recess vs. session.....the ongoing battle.

so of the many ups and downs of working on the Hill comes the love/hate relationship i have with being in session.  while it's much more interesting to watch on CSPAN and the floor of the House and Senate, it's much worse for staffers.  mainly for interns who have to listen to constituents call and complain about things they don't understand.  i'm all for democracy and being able to petition your government, but my gosh people do some research before you call your congressman's office and demand to know about bill X which doesn't exist/is not on the topic you thought it was on/has already been passed/never made it out of committee.  i've never heard so many people so passionate about things that aren't remotely true.  also, to all you readers out there....i know most of you are in college and/or adults but if you are, know someone, or have a child that is in high school and is about to take american government please make them pay attention and get an A...and retain the information before they call their congressman's office. it's really not that hard. 

anyway, i'm stepping off my soapbox.  the past couple weeks have been busy but great.  i've gotten to take on a lot more projects that are interesting and challenging at the same time and have been able to catch a few briefings/hearings along the way.  i have also added Capitol Tour Guide to my resume as my tour groups have not been disappointed yet.....you should all come visit, i'll give you the tour of your life.  the DC Dawgs alumni group (they're the largest outside of atlanta....go dawgs) are an amazingly nice group of young professionals who threw us a dinner last week and we had a great time getting to talk to them about their jobs and hang out and of course, talk about UGA football and how much we all love/miss athens.  a good time was had by all.  we also found out we'll be going on a white house tour in march; so after weeks of trying to schedule them for other people i get to go to the White House....i'll send obama all of your regards.  

this weekend i'm buckling down and finally doing some serious work on a research paper that i've neglected for the past 6 weeks.  it's crazy to think we're already half-way through our program.  while some days it feels like i've been here for years i know i won't be ready to leave come the end of April.  thanks for reading and i promise i'll try and post more! 

much love. 

at home.

you know that moment after you've been somewhere for awhile when it hits you that you don't feel like a tourist anymore?  maybe that feeling is only familiar to those of us who've spent years of our lives moving around...but i digress.  i got that feeling today on the metro.  as i stepped out of the turnstile and got on the escalator, this lady stood smack dab on the left and wouldn't walk.  for anyone who's lived in dc, this is a huge faux pas.  before i knew it i was saying "excuse me, excuse me miss" demanding subtly that she move out of my way.  normally i wouldn't have cared and i certainly wasn't in a hurry it was just the fact that she had the gall to stand on the left when it's so clearly not a kosher thing to do.  anyway, it weirded me out that i've adapted norms of the city i never really cared about and didn't even know it.  i'm such a townie now. 

today is the first day i've had off of my internship so i'm enjoying the free time and using it to catch up on school work.  the whole switching your brain back and forth between work and school mode is a lot harder than one would think.  but i'm desperately behind on research so i think my washington thing tomorrow will have to be the library of congress.  i suppose if i have to sit in a library all day it can't hurt that it's the LOC (sorry UGA libs...i still love you and will no doubt see you in the fall).  

i miss all of you dearly and can't wait to see some of you soon! as much as i love the city, it would be a $800 billion stimulus package better if you were all here. love. 

i'm the worst blogger ever.

so i realize that i'm not very good at this whole blogging thing...in regards to timeliness that is.  but i'm trying to get better.  the past couple of weeks have been ridiculously busy in the office due to the stimulus package and all that it entails.  that thing has taken over washington and i swear if i hear one more person call it the "porkulus" package i'm gonna freak out.  other than that, i've been sticking to my weekly saturday ritual of doing something "washington-y" and this saturday i ventured to chinatown and the national portrait gallery.  forgetting it was president's day i was surprised by the fifes & drums of virginia performing in colonial garb in the courtyard of the museum but it was a welcome surprise and the little kids looked pretty darn cute playing those drums.  i walked around for awhile and came upon a one day only exhibit that was drawing quite the crowd. no big deal it was just thousands of cupcakes arranged in a square that if you viewed it from one story up was a picture of obama and lincoln's faces in icing...i mean really?  i really have no idea how to even feel about seeing 2 presidents faces portrayed in cupcake icings; especially when was a great president who was just celebrated in washington on the 200th anniversary of his birth, and the other has been in office for less than a month.  i just hope somebody ate the cupcakes at the end of day....it'd be a shame to be a cupcake iced to portray obama's nose and never get to be enjoyed by anyone. 

i stole a cord to give you visual proof that i'm doing stuff.

so my gracious hallmate let me his borrow a cord so i could show you all what i'm doing. enjoy!

my favorite at the zoo.

for mom.

the blurry but beautiful view from my room.

my view of the capitol on inauguration day. 

zoom.

my lovely roommate and me. at this point we were freezing and about to leave.

so i was trying to get a picture of the 2.5 million people behind this fence. ridiculous.

despite the fact that my internet in this building is super slow i promise to be better at posting pictures on here. much love. 

friday night at the senate.

as the weeks pass in d.c. the experience has yet to become routine and i'm still not over the fact that i work here.  wednesday night was class at the u.s. trade representative's office where we talked to a uga alum who now works on trade issues with china. so sweet.  i've gotten to attend a couple hearings/briefings thus far and i love being able to get out of the office for a bit and get a snapshot of what's happening with a certain issue right now.  

i've mastered the art of riding the trains that go underground from the senate office buildings to the capitol and then to the house office buildings.....and it's always cool to look over and see roland burris getting interviewed by some reporter eating up his every word or see john kerry sitting in the train next to you.  tonight after a long week at work i thought all i wanted was to go home, change, and go out on the town.  instead, i went back to the capitol and watched the stimulus debate from the senate gallery.  i'm a huge nerd, but when in rome?  there were a surprising amount of couples......maybe its a good d.c. date night. nothing better to set the mood than listening to john mccain talk about partisan politics and watching john kerry pull up his socks and pop a piece of gum in.  

i'm definitely finding that i like the flow of domestic politics and american government way more than i thought i would and i'm glad i took a job on the hill for this semester.....i could see myself ending up back here someday.  i still have no idea what i want to do or what i'm going to do to get back up here but i'm sure it'll all fall into place.  the cool thing about washington is everyone has a completely different story of how they ended up here and in the end it's really all about who you are. i'm convinced it really is the ugly hollywood.