Hurricane Sandy

The East Coast is in the middle of Hurricane Sandy, referred to affectionately as "Frankenstorm." As a California girl, I'm perfectly comfortable with earthquakes but hurricanes are new to me. The wind is blowing like crazy, rain is pouring down, and I know things are scheduled to get worse within the next couple of hours. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that there isn't a power outage!

(Photo Credit: telegraph.co.uk)

The federal government is shut down (so I didn't go to my internship today) but I still had class. Now that I'm done for the day, I'm curled up in bed with a sweater and thick socks, watching Netflix and hoping that the power stays on.

Other than Hurricane Sandy preparations, last week was great! The weather was (ironically) beautiful and my internship was busy but amazing. I got to attend the U.S.-Israel loan guarantee extension signing and met the Secretary of the Treasury!

(Photo Credit: Jerusalem Post)

Because things were so busy at work, I didn’t get much sleep during the week so over the weekend I slept 10-11 hours a day – yikes. I also went to see Argo on Saturday night, which was really powerful and is definitely on the list of my favorite movies for the year. I also spent a lot of time studying at Starbucks - my Washington Ethics midterm is this Thursday and I still have a lot of reading to catch up on.

It's strange to believe that it's Week Seven already - only four and a half more weeks until I'm back in Davis!

Hello, New York

I'm attempting to do homework, upload photos, and watch tonight's foreign policy presidential debate at the same time... Multi-tasking! Mainly I just wanted to quickly blog about my weekend in New York.

I took a bus from Chinatown early on Saturday morning and got in around 12pm to meet up with my friend Sarah who lives in Boston. We skipped luggage in favor of carrying one bag each, which we realized was probably a mistake by about 2:00 when the bags just got heavier. We had to go shopping just to get another bag to put our stuff in! Overall though, we had a lot of fun on Saturday - spent the afternoon in Times Square, stood in line for Broadway tickets, and visited a 4-story Forever 21. After dropping off our stuff at a friend's apartment (shout out to our amazing hosts, Caryn and Andrew!), we grabbed dinner and headed out to see Chicago. I've always been a huge fan of musicals - you can thank high school theatre for that - and I've wanted to see Chicago for a long time. It was absolutely incredible and I still can't believe we got to see it!

We visited Central Park on Sunday and headed down Fifth Ave before parting ways and taking our respective buses home. I'd planned on visiting NYU Law before going home to DC, but unfortunately I made the mistake of booking my return ticket on Sunday morning and all the later bus trips were sold out. On the plus side, I was home in time to finish up my research proposal and catch up on all the emails that had accumulated over the weekend.

I'm now back to my normal internship/class routine, and I have to say that New York makes me appreciate DC even more. DC is so clean and spacious in comparison! Nothing against NYC, but it's a bit crowded, to say the least. Sadly, this will be my last weekend trip for a while - I'm not doing anymore UCDC Center trips and I won't be going out on my own now that academics have gotten more hectic. Hopefully I'll still find time to see the city, though! It's been five weeks and I still haven't visited the monuments...

Weeks 4 and 5: More Sightseeing!

Things are definitely getting busy around here! I'm starting to have assignments due in my research seminar and I have a midterm coming up soon for my Washington Ethics elective. My internship has been pretty crazy as well - lots of research, reports, and correspondence I've been working on over the past week and a half.

This past weekend was a lot of fun - I spent Saturday in Philadelphia and Sunday touring the White House gardens. Philadelphia was amazing and I can't wait to go back - I loved the seamless mixture of historical and modern. Our group took a historical tour of the city and then split off to explore on our own. I ran over to the University of Pennsylvania to check out the law school before going back to see the sights, and I have to say that Penn Law was the highlight of my day. It's an absolutely gorgeous school and I've been gushing about it ever since!

Elfreth's Alley

The home of Betsy Ross

Penn Law courtyard

Christ Church

National Constitution Center



The White House gardens on Sunday were just as impressive. I woke up late and was worried I'd miss my tour time, so I practically sprinted to the White House Visitor Center. (I later found out that they accepted any tour ticket that was for a previous timeslot, so I could have slept later and eaten breakfast!) After standing in line for 20 minutes, I was able to get in and see the gardens. Beautiful!

