an 80% and fired one shot about every 10 seconds - the 80% accuracy is enough to qualify as a Marine sharpshooter.  So I guess I'll have options if this whole law school thing doesn't work out...  After getting back to DC, I went to see the new "Captain America" movie with a bunch of friends from my building.  It was better than expected and we all had a fun time at the Chinatown Theatre.

On Sunday, I slept in and then went back to Georgetown for the afternoon.  After wandering around and window shopping, I discovered a couple really cool design stores - my favorite of all time is CB2.  I think I wanted every single thing in that store in my future dream house/apartment.  For dinner, I went to Pizzeria Paradiso and had an amazing margarita pizza.  On the bus back to my building, I chatted with two tourists from Madrid and Galecia who were trying to find their way to the Capitol Building.  It was great to be able to practice Spanish with them and fun to hear the Spanish accent again.  

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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 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).

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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 taught himself to read and play the violin, he was fluent in several languages, loved reading Shakespeare, climbed the Egyptian Pyramids at age 70, was Minister to Haiti, and was a marshal of DC.  He was also a promoter of women's rights, abolition, anti-discrimination and anti-lynching.  He had an extensive library and there were always famous guests visiting the Cedar Hill home including Harriet Tubman, Susan B. Anthony, Ida B. Wells, and Elizabeth Cady-Stanton, just to name a few.

After the tour, my cousin and I headed to the opposite end and over to Wisconsin Avenue in Bethesda, Maryland, to eat a big lunch at another branch of Kabob Bazaar.  After a nice, long lunch, we went to drive back down Massachusetts Avenue to see all of the embassies. Right next to the Turkish embassy (which has a huge statue of Ataturk in the courtyard), there is a really impressive building.  We thought it was an embassy for a Middle Eastern country, but it turned out to be a mosque.  I asked someone if we could look around outside, since we didn't have any hijab, and as we were looking around, someone else asked us if we wanted to look around inside.  I told him that we'd love to but don't have any headscarves on us.  He said that it was no problem and took us to the front office where another person lent us scarves to wear.  The inside was phenomenal.  There were beautiful tiles everywhere and it was just like being inside a Spanish Alcázar.  The tiles on the walls were a gift from the Turkish government in 1969.  We also met a Jewish woman who was visiting the mosque - she said that it was Passover week and she's tired of eating matza balls so she thought she'd see what a mosque was like.

On Monday, April 25, I went to Dupont Circle to meet up with a friend from Spain for lunch.  We grabbed burritos at this really good burrito stand and then went to the circle by the fountain to eat.  It was a beautiful day but I had to work on my essay to get it edited to publish in a journal so we walked back to Johns Hopkins SAIS building and he snuck me into the library so I could use the computers there.  I was so out of school and paper writing mode that it took me over two hours to make a few minor corrections.  I even ended up running into another person I knew in the SAIS library.

After I finished making the changes and emailed the paper along, I went back to the metro and rode out to Arlington National Cemetery.  The cemetery is huge - just gravestones after gravestones.  The grounds are beautiful and the whole place is just quiet and peaceful, which is fitting I suppose since all of those buried there experienced the exact opposite while fighting.  The juxtaposition of such a beautiful, calm place filled with hill after hill of veterans' gravestones really makes visiting the cemetery a deeply emotional experience.  On some of the gravestones, people have placed small stones and rocks which I learned marked the gravestones of Jewish soldiers.  I saw Robert E. Lee's house (it was empty inside due to extensive restorations), the Kennedy's graves (JFK, RFK, and Ted), the eternal flame, and made it to the Tomb of the Unknown Solider in time to see the changing of the guard.


The tomb has the remains of a randomly selected unknown soldier from France (WWII) and the Pacific theatre (WWII), the Korean War, and the Vietnam War.  In the 1980s, the remains were exhumed from the Vietnam soldier's tomb and taken to Walter Reid's pathology lab.  The soldier was identified and his body was move to Missouri according to his family's wishes.  The Vietnam tomb is empty now, but still serves as a reminder.

On April 26, my last day in DC for the spring, I slept in and went back to my organization to eat lunch with the entire office.  The office treated us to a really nice intern appreciation lunch at the nearby District Grill on K and 12th streets, inside the Sheredon Inn hotel.  From lunch, we all walked back to the office and I did a mini exit interview with the COO - I'd never done an exit interview before.  It went really well and I got a good evaluation.  I'm going to miss working with this office a lot.

After saying goodbye to everyone in the office, I went to 14 & U streets to the African American Civil War memorial and museum.  The neighborhood there is sort of like DC's version of New York City's Harlem and there is a lot of really cool history there.  The memorial has the names of 209,145 black soldiers that served in the Union army/military during the Civil War.  All the names are from actual service records in the National Archives.  The names for the Navy is harder to find than the Army because the Navy was already integrated at the time.  The names on the memorial also include over 7,000 Latino surnames.  The museum itself is pretty small but I arrived in time to sit in the museum curator delivering an excellent lecture on African American involvement during the Civil War.  Although African Americans comprised only 1% of the total U.S. population at the time, black soldiers comprised 10% of the Union Army and about 25% of the Union Navy.  The curator also let everyone hold a 151 year old musket that had been donated by a descendant of a black Union soldier.  The musket was a lot heavier than it looked and a soldier at the time was expected to load and fire it three times in one minute during combat.

After the museum, I walked back down U Street past Bohemian Tavern which used to be frequented by Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Duke Ellington.  There is even a Duke Ellington mural on a building across the street.  I walked all the way over to Malcolm X (Meridian) Park which is one of the prettiest parks that I have been to in DC.  There are so many trees and the row houses surrounding the park along the hill are also really cool.  There is a large tiered waterfall straight down the middle of the park and I spent a fair amount of time just wandering around the park.

After a while, I wandered back down U Street to the infamous Ben's Chili Bowl for a chili cheeseburger and fries.  Ben's Chili Bowl is a black-owned diner that has been around since the 1950s and the only people that are allowed to eat there for free are Bill Cosby and the Obama family.  It reminds me a lot of Yesterdog with the food, decor, and neighborhood.  The food is amazing as well.  From U Street, I went to George Washington University's campus for my last Farsi class of the spring.  After class, I packed everything up, called my cab, and am now ready to go.

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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