The last week :(

So my last week in Washington was filled with excitement!

Monday: Was the most uneventful day of the week. This was the day that we all realized that we had a bunch of stuff that we had to finish by the end of the week, which was almost stressful, but not really. Jill and I watched Made of Honor, which was hilarious and really cute! (we made Dane watch it with us, too)

Tuesday: Crazy day! I was on support, which meant that I got to run a bunch of errands that I didn't have time for. I was supposed to get a couple signatures from members of the finance committee, but the staff didn't like the format of the letter, so I had to redo it... Then we got to go on the SENATE FLOOR during a vote (which basically meant that we got to see all of the senators up close and personal!) When I got back, I sat up front while Sanjay took a tour. In the middle of my lunch break, I had to stop eating and give a capitol tour because we had more tour groups come in than we originally thought. When I got back from that, we had to go on a tour of the Library of Congress, which could have been better...

Wednesday: We had a tour of the future capitol visitor's center. It is a HUGE space that is being constructed out front of the capitol... all underground! It's pretty much amazing. The guy who gave the tour was so well informed, it was unbelievable.
My grandpa came into town for the day with the WWII Veteran's Honor Flight from Northwest Ohio. I went to meet him at the WWII memorial (which is one of the coolest ones, I think). They let me eat lunch with the veterans (for free!). It was really fun and I'm glad my grandpa got to come to see the memorial! When we got home from work, there was poop in the hall. That was a very interesting night...

Thursday: We had breakfast with the Senator in the morning (paid for by him) at which we discussed our time in DC and what we were planning on doing afterwards. It was quite enjoyable. We got to go eat in the cafeteria, where they have some of the best breakfast food I have ever had... it's a good thing that we didn't know about it before, because I think we would have eaten breakfast there every morning... For lunch, the office staff threw us a thank you pizza party. We had to go around and tell all of them what we had been doing and our plans for the rest of our summer. That was also enjoyable!
After lunch, we had a "tour" of the supreme court, which meant that we got to sit in the court chamber and listen to an intern talk about what goes on and the architecture of the building. When we got back, I submitted the remainder of my project stuff to my supervisor. After work, I took the metro out to New Carrollton, where I met Mr. Ferry, who took me to the Ferry residence in Annapolis. We went out to dinner and had an amazing time! I watched Noah eat about 6 or 7 sets of crab legs (eww...). It was really nice to not have to pay for any food all day!

Friday: We decided to get up and watch the sunrise from the Lincoln memorial (like they do in My Date with the President's Daughter). It was beautiful! I'm so glad that we got to do that. We headed off to work and then headed out to the Pentagon for a tour. That was pretty exciting! Our tour guide and his supervisor were both pretty cute (& Jessica fell in love... haha). When we got back to the office, we had to fill out a questionnaire about our experience in the office (which was an amazing one, I can guarantee!). We went out to Matchbox for lunch & had mini burgers and pizza! Then we had to go back to our room and pack so that we could move out in the morning. :( We went out to the airport to pick up Jessica's family and we went out to dinner with them, which was a nice last dinner in DC.

Saturday: We woke up nice and early so that we could meet Cecily and go out to breakfast. We went to this really cute hole-in-the-wall locally owned place and had some delicious food! After we got back, we finished packing, cleaned our room fairly well & then moved out! I took my stuff over to Cec's so that I didn't have to carry it around all day and then went with Jess to turn in our keys and other stuff. I hung out with Cecily and her friend Judy, who was trying to find housing for the fall when she comes to DC for Law school. I got to the airport (kinda late...), bought some food for the plane, and got on the plane and left DC. :( Unfortunately, I am having bad allergies or a cold or something... and flying with those sorts of symptoms is pretty much the worst... So instead of staying the night at Amy's lovely house, she drove me home so that I could sleep in my own bed (because she's awesome like that!)

And that is my DC trip. Wow. I still can't believe that I'm home...

