So, I am back in Dubuque, have been since Saturday afternoon. The last week in DC was pretty nice. Without work, I was able to both sleep in and wrap up a few of the sightseeing things I had not yet done. But first, end of classes. I managed to finish off all of my finals without any real issues. All in all, I think the semester went pretty well. I'm definitely looking forward to digging into the meat of my major and minor next semester, but these classes were a lot of fun. Since I've put this off so long, I'm drawing a blank on what I did at the beginning of the week. It seems to me that most days I slept in late and then struggled to work on final papers. On Wednesday, I went in to have an exit interview of sorts with Bruce and got my picture taken. Thursday, after our final, we went to Vittorio's for the last time and then finally went to the Spy Museum. Rather than just touring the museum, we decided to do the interactive spy game thingy, which was pretty fun (though I think we proved to be pretty average spies). Friday, Packy and I had the unenviable task of shipping our stuff home. It was both a pain in the butt and expensive, but I guess it was better than the alternative. Then we all went to Georgetown one last time to have a more relaxed version of it as our last memory there. We got cupcakes and then did some window shopping and just took in the scenery of it all. Then it was down to business as we had to completely empty and clean the apartment before my shuttle to the airport arrived at 3 AM. We got through it, just barely. The initial flight out of Baltimore wasn't too bad, except that my baggage was a little overweight, which was nothing a little bribery couldn't fix. It was my time in Chicago that proved to be a little bothersome. I had a four-hour layover and a constantly changing gate to deal with. I finally set up camp about three hours before my flight was to take off in what was then my gate. After trying unsuccessfully to sleep in a chair, I moved to the floor and napped for about two and a half hours. When I woke up, my gate had changed again, so I lugged all my stuff to my new gate and waited for take off. When I was finally back in Dubuque, I was greeted by mountains of snow, frigid temperatures, and no one being home. I spent most of the weekend trying to catch up on sleep, which I'm still not fully caught up on. I started working at the Y today, and I will be working close to 20 hours per week these next three weeks (time to start rebuilding my funds after the semester in DC). At this point, I make no promises to maintain the blog during Christmas break, but I fully intend to be back to semi-regular updates once I'm back on campus. So, until I next blog, I wish you all a happy and blessed Christmas season and new year. May your 2010 be even better than your 2009.
God Bless,
Jes
December 15, 2009
December 6, 2009
Last Day of Work, Last Weekend in DC
So, as the title of today's post would suggest, my time in DC is starting to wind down. Friday was my last day at work in Bruce Braley's office. It was a good day to wrap up work on. I got to do a good deal of my usual tasks, including answering crazy peoples' phone calls, entering mail, and collecting signatures. The office threw me a little party with some cookies and we chatted about my experience. Some time next week I am going back into the office to chat with Bruce about my experience as well. Fittingly, the last phone call I answered was a wrong number. As I think I've said several times, I have thoroughly enjoyed my experience working in the Braley office, and my co-workers in particular.
This weekend I took advantage of the fact that I'm not working this week and can use the days for homework and did some last minute sight seeing. On saturday we went to see the National Christmas Tree in the ellipse near the White House. While it's not the prettiest tree, it's neat that its actually a live tree that grows there. We also got pictures with the smaller trees surrounding it that were dedicated to our particular states, and a group shot with Santa. After that we went up in the old post office tower to get a sweet view of the city. Then we headed over to the ESPN Zone to eat, play arcade games, and watch Florida and USC lose. Today, I went to the Basillica of the National Shrine of the Sacred Heart at the Catholic University. It is the largest Catholic church in North America, and one of the ten largest churches in the world. It was pretty cool to see all of the religious spaces and I took advantage and prayed in a few of the chapels that I felt a particular connection to.
I also have started having my lasts of several things I've been doing regularly. In addition to the fact that this was the last weekend, I had my last trip to farmer's market, my last Sunday afternoon brunch, and my last Sunday evening Mass. I'll continue to update you on all of my lasts and how the semester wraps up. While I can't wait to be home, this has been a fantastic experience and I wouldn't trade the experience or the friends I've made for anything.
Later,
Jes
This weekend I took advantage of the fact that I'm not working this week and can use the days for homework and did some last minute sight seeing. On saturday we went to see the National Christmas Tree in the ellipse near the White House. While it's not the prettiest tree, it's neat that its actually a live tree that grows there. We also got pictures with the smaller trees surrounding it that were dedicated to our particular states, and a group shot with Santa. After that we went up in the old post office tower to get a sweet view of the city. Then we headed over to the ESPN Zone to eat, play arcade games, and watch Florida and USC lose. Today, I went to the Basillica of the National Shrine of the Sacred Heart at the Catholic University. It is the largest Catholic church in North America, and one of the ten largest churches in the world. It was pretty cool to see all of the religious spaces and I took advantage and prayed in a few of the chapels that I felt a particular connection to.
