First of all, I have switched from using a paper calendar to using Google calendar - what a great switch that was! I'm finding it especially convenient right now as I'm using my Google calendar to remember what I have done since I last posted.
September
Dr. Adrienne Pine is a really awesome professor who I took Cultural Anthropology from during my semester at the American University in Cairo. I found Dr. Pine to be very personally inspiring, and she played a large part in my decision to switch from a Physics major to more social science-y majors. Dr. Pine is now teaching at American University, and, when I told her that I was in DC for the semester, she was kind enough to invite me to a brunch she was having for her current advisees at her home. It was a really nice time of re-connecting with an old mentor and meeting some really awesome new people. I can't believe that was a month and a half ago now!
Speaking of re-connecting with people from the past, I discovered that another friend from my time in Egypt is here in DC now. Laura was my Arabic classmate at the AUC. At the time, she was a student at Notre Dame. Now she works for Georgetown's Public Policy Institute and lives in the same building as I do. Crazy coincidence! In early October, my roommates and I had Laura and her roommate Delia over for a potluck dinner, along with some friends of ours from our program. I made Egyptian koshari (a rice and lentil dish). It's a lot more fun cooking when it's for other people! We all had a great time eating, catching up and laughing at the naked guy in the apartment across from ours.
Now back to September! In late September, I went to a House subcommittee hearing on water security in South East Asia. The hearing itself was really quite interesting. They were talking about disputes over the rights to build dams along the Mekong River. The issue presents many of the same issues as we saw with various dam construction projects in India.
Also in late September was the Barracks Row Fall Festival. I volunteered at the festival, and in doing so, earned my first free t-shirt in DC (I now have six). The festival was actually rather boring compared to other festivals I had been to. It was neat to see a new part of D.C. though. Barracks Row is part of the larger neighborhood called Capitol Hill and it is currently undergoing massive revitalization projects. The National Book Festival was on the same day, but, because I had committed myself to volunteering at the Barracks Row festival, I was unable to go.
Later that same Saturday in September (the 25th), I volunteered overnight at N Street Village; Luther Place Night Shelter for the first time. Luther Place provides long-term night residence to a group of about 30 women who commit to participating in some sort of recovery/management program over at N Street Village. The first two nights I volunteered there, Kathryn - a classmate from my program, volunteered with me. Kathryn and I have similar views and share a lot in common, so we quickly became good friends. It was certainly nice to have somebody to share in the night shelter experience for those first couple nights. The other nights that I have stayed at Luther Place, I have gone alone which is also really nice because it gives me more of a chance to connect with the women who live there.
At the very end of September, I attended the DC Idealist Grad School Fair. I went intending to look at a few particular grad school programs, but I ended up being most drawn to the Teach for America booth. Since then, I have been doing a lot of exploring options for transitioning into teaching. Over the past few years, I have worked with kids in a number of capacities (as an ELL tutor, as a camp counselor, as a tennis instructor...), and I have realized that working with middle-school aged kids really energizes me. I love how willing to learn 11-15 year olds are, and I also feel that kids in that age group are really looking for direction and people who can help them find their own direction. With all of that going on, there's so much potential to impact kids' lives at that age, and I'm really inspired by that potential.
October
October started in a very busy way. I started off Saturday, October 2nd at the DC AIDS Walk around the Capitol (free t-shirt #2!). I was walking on Team "No Glove, No Love" along with one of my fellow interns and her friends. A lot of people turned up for the walk which was pretty amazing, and I had a fun time getting to know Sarah and her friends. From the AIDS Walk, I went over to Adams Morgan for the Crafty Bastards Arts & Crafts Fair. It was really cool to see all of the neat things people make. I bought a really neat journal made out of an old copy of Dr. Seuss' One Fish, Two Fish. It's pretty awesome. The guy sells all sorts of journals made out of old books from this small one-man company called ex libris anonymous. They make such great gifts too. Very personal. After Crafty Bastards I headed back to the Lincoln Memorial for the One Nation Working Together Rally. There were tens of thousands of people there, but most of them were already leaving by the time I got there. Because so many people were leaving, I ended up being able to sit on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial behind the speakers: pretty cool! I'll put up a separate post with some pictures from the rally shortly.
A couple of weeks ago, I had another fabulously busy week. October 23rd was the DC Stop Modern Slavery Walk (t-shirt #3). I walked on Shared Hope International's team. It was quite a fun walk to do because it was a gorgeous fall day and the 5k walk took us through a tour of the monuments. I also learned a lot about modern human trafficking in the US and abroad. An opinions piece will come soon.
Later that day, I met my fellow intern Alex and my supervisor Aparna at the Green Festival. The Green Festival is basically a huge, traveling convention that showcases all things sustainable. It was really awesome to see what kinds of things out there. I won a t-shirt (#4) from one of the booths by guessing the answers to a sustainability quiz right. I had signed up to volunteer (t-shirt #5) which ended up meaning standing in a hallway directing human traffic for four hours.