:)

Poop in the hall

So we got home from work today after going to CVS to grab some stuffs to eat and we were really excited to go and make dinner. But when we got out of the elevator on the 7th floor, there was POOP on the floor. And Jillian almost stepped in it (which would have been tragic) but she didn't (thank goodness!).

Jillian "What is that smell???"
Jessica "Probably the poop that you just stepped in..."
*turn around the corner, see big guy who is really red in the face and had dropped his bag...*
Big Guy "Hi."
Jessica "Hello." *opens door, goes inside w/Kelley and Jillian, shuts door, ALL make faces*

About 2 minutes later, Jessica opened the door to look and saw that the big guy was gone and looked down... some of the poop had been partially wiped up, but was more rubbed into the carpet.

GAAAHHHHH. It was really awful. Needless to say, we kinda lost our appetites... hopefully we will feel better soon, because I really am hungry, I just don't think that I can eat right now...

Week 4... which means only one more week :(

This week was AMAZING! I don't know why, but it was pretty much the best week that I've had so far. I think that it was all of the small things that added up, along with a few BIG things... yes. :)

Sunday: Jessica and I slept in on the wonderful Father's Day. Jill went up to her grandparents house to have a huge meal, so Jess and I were on our own. We went grocery shopping (which we should never do together) and then we met up with Jess's friend Whitney. We decided to meet up with her in the late afternoon and head up to her apartment (which is really just an extended stay hotel, but it is nice) because we wanted to go swimming and Whitney has a pool!
Once we got up there, we went shopping at Bed, Bath, and Beyond. By this point, our air conditioning was broken, so I decided to buy a FAN. That was the big purchase of the day... mostly because we would have died without it. So Jess, Whitney and I ordered pizza and we had a little pool/pizza party. It was a really relaxing afternoon/evening. We even got to watch some TV! (which is a rare treat for those of us without TVs).

Monday: Our office is so amazing. They set up a tour of the National Archives for us that was a before hours, private, behind the scenes tour of the Archives. It totally reminded me of National Treasure (the first one, where he breaks in to the back of the archives to steal the Declaration of Independence). Haha... I am such a dork. Other than that, it was really cool. We got to see lots of exciting things there, including the first congressional record, a lot of letters from George Washington (originals!), and, of course, the first MAD magazine! That was our super cool Monday. I think one of the best parts was that we got to go into work at 11 (which was both good and bad... I love the office, but at the same time, I like to get out and about... and not stare at a computer screen all day).

Tuesday: My tour day! I actually had 2 tours scheduled. The first one was a family with really cute kids. Unfortunately, the Senate does not allow children under the age of 6 into the gallery... so the poor little girl didn't get to go in (I'm sure she didn't really care, but one of her parents had to be with her at all times, which made things slightly inconvenient).
In the afternoon, I had to give another tour, which was supposed to be a big group of 10 plus one other guy. The group of ten was actually a reschedule from the day before because they didn't show, so by the time we figured out that they weren't coming, it was about 2:20, which meant that there were a million people in the capitol. If we had left when the one guy got there, we would have beat the crowds. Oh well. It's a lot easier to move fast through the capitol when you only have 1 other person instead of 15 people following you around. After that tour, we took some pictures for the Intern Website... aren't we special? I really didn't get much research work done, but I did get to get out and about a lot!

