Justice Kagan and the Washington Monument

Today I got to see this lady speak. Justice Kagan. My pictures are not very good since I was near the back, but for those of you who don't know, this is what she looks like. It was really interesting because she was extremely funny, and you wouldn't really expect that from a Supreme Court justice. As well, she wasn't the most eloquent speaker ever. She stuttered and said "um" a lot, which I found rather surprising. But nevertheless, she was delightful to listen to. Then I spent the rest of the day by going to lunch with one of my friends and attending a 3 1/2 hour briefing on fishing. Who knew you could talk for three hours about fish? Since the President spoke last night and told people to call/write their congressman/congresswoman, that is what people did. So we had a lot of mail and phone calls.

But then the second best part of my day. We went to the top of the Washington Monument! It was mega cool!

Steny Hoyer - Minority Whip

Today I got to see this man, Steny Hoyer. He is the minority whip. It was really great seeing him, even though he was late because of votes. He told this story about how he interned on the Hill and the person working the front desk, answering the phones...well, her name was Nancy. Who later turned into Nancy Pelosi. I absolutely love when people tell stories like that.

This weekend was mainly uneventful. Saturday we went to Dupont and I finally had Pinkberry! It's kind of like Red Mango, but you get to have as many toppings as you want. Then since it was really hot out, we went to go see a movie. It was a very movie filled weekend, since we watched a lot of movies on my laptop. The heat was pretty unbearable so I just wanted to do nothing all day. I did play some football and actually caught it twice, which was a plus. But that was the sum of my weekend.

This week will be pretty exciting though. I may get to go to the top of the Washington Monument and I may get to see Justice Kagan. I am also going to the White House and taking a picture with my Congressman. So be prepared for some totally awesome updates. And my family comes to visit this week!

Despite the craziness in Washington, House Reps are still nice

So today I went to dinner with my friend Becky from Spirit Camp. We both were not able to attend camp this year, so we decided to meet up since she is in Virginia this summer.

I was in the process of taking this picture, when some House Reps walked out of the members only entrance. One of the House Reps tried to put bunny fingers in the picture I was taking here, but he missed. Then one House Rep was like, "here let me take a picture of both of you."

I didn't want to be a pest and ask them all these questions, so I don't know who they were. But they were all laughing and joking and it really showed a more human side to them. I rather enjoyed it. The Rep who took our picture made me look at it to make sure it was a good picture. Now I know where to stand if I really want to meet some House Reps.

Newseum, Art Museums & More

As I have previous mentioned, Wednesdays are the best days. This Wednesday was no exception. First we started with the Newseum.

Since I really want to go to bed instead of blogging, I shall put in pictures the newseum.

The view from the top floor of the Newseum :)

Totally geeky and own this newspaper. Thanks daddy!



I got to be a reporter in front of my favorite building!

Then we went to two art museums.


Saw some Picasso's, Monet's, Van Gogh's paintings.




Then my friends went to the Spy Museum and I went to the portrait gallery since I'm going to the Spy Museum with my family.




Then we went to dinner at this yummy restaurant. It was family style, so it was really cheap. Overall, a good day.

Picture!

Since I haven't blogged in a while, I shall post a picture now, in order to keep everyone happy until I am able to blog about today :)

This is an unseen picture from the first day of class. For some reason I can't find the pictures I added today, so...here we go. Pulling a photo from the archives.

Harry Potter

Sorry I haven't blogged in a while. There hasn't been anything too exciting. The most exciting thing that happened since last time I wrote was seeing Harry Potter at midnight. We got to the theater around 8pm and there honestly wasn't much of a line. I watched the previous movie with a friend while we waited for midnight. Then the movie started and it was really exciting. Until at a key point in the plot line, the screen went blank. People freaked out. Then it came back on, but the sound was gone. So for like 8 minutes, there was no sound and everyone was going crazy. Like, that is something that just can't happen. But then the brought the sound back on, but we missed the crucial part. But the rest of the movie was delightful and I would totally recommend seeing it. But luckily they gave us free tickets to come back and see any other movie. So that was nice.

Saturday we went to the pool, which was really nice. It's so great just relaxing and hanging out with friends. But that's about all for now :)

Zoo

Well today after class, where we talked about the two books we had read, as well as graduate/law school, we decided to go to the zoo. Well it was all good until we got there and it started to drizzle. Which then turned into a stead rain, and then a downpour. So we decided to leave since the rain radar didn't look to promising. So we ran back to the metro station in the rain. I haven't been out in a downpour like that in a long time. But I got to see a sloth bear, so that wasn't too bad. Of course I forgot my battery for my camera, but brought my camera, but luckily I had my iPod. But since we weren't there as long as we planned and spent more time in the giftshop than anything, I only have one or two good pictures.

Me and the fake otters.

Real otters.
We will for sure try to go back, since we basically saw like five animals. And one of them was a bird that was just flying by.

I'm on a Boat

For those of you who know me, I have a radio show Wednesdays from 9-11pm CST on waug.fm, that is entitled "I'm on a Boat." This blog post is, in fact, not at all about my radio show.

This weekend we went on a boat trip to Alexandria, VA and then to Mt. Vernon the next day. So both Saturday and Sunday, I was on a boat. So initially we were going to go down to Georgetown on Saturday, just to walk around. But then someone remembered about the boat trip that you could take, so we decided to do that. And it was one of our friend's birthday, so this would be something special to celebrate his birthday with.




It was a lot of fun, especially going on the boat. I love boat rides. As I said before, we had been to Alexandria, or Old Town, before. But it was still just as fun. Then after that, before getting on the metro, we went to the George Washington Masonic National Memorial. As we learned on the boat trip, this is one very tall building that has a wonderful view.



While we weren't able to go up since, since it had closed a few minutes before we got up there, there was still a beautiful view. Then after that, we went back, took a nap and went to see the monuments at night. On the way back from the metro though, we got the whole entire metro car to sing happy birthday to my friend. That was mega cool.







So that was Saturday. On to Sunday :)
We had to wake up mega early because we had to leave on the Spirit, the boat at 8:30am. But the boat was really cool and reminded me of my 8th grade trip on the Odyssey, so it was totally worth it.

After about an hour, we made it to Mt. Vernon! First we saw his grave, where he was buried instead of in the crypt in the Capitol.

Then we saw some of his gardens.


After that we saw the kitchen, slave quarters, shoemaker shop, blacksmith, clerk's quarters, paint house, wash house, and then finally, his house! Fun fact: his house is actually wood, but they tossed sand on it to make it look like stones. Pretty cool, huh?

His house has such a gorgeous view of the Potomac.

We weren't able to take pictures inside, which was sad, but I was running low on battery then anyways. So we ate lunch, went to the museum and giftshop (They had press pennies!) and finally started heading back to the boat.
Then we got to see some animals! This was my favorite picture out of the cattle, horses, chicken and sheep we saw.

We were able to see the horses make grain or something. It was rather cool. And then we went back on the boat towards home. I essentially slept all the way back because being in the sun had exhausted me. But I would totally recommend going to Mt. Vernon to those who haven't gone. They have costumed interpretors which are really cool. One lady asked where I was from and I said Illinois and they said I must be from some undiscovered territory. It really reminded me of a living history museum I used to volunteer in. Overall, this weekend was pretty great, minus the fact it flew by really, really fast.

Met My Congressman

Today I finally met the Congressman who I work for! Only took 4 weeks. Haha, but he is really nice. Today I got to finish my memo I was previously working on. Then I did the press clippings for the day.

We also got to work on an intern project and it was really cool, since the congressman assigned it.

Library of Congress, Supreme Court Building & Cubs Game!