The following day, I went over to Karma Kitchen for lunch. Karma Kitchen is this amazing restaurant (and more) that runs on the gift-economy concept. They serve you as much delicious Indian lunch as you want, you pay back the favor however you want, either directly by funding future meals at Karma Kitchen, or indirectly. Karma Kitchen uses their surplus funds to do awesome things like give out treats to random people. I don't know a ton about the other things Karma Kitchen does in DC, but I know that they also occasionally I have free hugs campaigns. :) What I know about Karma Kitchen comes from my supervisor Aparna who is a core member of DC's Karma Kitchen. I picked a good day to go to Karma Kitchen because, not only was I able to take part in a small celebration in honor of Aparna's birthday, but I also was able to eat with a few of the Atlas Corps (the non-profit that I intern with; post about it to come soon) fellows who arrived minutes after I did.
This past weekend was one of the busiest yet. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert's Rally to Restore Sanity was on Saturday the 30th. I was able to attend (and volunteer - t-shirt #6) along with over 200,000 others. It was simply amazing to see that many people come together. I wrote an opinions article about the uniqueness of the event. I will add a separate post soon with some pictures.
After the rally on Saturday, I went to Yoni ki Baat, a South Asian American take on Eve Ensler's Vagina Monologues. I heard about the show from Aparna who was performing it. I am really glad that I went. Aparna (and all of the performers) did a really amazing job and many of the stories really resonated with me.
Sunday was Halloween. It was also the day of the Marine Corps Marathon. The marathon started and ended in Rosslyn, right in front of our apartment complex, so there was a general air of festivity all day. When I left at around noon to go to Karma Kitchen again (this time with Tricia, a classmate from the LCWS program) we didn't have much trouble getting on the metro, but when we got back at around 3 the line to get on the metro snaked around the block and continued to get longer. Pretty crazy!
Every year, Dr. Joyner, the dean of the LCWS program holds a Halloween party for the kids who live in the apartment complex that our program is housed in. My job during the party was to hand out popcorn. It ran out fast, so I got to spend most of the time playing fun games like ninja and simon says with a group of about eight 4 to 10 year old boys who I made friends with. It wasn't quite the same as having Kimo to play with, but it was still pretty darn fun. As a side note, check out Kimo, Ashraf and Katie on Halloween! My family is pretty awesome.
November
Has just started! Things have been pretty busy at Atlas Corps, so that has taken a lot of my time. I also tried to spend as much time as possible making calls for the Obama campaign.
Today I played my last team tennis match of the season. We'll not talk about the outcome. :p
Tomorrow I am going to have lunch with another long-lost friend. Caitlin/Alyaa is currently a student at Georgetown. We were cabinmates at Arabic camp back in 2006. Since then our paths have passed in a number of crazy coincidental ways, and this is no different. We had been planning to find a time to catch up anyway, but last Thursday I ran into her at Georgetown when I was on campus for all of a few hours to staff Atlas Corps' table at a job fair. I'm excited to hear about all of the awesomeness that is going in her life!
Tomorrow we have a special Sunday field trip to...Hair the musical! I love musicals, but it has been a very long time since I saw one live. I'm stoked!
Opinions (and Counter-Opinions!)
Tuesday was, of course, election day. Disappointing day, but an exciting time to be in D.C. nonetheless. In anticipation of the elections, my last few opinions pieces were political and two of them garnered responses. Having people respond to my opinions pieces had been one of my goals for the year, so I was very excited to see it happen. I wrote a piece about my dislike of the Tea Party, informed by my experience at the Tea Party rally I attended back in September. Among the claims that Tyler made in his response was that allegations of Tea Party racism are unfounded. I had never intended to make the broad claim that the Tea Party as an establishment is racist, but I wrote this with regard to that issue.
Around the same time, I wrote an (admittedly not very well-written) plea to young Democrats to stand up for what they believe in. Mark replied with a very well-written defense of Republican policies.
I've really enjoyed the challenge of coming up with something to say each week. Some weeks I construct well-reasoned arguments that are very personally important to me and other weeks I just construct arguments. Either way, writing for the paper has so far been a both difficult and satisfying exercise in forming and expressing opinions.
Fieldtrips
This post is already very long. I think I will make a new post to recap the field trips from the past eight fieldtrips.
I should be very busy write now writing papers, applying for grad schools and other programs and keeping up to date with course readings, but if I keep putting off updating my blog until I'm not busy, it will never happen, and I like using my blog as a way of sharing my experiences with others and recording my memories for myself.
Whoo! If you read all of that, thank you! I know that this was long.
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