Wednesday: Probably the best day of the week! I got to shadow the senator all day (well, sort of). Jessica and I went with him to 4 of his meetings. The first one we got to walk with him (and ride on the Senator Only elevator!). It was really interesting because on the way there, one of his staffers basically briefed him on the hearing, which was the Iran Sanctions Act of 2008 markup session (or something to that effect). It was really cool because it is a really important bill when discussing the war on terror/war in Iraq/potential war in Iran. Mr. Bingaman even introduced an amendment, which was really cool to see because the senators actually debated it there in front of us. Too bad the amendment didn't pass (15-4...), but it was still REALLY awesome to see!
Right when we got back, he was supposed to be meeting with a school group of constituents from NM, so we ran back and met with them for about 10 minutes (long enough for them to have a small Q & A session). We also got to meet with some people from Alaska who wanted him to cosponsor a bill (once it gets introduced). That was a very interesting meeting-- we got briefed on that one by some of the members of the Energy and Natural Resources committee-- basically they said that Jeff would be just listening and smiling and nodding, which I pretty much did too!
The last meeting of the day was the Energy Committee hearing about Wildfire preparedness, which definitely could have been MUCH more interesting... but really it was pretty boring. Jessica and I pretty much stared off into space and doodled... So in conclusion, I think it would be cool to be a Senator, but also pretty boring at times. He was pretty busy all day (we didn't get to go with him to everything that he did), but it was definitely very interesting to get some insight into what our elected officials do in a day! :)
After work, I met Cecily for a late dinner... well, she had dinner and Jessica and I had DESSERT!!! It was quite delicious, but we really should have split something... because we both only had about half of our dessert... oh well. It was delicious!

Thursday: Awkward day! Jessica and I gave a tour to middle and high school history teachers from CO and Northern NM... and 3 of them were from Los Alamos... and they all knew me... Luckily, it wasn't too bad. I think the worst part was probably when they decided that they needed a picture with me for their slide show when they show the little middle schoolers their trip to DC. Of course when we got to the rotunda, we went to see the statue of Po Pay (one of the 2 NM statues), and they ALL knew more about him than me and Jess did together (oops... my 7th grade NM history teacher was there...) We took more pictures for the Intern Website (just because we want it to be super awesome).
After work, I went to hang out with Cecily again... and I (of course) utilized her FREE LAUNDRY... and we hung out for a while, watched TV, and then went wandering around, kinda near the White House. We went to the Barnes & Noble for a while, and then went to a really good smelling Mexican restaurant (because Cec was hungry). I didn't have anything to eat, but it did smell good... which doesn't really mean much...

Friday: So first thing, we went to the Democratic Policy Committee hearing on contractors in Iraq, specifically a Haliburton company branch called KBR. It was an interesting hearing, but I was really tired, so I started falling asleep in it... but it was interesting to hear first hand accounts about the things happening in Iraq, not directly related to combat. The people testifying were working at a water treatment plant where there were contaminants in the air & water where they were working, and it affected everyone there, US military, contractors, and Iraqis. Very interesting stuff...
We went to lunch at a Chinese place in Chinatown, which is pretty much 1 block long. Now I have never been to Chinatown anywhere else, but I'm pretty sure that LA, SF, and NY all have better Chinatowns than DC. Anywho, we had some pretty good Chinese food, which was good. Later that night, we were hanging out in our room and Jess was going to go out, so she invited us to hang out at her boy toy, Dave's house/ apartment. We all headed out to Adams Morgen but by the time we got there, they had decided to go to a bar... and half of us were underage, so we just went off to Whitney's apartment, watched TV, and then crashed for the night. Fun times...

Saturday: After we got back from Whitney's, Jill and I decided to go out to Dupont Circle to get Krispy Kreme... and then we decided to walk back through Georgetown, which was really fun just to walk around and pretend like we were rich by going into really high class stores... That was a lot of fun. So then we came back and hung out in our room for a while and then Jess decided that we should go to the mall. So we headed out to Pentagon City to got to the mall. We wandered around there for a while and then came back to our room to have dinner at about 8 PM.

Sunday: We actually got up pretty early & left our apartment by 8:30! We went over to the Washington Monument to get tickets to go up to the top later in the day! Then we headed over to a really good brunch place off of the Mall and had some fabulous eats. We wandered around, ended up walking into a Borders for about an hour, and then headed over to Eastern Market (on the East side of Capitol Hill). It's like a flea market, similar to the open air market in New Orleans. It was a lot of fun to walk around and look at all of the local vendor's stuff. We walked inside where they basically have a fresh everything market, and we ended up getting cookies and fresh-squeezed lemonade. It was quite delicious. Then we left and needed somewhere out of the sun, preferably with a/c to sit for about an hour before we headed back to the Wash Mon. So we walked over to the public library on the SE side (right near the Eastern Market). It was a cute little library. Literally LITTLE. Then we headed out and went to the top of the monument... and then we headed home for an early arrival!