 

Mandatory White House photo

 

 

 

 

Other side of the White House



Malia and Sasha's playground

White House Kitchen Garden



On the Mall while heading out

While heading back from the garden tours, I stopped at Starbucks and spent about an hour catching up on required reading over a Salted Caramel Mocha (obsessed with those right now!) - which was good, since with all of my sightseeing over the weekend I was way behind on homework! I've been catching up little-by-little over the past few days, just in time for the rush of assignments. Now that we're nearly halfway done with the quarter, research proposals are due and it's time to start taking classes more seriously - not that I wasn't taking them seriously to begin with, though!

...Unfortunately, this weekend won't be a good time for me to start working on my research paper, since I'm actually heading to New York! This will be my first time there and I'm super excited. (Expect plenty of pictures, of course.) When I actually do start working on my research paper, I'll let you know. The paper was always one of my hesitations about the UCDC Program, since I don't really enjoy writing 20-page papers and I don't know too many people who do! However, I'll be writing about the Arab Spring which is fascinating to me, so hopefully that will get me through it. Fingers crossed for a smooth writing process - and for smooth democratic transitions in the Middle East! (Ha. I wish.)

Columbus Day and Week Three

Happy Columbus Day, everyone! I survived week three and am enjoying a cupcake from Crumbs on my "day off" (no internship today, but I still had class).

I visited Charlottesville, VA the day after my last post. I got to tour Monticello (Thomas Jefferson's estate) and the University of Virginia. Although it was cloudy and cold, Virginia was still beautiful and I loved Monticello.

The University of Virginia was beautiful as well - I toured Jefferson's "academical village" and the Rotunda. I attempted to find the law school during our lunch break, but didn't have any luck. Also, fun fact: some of the university's high profile students get to live right on the lawn in Jefferson's original buildings, in the footsteps of Woodrow Wilson and Edgar Allan Poe!

Week three of my internship was a mix between being insanely busy/working on multiple projects at once and doubt/boredom. There's an expectation that once an intern gets settled in, he/she will find a long-term project to work on. An exemplary intern's project will be self-motivated and something that he/she noticed about the organization that needs to be done or could be improved. At the very least, a good intern needs a long-term project that contributes something substantial to the organization. I've worked on a lot of projects so far - and they were all important and needed to be done - but I haven't found anything long-term to do yet. My longest project so far has a duration of 1-2 weeks. I'm really pressuring myself to seek out more to do so that I can make a larger contribution in the office, but it's hard to do when I'm surrounded by such impressive people and in an organization as large as the Department of State. I feel like my presence in the office is helpful but not crucial, so that's something I definitely want to fix over the next couple of weeks.

After a crazy day of work on Friday (with absolutely no downtime), I was definitely ready for the weekend! I toured the Capitol on Saturday and visited the Library of Congress. I've seen both of those buildings before on a previous trip to DC, but they still impressed me as much as they did four years ago.

The Capitol:

Library of Congress:

Sunday the temperature dropped to 50 degrees (which wasn't fun considering it was sunny and 80 degrees on Thursday), but instead of staying inside and avoiding the cold, rainy weather I decided to go shopping! I attempted to take the Metro to Wheaton, MD to visit their mall, but there was construction on the Metrorail tracks so the 35-minute trip up to Wheaton turned into a 90-minute trip. Ouch. At least I got to take advantage of the Columbus Day sales! I am hoping to go shopping again in the future (although hopefully it won't be an all-day adventure) - there are a lot of stores in DC itself, although Connecticut Avenue and Georgetown are a bit more expensive (as is Pentagon City) so for affordability I would still recommend trying Wheaton.

 

As the weather gets colder, I'm really starting to miss California autumns. Luckily the beautiful colors make it worth it! I'm hoping to walk around the monuments sometime soon to see all the fall colors - hopefully it will be warmer than 50 degrees though.