So much to do!

Time is whizzing past me. The past two weeks have flown by in what seems like two hours. Some quick highlights:

US Capitol Tour
In the LCWS program, we don't go to our internships on Wednesdays because they are reserved for field trips. Our first Wednesday trip was to the Capitol building. The words the tour guide said were hard to follow because they came out at a monotone 100 per minute. At one point in the tour, our guide explained to us that the painter of that black and white painting that goes all the way around the inside of the dome fell of his ladder and hung from the ceiling for 20 minutes before someone found him and proceeded to fire him. It was a crazy story and probably would have earned a good laugh if we had been able to decipher what she was saying.
My personal favorite part of the tour was the corn cob pillars in the receiving hall!

Atlas Corps
I started my internship! It's been busy since the moment I walked in, and I love it. Atlas is a really neat organization. I'm too tired to do it justice at the moment, so I think I'll give it its own post later.

Festivals!
There are so many going on, and I have a hard time letting any of them pass me by which has definitely contributed to my constant state of busy-ness. (I'm not really sure what the word is...I thought it was business, but that doesn't look right...)

The first of the string of festivals was DC VegFest last Saturday. It was awesome. There were a lot of people there who I really wish I could have met. The woman in front of me in the line to buy a coconut handed a flower to the coconut vendor. She said in the most floaty, dreamy voice I've ever heard "Here. Eat this. It's really good for the eyes. This flower has such good vibrations." My insides giggled a bit. Anyway, the highlight of VegFest for me was the yummy falafel sandwich I ate. Or maybe it was the awesome hair of the woman taking photos in this pic.

Festival number 2 was the Rosslyn Jazz Festival later on Saturday. We got there toward the end and only spent 20 minutes there, but I would have loved to have stayed for longer.

On Sunday, Jordyn, Lulit and I went to the Adams Morgan neighborhood to hit up the Adams Morgan Day Festival. Adams Morgan is known as one of the most diverse spots in DC, and the festival was a lot of fun: plenty of good music, dance and food.

This Saturday, I hit up festival number four. The H Street Festival is DC's largest street festival (I think). It was a lot like the Adams Morgan Day Festival. Good music, great food and plenty of dance. In fact, a jazz band that we saw performing at the Adams Morgan Festival was also performing at the H Street Festival (the same song too!). There were all sorts of crazy booths set up. Here's one a man set up to showcase his motorcycle. The festival was plenty of fun, but not quite as fun as the process of getting there which brings me to my favorite kind of story to tell: an Ayah-Gets-Lost story.

9/12 Taxpayer March on Washington
In laymen's terms: a tea party rally. One of the requirements of the LCWS program is that we attend a protest or a demonstration and write a paper about it; I went to last weekend's Tea Party rally. I had a harder time than I thought I would synthesizing my thoughts about the Tea Party into an opinions piece for The Concordian. If you want to see more pictures of signs I saw, click here.

Newseum
Our field trip this past Wednesday was to the Newseum, the coolest museum I have ever visited. It is entirely dedicated to the news. I spent around three hours there and definitely could have spent longer. My favorite exhibit was the sports photography one because every picture had a placard next to it with a paragraph by the photographer explaining how he captured the photo. Here's an interesting one.
The other exhibit that sticks out in my mind is the 9/11 exhibit. There is a 20-minute long bone-chilling video about news reporting on that day as well as the remains of the antenna that stood on top of one of the towers and a wall full of newspaper headlines from September 12, 2001. The Fargo Forum is in the 9th column from the left and the 2nd row from the top. Some other neat things at the Newseum were Elvis' boots and credit card (I didn't realize they had credit cards in Elvis' time), a piece of the Berlin wall and a map depicting how free the press in each of the countries of the world is (red is not free, yellow is somewhat free, and green is free)


Classes
Both of my classes - The Global Agenda and American Diversity - seem really great so far. They are both very discussion centered, and the professors for both are awesome.

Horton's Kids
I went to a volunteer orientation for Horton's Kids earlier this week. Horton's Kids is an awesome tutoring and mentoring program for the kids of one of DC's poorest neighborhoods. I have applied to volunteer with them this semester, and I am really, really excited for it! I'll be a group leader for Wednesday night tutoring sessions. Only older kids come on Wednesdays and they work, not necessarily on homework, but on skills and projects that will help them finish high school and go on to college. From what I understand it is a lot more relaxed and open than Monday and Tuesday night sessions which are more traditional tutoring. I will also hopefully be able to accompany the kids on a few Sunday field trips.

Tennis
I joined a league tennis team here, and last weekend I played my first match with them. We won - whoo! I also have found a few people to play with online, so it looks like I'll be able to play two to three times a week on a regular basis.

Talk of the Nation!
We got invited to attend the recording of Talk of the Nation's special report on the state of the Gulf of Mexico last Thursday. I was one of only a couple of people who decided to go. It was fun to see what parts are actually live, how they get questions to host Neil Conan, etc. It was also neat to put faces to the names Neil Conan (host of Talk of the Nation), Sue Goodwin (Executive Producer) and Richard Harris (NPR's science correspondent) that I've heard so often. You can see all three of them in this picture. Neil Conan is on the far left, Richard Harris is the lighter-colored-suit-wearing man at the center table, and Sue Goodwin is the only woman on the far right table.

Opinions
My first opinions column of the year was in yesterday's Concordian. It is a reaction to the all of the "Ground Zero Mosque" and Quran burning headlines that have been making news in the past couple of weeks. If you're interested, you can read it here. If you have some time, I'd encourage you to read other columns and articles too. I haven't read the whole paper yet, but I've liked everything I have read.