Overall, this was definitely the best week I have had so far. I got to do a lot of things, and I started hanging out in a setting outside the walls of our apartment, which was really nice. I am really starting to love it here... but I am also very ready to come home. So one more week... and then we will see what happens from there. It is really weird thinking that I will be starting lifeguarding next Monday at 8 am (well, sort of... orientation at least).

Week 3!!! :)

It's a good thing that I'm doing this blog with pictures... because then I actually have to download them all onto my computer! ...haha...


So here is the official weekly update, beginning with SUNDAY (kinda)!:

Jill, Dane and I went for a nice long bike ride along the C & O canal. It was gorgeous. If you want to know more, read the post about Hissing Geese. On Sunday night, Jill, Jess, and I went to see Sex and the City (the movie). It was good. Nothing really too exciting happened... besides that we found the Starbucks on campus that is about 1 block away!

Monday: We had to go to code of conduct training at work. Oh my goodness! It was an hour and a half long given by a guy with a st-st-stu-stutter. Which, normally isn't too bad, but he freaking READ OFF OF THE SLIDES and then he RE-STATED IT not on the slides (or vice-versa, depending on what else it related to). I think the worst part about that was that it is only required for employees of the Senate to get within the first 60 days of working there... but we aren't even going to be here for 60 days. It's only 35 if you count the weekends! Oh well... I survived that (barely).

Tuesday: If anything exciting or important happened, it was all forgotten when J.Lo showed up on our floor of the Hart office building! She had come to talk to Obama... who wasn't in town... but that was pretty much the extent of the excitement. (for more about this, read the post "When J.Lo comes to town")

Wednesday: I got to be the support person for the day... and that meant that I got to hang out up front for a while, which I have to say, is pretty fun. It's a little bit higher pressure (sometimes) but you actually get to interact with consitutents and other people who happen to come by the office. I also got a nice big project for being on support-- we had to look up a bunch of Sen. Bingaman's floor speeches for some big project that someone is doing... lucky for them, I don't know who (jk... it wasn't that bad). Jill helped me with it and we finished it by Friday's COB. I also got another project from my supervisor about Guantanamo Bay... that should be fun. Wednesday was also the half way point of our internship... it really has gone by fast!

Thursday: Robin's family (minus Robin...) came to town, so I got to give them a tour of the Capitol! It was lots of fun. We went out to dinner to Matchbox (again) and this time I got their famous Mini Burgers. Oh my goodness, they were EXCELLENT! So I have officially given 2 tours... but that's okay with me. They are fun to give because it gets you out of the office and into the craziness of things, but then you have to act like you know everything... which is only sometimes true.

Friday!: We had another one of those mandatory lectures, but this one had potential to be exceptionally good: Women of the Senate. It actually was really good, I was just really tired and the lady's voice was really soothing... Right. Anywho. As I said earlier, Jill and I finished that project, which was really nice to get done. We went to lunch at the Capital City Brewing Company, which had really good food-- and we had a really delicious Brownie smothered in ice cream, whipped cream, and chocolate syrup (it was REALLY good.) We headed up to Baltimore for an Orioles game... and they WON... amazingly enough, 9-6! We had some adventures on the way there with trains and tickets and, well, you know... travel drama. But it all worked out and we made it there in back all in one piece!


Saturday: I met up with mi madre's friend, Bridget who used to work at the Smithsonian and now owns her own framing business. She has had an interesting life and has met up with some very interesting people. We went all around, to a bunch of museums (arm museums, mostly, but also the new Native American museum) and then to the sculpture garden, where we got lunch and sat by the fountain and talked. It was really cool to sit and people watch while talking about life. Now Jess, Jill and I are going to head out and maybe get some dinner and hope to avoid a big rainstorm!