I also have started having my lasts of several things I've been doing regularly. In addition to the fact that this was the last weekend, I had my last trip to farmer's market, my last Sunday afternoon brunch, and my last Sunday evening Mass. I'll continue to update you on all of my lasts and how the semester wraps up. While I can't wait to be home, this has been a fantastic experience and I wouldn't trade the experience or the friends I've made for anything.
Later,
Jes
December 3, 2009
Thanksgiving Wrap-Up (A Little Late)
So, as usual, I'm not blogging until Thursday evening. Unfortunately, this week it has been nothing but pure laziness that has kept me from it. Thanksgiving was a lot of fun. Three of us from the program went to my friend Erin's house in south Jersey to celebrate with her family. The food was great, a very traditional Thanksgiving dinner, which I really appreciated. Erin's family was fantastic, and so open with their open and their food. The night after Thanksgiving (Friday) we went to Atlantic City, to allow Matt and I to get our first taste of gambling, as both of us have turned 21 this semester. I've got to say, it was a lot of fun. It was like the casinos you see on TV, not at all like the Dog Track or the Diamond Jo. The best part was, I won $10.50!! After we came home on Saturday, I went to the National Portrait Gallery to see an exhibition by an artist from Maquoketa. The exhibition consisted of over 100 portraits of Maquoketa residents (Maquoketans?) and a soundtrack of them talking about life in semi-rural Iowa. In a strange way, it almost made me feel like I was back home for a little bit. Sunday, for whatever reason, I couldn't motivate myself to do much of anything in terms of school work, despite kind of needing to. I think it was a combination of the busy weekend and a slight sense of being ready to be done with the semester. As much as I thoroughly enjoy being in DC and working in the Braley Office, I'm ready to get back home and be a kid again, at least as much as a 21 year old man can be a kid.
At work this week, I've been concentrating on entering mail and answering the phones. I wasn't given a letter assignment, I guess as a gift for it being my last week in the office, but also because we really need to try to knock some of the incoming mail out of the way before I leave the office internless. The only real out of the ordinary thing this week happened yesterday. I tried to get into the House Foreign Affairs Committee meeting on the Iraq war that Secretary of State Clinton and Secretary of Defense Gates were speaking at. Unfortunately, I was not able to get into the room as it filled up too fast. To make matters worse, I got completely and utterly lost in the Rayburn House Office Building for like 30 minutes. In my defense, Rayburn is not the most logically designed building. As far as I can tell, some of the floors don't wrap around the whole building, and when you take certain elevators to what you know should be the right floor, you wind up in the parking garage. Beside all that, though, this has been a pretty nice last week.
We've also been wrapping up classes this week. Next week is finals for all three of my classes, though my Wednesday night history class is a take home final that we are just turning in on Wednesday at dinner with our professor. I'm relatively excited about the classes winding down. They've been very interesting, but far from the somewhat easier classes you might expect from a semester abroad. Today, our policy visit was to the World Bank, which was significantly more interesting than the International Monetary Fund last week. Don't get me wrong, I have no intention of working at either, but if I had to pick one, it would be the World Bank. We walked to Union Station after that, since it was a beautiful day and we had some time before class. It was nice to take in a fairly large chunk of the capitol area again before we start to run out of time. I guess that's about it for this week. My goal is to post on Sunday and then again next Friday before coming home by mid-day Saturday.
Until then,
Jes
At work this week, I've been concentrating on entering mail and answering the phones. I wasn't given a letter assignment, I guess as a gift for it being my last week in the office, but also because we really need to try to knock some of the incoming mail out of the way before I leave the office internless. The only real out of the ordinary thing this week happened yesterday. I tried to get into the House Foreign Affairs Committee meeting on the Iraq war that Secretary of State Clinton and Secretary of Defense Gates were speaking at. Unfortunately, I was not able to get into the room as it filled up too fast. To make matters worse, I got completely and utterly lost in the Rayburn House Office Building for like 30 minutes. In my defense, Rayburn is not the most logically designed building. As far as I can tell, some of the floors don't wrap around the whole building, and when you take certain elevators to what you know should be the right floor, you wind up in the parking garage. Beside all that, though, this has been a pretty nice last week.
We've also been wrapping up classes this week. Next week is finals for all three of my classes, though my Wednesday night history class is a take home final that we are just turning in on Wednesday at dinner with our professor. I'm relatively excited about the classes winding down. They've been very interesting, but far from the somewhat easier classes you might expect from a semester abroad. Today, our policy visit was to the World Bank, which was significantly more interesting than the International Monetary Fund last week. Don't get me wrong, I have no intention of working at either, but if I had to pick one, it would be the World Bank. We walked to Union Station after that, since it was a beautiful day and we had some time before class. It was nice to take in a fairly large chunk of the capitol area again before we start to run out of time. I guess that's about it for this week. My goal is to post on Sunday and then again next Friday before coming home by mid-day Saturday.
Until then,
Jes
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
