Over the Hump Day!

If anyone is looking for a new Pandora station, I recommend the "MGMT" station. It is fabulous and getting me through this over the hump day! Fun, upbeat tunes -- check it out :)

I've been talking with some of you about how I've been uneasy about the internship so far, but today I gained some confidence that this is really going to work out and my strengths are going to be put to good use here. I also know I will be learning a lot! It is so hard to sum all that I am learning about into a short version to talk to people about, but then again talking about anything that I'm passionate about has never been done in a few sentences! This morning my boss and I started talking about different education issues and he told me about a project a few interns started a couple of years ago and never finished that I could pick up on. It sounds really cool... basically I'm going to surveying/interviewing Native American school districts on what works for their district in terms of best performance rates. I'm going to be putting together how they successfully achieve good test scores (and other things; I have to research first) as well as what they are doing to help maintain their native culture. I have witnessed first hand how culture is being lost on reservations, so I think this will be an interesting project. After all of my research and feedback from the districts my work is going to be put on the NAFIS website so that all of the districts have access to the information. I hope it works out! I really like the idea of the districts being able to help eachother out, after reading some articles today I thought about how a dominant theme in our country is still to compete to be the best. I don't understand why we can't just learn from eachother instead of being competetive, and in the case of education, I think it would be beneficial to learn from other education systems, rather than just trying to strive above them. On Friday I was at the Air and Space museum and was re-learning about the Space Race and how it was such a big deal that America be the first in everything (even though we seriously failed) and today listening to a speech from the new Secretary of Education Arne Duncan he talked about how schools still need to be aware of the fact that we are competing with India and China. Like why can't we talk about how more and more children in schools are becoming homeless because of the economy, and how schools are struggling to give them support... or how segregated our public school system still is (guaranteed you've heard that speech from me already). But seriously I think right now we need to get our own country together before we can worry about not being #1 anymore. In one of the books my Peace Studies prof wrote he talks about being a citizen of the world rather than being a citizen of a specific country, and how patriotism can breed violence. It was really interesting.

Just letting you know, this is going to be a novel. Though I'm sure you've caught on...

Some have been asking about what DC is like right now with everything changing so quickly. Being here during the stimulus bill drama is pretty cool. Yesterday Tony and I went to capital hill just to drop off thank you notes (sending letters takes a ridiculously long time after security increases after 9/11 and the anthrax scare); and we wound up running into some people from an education reform group that Impact Aid is involved in and we last minute got in on a meeting with Virginia representative Bobby Scott. It was soo cool! But I was so mad at myself because a) I didn't have my business cards to hand out! b) I had nothing to take notes with! c) I didn't have my 30-second "this is who I am" planned out (we had a meeting about networking at The Washington Center the other day and they said we should really make one up). So I'm putting together an "emergency capital hill" kit (I told Tony this too, he seemed amused) that has my camera in it (for famous sightings), pen, paper, and my business cards for networking. As for my 30-second gig, I'm going to have to leave that to mirror practice. Tomorrow we're headed to the hill to sit in on a hearing. I'm still really struggling to understand everything about the politics of these issues...

Soo what else... weekend highlights include going to my first and last sketchy DC club. It was called Fur. I'm not kidding. We met up with some Dickinson kids though (Richard and Will), which was the point of that in the first place. But it was fun to dance. Saturday we ventured to Target and hosted our first dinner party. A successful pot luck if I do say so myself. But overall I feel like the weekend was a lot of "college partying" and I think that I'm looking for more of a mature scene this semester. Sunday I went to the Hirshorn art and sculpture museum. I will definitely be returning, it was awesome. My roomie and I also went to see Abe (as in Lincoln), and found a great place to watch the sunset, another place I'll be returning to (picture below). Speaking of my roomie, she is great. We're in love and have great chemistry. Right Andrea? Fortunately or unfortunately for me, my life here is being tagged on facebook quite a bit.

Oh, America.... sunset overlooking a highway

Tomorrow after work I'm most-likely going to my first happy hour! Some non-profit networking thing, but it should be interesting to check out the young professional scene and meet some cool people -- wish me luck! I did actually get a Valentine's Day date for the weekend, but I wound up cancelling because for the first time in forever I'm actually single on this strange (and tragically AMERICAN) hallmark-holiday and I think it's about time I embrace that. Single and fabulous has to be celebrated, right? ;-) We shall see... all of my roommates, and pretty much everyone else here is in some sort of serious relationship, which has been an interesting "test" for me. But really, I've been thinking how fortunate I am to have such dear friends in my life to love and to feel loved back by... maybe that's all I need right now.

Me and my roomie :)

To leave you on an amusing and random note: We already have a spoon stuck in our garbage disposal (it's bad).