:)

When J.Lo Comes to Town...

Well...the excitement of today's work was that J.Lo came to visit Sen. Barack Obama! As you probably don't know, Obama's office is down the hall and around the corner from Sen. Bingaman's office (that's where I work), so we heard about the visit pretty quick. However, Obama wasn't around... he was out campaigning (apparently in St. Louis), which WE all knew as informed people who watched the votes on the Senate floor today.


As the crowd gathered, we went up to the 8th floor to get a better view of Obama's office. We stood around for about 30 minutes, waiting for her to come out. We were speculating what she was doing there, and pretty much we came up with the "fact" that J.Lo is Obama's pick for VP. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, J.Lo is going to be the first female vice president. Because that wouldn't be ridiculous at all.

It was all rather amusing. The crowd gathered just by people passing by and hearing what was up and from all sorts of messages that were being sent around the senate. We got shushed about 3 times by the Capitol Police because basically the crowd was compromised of a bunch of interns and young staffers (who all LOVE to talk!). After a while, one of Obama's staffers went into the upstairs part of their office and put up a sign that said "She's Gone." We stood there in disbelief for a little while until we looked down to the first floor where the exit is... and saw a small crowd of about 10 people surrounding a young woman who was wearing a BRIGHT YELLOW dress... Sad days... no one got a picture of her coming out of his office... oh well.

So that is what happened on the Hill today: Your tax dollars [hard] at work!

:)

Hissing Geese

Today Jill, Dane, and I went for a 4 hour bike ride along the C & O Canal. It was really awesome and fun... and HOT. One of the coolest things that we saw was a blue crane along the canal. It was really beautiful, but we couldn't take a picture because we were biking... and it flew off when we got too close. :(

I think one of the funniest things that we saw was geese along the side of the path. The mom & dad geese were chilling out with their babies and as we rode past, they started HISSING at us... which was probably one of the funniest things I have ever heard. There were a lot of geese around and at least 2 of the families hissed at us. So I hissed back. Haha.

Now Jess and Jill and I are off to see Sex and the City!

:)

Week 2!!

So the past week has been pretty intense & crazy! The Senate went back into session, so we had to stay at work an extra hour each day... BUT before we did that, Jessica, Dane and I did some crazy things over last weekend!

We started out Saturday morning my sleeping in... which was amazing, but it also meant that we got a late start to our day, which probably was not a brilliant plan... We decided to head over to Arlington National Cemetery just as a big storm started to roll in. We visited the Iwo Jima monument as the storm darkened (see picture...). Of course, in all of our genius-ness, we decided to head over to the tomb of the unknown soldiers for the changing of the guard, which is on the entire opposite side of the cemetery. As we walked over, we stopped at the house of Robert E. Lee and the tombs of L'Enfant and the Kennedy's. When we were stopped at the Kennedy's grave site, it started to rain, which as Jessica pointed out, made it pretty creepy. We continued our walk and finally made it to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers for the 2pm changing of the guard... and as we walked up, it began to pour rain. It was pretty incredible to see a rainstorm that huge; however, we were outside... during the equivalent of a hurricane (probably not, but I like to exaggerate) while standing under a bunch of trees and a bunch of umbrellas. I just felt bad for the poor fool who was being changed out because he didn't have a raincoat on like the other two guys. After that, we went home and pretty much chilled out (literally).

Sunday: We woke up late again, mostly because we could. We decided to head over to the Aquarium to watch the feeding of the piranhas! The aquarium itself isn't that fantastic (it's in the basement of the Department of Commerce...), but it was really cool to watch the piranhas get fed... they are pretty intense about it (worse that the swim team at a banquet...!) After that, we headed up to the Zoo... which is pretty amazing, mostly because they have PANDAS! :) After we walked the whole zoo, we exited on the other side, where we thought that we might be near a metro stop... but we were wrong. So we had to walk through Rock Creek Park in order to get to the metro stop... that was quite a hike! When we got home, we met up with Jill and watched Friends... because we can't do that anywhere but Washington DC... I also met Mary for dinner at this really cute restaurant around the corner called Tonic. I had.... PIZZA... shocker... but it was really good, which was awesome! :)

