Friday morning was another early day. We were on the bus to head to Langley before 7am. When we arrived we went through their (very thorough) security. After that we headed inside. I managed to forget the thank you treats we brought with us and rode in a CIA police car to get them. After that we had our meeting with Mike Ard, National Intelligence Officer for the Western Hemisphere. After that we visited their museum which contains artifacts from all different time periods (the war in Afghanistan had a very large section, for example). I have no pictures at the CIA because we could not even bring cameras into the building.
After leaving the CIA we headed back to downtown DC for the rest of the day. We had lunch on the bus and took a group picture in front of the White House (I'm squinting in every version I've seen):
We spent most of our day on Friday at the Inter-American Dialogue, a major think tank on Latin America. Our first meeting there was with four diplomats from the Brazilian embassy. This was probably the most interesting meeting we held the whole trip. We realized pretty quickly we probably should have tweaked our paper to remove more of the American bias before we handed it to the Brazilians. They had lots of tough questions and, honestly, we couldn't answer all of them. It was a pretty lengthy meeting but they provided us cookies and coffee before the next one which was nice. After that meeting we met with Peter Hakim, an expert on Brazil who runs the Inter-American Dialogue. This meeting was pretty laid back and he had lots of insights on Brazil and our paper.
After leaving the Inter-American Dialogue, we headed to the Hill to meet with the staff on one of our Senators. Senator Nelson's office is in the Hart building and as we walked in we passed Claire McCaskill's (one of my favorite senators) office (I also saw on the board that Sen. Feingold and Sen. Franken appear to have offices very close to each other which made me happy). Of course, Congress was in recess so we were not able to meet with our Senator but we did meet with his legislative correspondent for foreign and military issues, Yariv Pierce. He was so young he looked like part of our class. Another interesting thing about this meeting is the fact that two UNF students are currently interning at Sen. Nelson's office. The office looked like a NASA museum, there were pictures and models of space shuttles everywhere (Sen. Nelson was an astronaut, fyi). Our meeting went well, this one was similar to the meeting with the member of the NSC because he asked question that related to the way he writes memos for his boss.
Me with Senator Nelson:
After leaving Senator Nelson's office we drove to a few of the monuments and walked around. It was cold so we didn't take much time. We had Ethiopian food for dinner in Adams Morgan and two of my friends from my internship last year (one of whom went to UNF) joined us. Shannon (my roommate) and I were exhausted so we headed back to the hotel and went to bed. The next morning we took our time getting up and checking out then headed out for some sightseeing. It was incredibly busy all over the mall, as the Cherry Blossom parade was just ending when we got there. We spent some time at the Natural History Museum and the Air and Space Museum before Shannon and Tejas (another classmate who went with us) had to head to the airport. At that point I went and got my stuff and headed to where I was saying (with my friend Kari in Silver Spring, MD). Kari and were roommates last year when we were interning and now she is a social worker in Maryland. One of our other former roommates is in grad school at Galludat and came over for game night. We had a nice time and got to bed because we were planning a day trip to Annapolis the next day.
Sunday's weather was perfect for Annapolis. We walked around on the water, did a little shopping (I finally got sunglasses so I wasn't constantly squinting), had lunch (at a restaurant that had been on Man vs. Food and where John McCain had eaten during the campaign), and walked around the Naval Academy. It was a really beautiful day.
Boats:
My (ex)roommate Kari and I squinting in the sun:
Now I'm seating in Reagan National writing this and waiting for my flight. I always hate leaving DC and this time is no different. While I was here I found out I did not get the Summer internship at the White House that I applied for. I'm upset but I know it's for the best. I just keep telling myself that everything will work out. There is a reason I did not get the internship, just like there is a reason I can't graduate until Spring of next year. I just have to figure out what that reason is.
Update: Right after writing this, as I was coming out of the bathroom I saw Nancy Pelosi! All of the sudden I heard someone say "Madam Speaker!" and when I turned around, there she was (full pantsuit and everything). To me her height was more surprising then the fact she was flying commercial! She was at most, my height (5'2").
Also, one of my classmates managed to get a picture of our little run in with David Gergen (sort of). He's the one at the top (red tie) and I'm just to the right of the girl with the green bag (I was basically wearing all black so it's hard to see):
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