Monday: We had to go to work again... but it was really cool because we got to meet with Jeff Bingaman (D-NM!). I was on support, so when we walked in, I had to help out in the front, which means answering phones and saying HI to everyone who walks past. Jessica came to give me something, and as she was leaving she started making funny hand signals and pointing outside. It took me a second, but I finally realized that Jeff was walking down the hall, about to come into the office. So I got to meet him as he came in, before we had our "official" meeting with him (cuz I'm awesome like that). As the person on support, I got to run a couple of errands (like get lost while trying to find the post office...haha). After work, Jill made me try some Steamed Maryland Blue Crab. Ewww. As much as I love seafood, I really actually don't. But that's ok... now I can say that I at least TRIED it. :)

Tuesday: Just a regular day of work... Nothing too exciting of importance happened...

Wednesday: My first day of Tours! I got to give a Capitol Building tour to a family of 5 from Albuquerque... they were really nice & understanding (since it was my first time...) It was a lot of fun... I only got us almost shot once when we were trying to leave... Oh well.

Thursday: Jill was sick :( so I covered her support day for her... I didn't actually have to do anything, which was nice, so we went and did some other awesome stuff. We went to a lecture from the House and Senate Historians. It was very interesting... not a job that I will ever want or do, but very interesting! I also got to go to a briefing in the Capitol building with my supervisor on border violence on the US-Mexico border. It was really interesting because we got to look at a bunch of guns that they had confiscated and look into the reasoning for increased border violence (S2867). That was really fun... I felt so official for being able to go (just cuz I'm awesome like that).

Friday: It was a good Friday. I got a lot of research done for my project, and I found a lot of new sources... I'm just a little bit miffed by the NM Dept. of Education because I emailed them to get drop out rate statistics... and they don't have any... so they are going to look into it for me and get back when they find the numbers... um right. We went to lunch at this cute little hole-in-the-wall restaurant called Matchbox in Chinatown. It was delicious! We all got pizza... I don't think I have ever had such good pepperoni in my LIFE! :)
We had a little girl's night out at the Nationals game. They got their butts kicked by SF Giants... but that's okay. We had a LOT of fun!

Saturday: We got up nice and late just in time to watch Hillary give her not-so-concession speech... and be late for it... (not that I'm bitter or anything...) We finally got going mid-afternoon... which was terrible because of the heat. It was 97 out, but it felt like 107! It was really gross, but we walked down to the Museum of Natural History, which was pretty awesome. We were so hot that we walked through the dinosaur section and then went to get some ice cream. We decided to get tickets to the IMAX theater so that we could cool off and sit down. We went over to see the Hope Diamond, which was really pretty! Afterwards, we decided to come home and have dinner. Jill and I are about to go shopping at the Mall (not the National Mall) to hang out.

Tomorrow Jill, Dane and I are going to rent bikes and ride around the C & O canal for the morning and into the early afternoon. Hopefully we won't be out during the heat of the day because it is WAY too hot. Yes yes.

:)

Why can't people be on time???

So last night, I got tickets to go to Hillary Clinton's "suspension" speech. But the ticket did not guarantee admission, so instead, I slept in and now I am trying to watch it on CNN.com. It's rather frustrating because first, it was supposed to start at 10am. So when I got up at 10 to watch it, it wasn't on... and CNN said that she was supposed to speak at noon. So I went back to sleep and got up at noon... and now, at 12:17 pm, she is RUNNING LATE.

Good thing she didn't get the nomination because otherwise, she would be all late for everything that she didn't want to do (at least that's my assumption).

Oh. And all of her comments about RFK's assassination, I think that Barack might need some extra protection now just to make sure that he is not accidentally assassinated... and if he is, I think I know who to blame... (JUST KIDDING.)