Taking Advantage of DC

Recently in a five day period (including the weekend) I attended talks at the Wilson Center and the American Foreign Service Association and visited the National Gallery of Art and Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. I have finally begun taking advantage of the city. Yes Mom and Dad, I did my schoolwork too.

First the talks. I didn't know what to expect when I showed up at the Wilson Center. The topic for the panel was - Arab Spring or Arab Autumn: Women's Political Participation in the Arab Uprisings and Beyond. I didn't know how many people were going to be at the talk was going to be, if I was going to have to say anything, who was going to be there, etc. All I knew is that the general topic sounded interesting and I may be able to make some new connections. When I showed up I went through the usual rigmarole of entering a federal building - send my bag through the x-ray, walk through the metal detector, and show the security guard what shoes I'm wearing since they probably set-off the metal detector. I then followed the crowd upstairs and took a seat in the auditorium. At this point I could tell that I wasn't going to have to talk unless I really wanted to - there was at least 50 people.

photo courtesy of Wilson Center

The discussion lasted about an hour and a half and was fascinating. At least I thought it was. There were three women who sat up front and talked about what their various organizations had done and were doing to work with women in the Middle East. They also debated on how active women currently are in the countries - which surprisingly varied. It mostly varied due to the differing definitions of political action. Some argued that any activity in the political, economic or domestic sectors qualified while others focused specifically on activity in parliament or government. There was also some discussion on what can be done or will be most effective to continue moving the countries toward gender equality. Again I was surprised at the varying opinions within the group. I guess I expected it to be a more uniform consensus that there needs to be a bigger push to get women into the parliamentary system. Thinking back on it though I guess it's good there is not consensus, this way it is more likely that the cultural values of the nations will be taken into consideration instead of pushing the western ideals (with good intentions obviously).

Then the talk at the American Foreign Service Association. I found out about this lunch through the Trojan network. USC is looking like a better and better school for me to have done my undergrad school work. They brought Joie Chen to AFSA to talk about Al-Jazeera America. Again I really didn't know what to expect when I arrived at AFSA and I knew even less about Al-Jazeera America as a television station. Sure, I had looked at it online but beyond being a news station that does more long form reporting I wasn't sure what made it so unique.

Ms. Chen was very engaging and obviously excited about the station. Al-Jazeera America is technically a part of the greater Al-Jazeera enterprise around the world, but there is apparently a very strong firewall between Al-Jazeera in Qatar and Al-Jazeera America. I'm sure there is some communication among the higher ups, but Ms. Chen has been allowed to produce programming that goes against the corporate greed practice of short and quick blurbs on whatever the station thinks will get the most viewers. In fact, she said they have a "No Bieber" zone policy. Definitely something I can support. She anchors their flagship show America Tonight that presents four to six stories in a given night (instead of the ten presented during a 30 minutes standard news show). Personally I like this idea since it gives more in depth coverage instead of attempting to make a rush judgment on an idea in 90 seconds. I'll get my short form coverage from the entertainment of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.

This is long enough for now. I'll put down my thoughts on the museums later.

Business Cards and SOTU

So I've only been here for three weeks but I get the message. Everyone in DC has business cards. I mean everyone. In the first two weeks of my internship at PLEN and listening in on the panels, I think I heard about the importance of business cards at least once a day. It doesn't seem to matter if you're working or not, everyone has personal business cards. So while delaying the over 200 pages of reading I have for school, I played around on a couple sites and now I have my own business cards. I haven't handed any out yet, so we'll see. Hopefully they'll help me make more connections.

As if I needed more proof that I have moved to DC, I watched the State of the Union tonight. I've never watched it before but I felt like I had to. I'm guessing there will be much discussion tomorrow. Since I don't have cable, I watched it online and got the "enhanced" version with slides. I didn't keep it as the active window the whole time but I did at least listen.

For those of you who don't know, I moved to Washington DC. After 10 years enjoying the sun and amazing year round weather in California I decided I wanted seasons again. I'm already questioning the sanity of this but I keep reminding myself, I grew up in Minnesota and it's a lot worse there. In general though, I am enjoying this version of winter. It's a nice balance for me.

Of course, that's not the only reason I moved. I have also decided to go back to school, sort of. I am taking a class (Children in International Development) and a seminar (International Affairs) at American University as part of their Graduate Gateway Program (GGP). As part of the program I am also interning at the Public Leadership Education Network (PLEN). The GGP is designed to give the student an opportunity to determine if the selected area of interest is where they want to work or study and decide if they want to go back to school for their masters or get a job next. By participating in the program I get a boost in my grad school application by proving I can actually do grad school work and potentially make connections to get me a job (to maybe help pay for grad school).  

Snow Day!

I thought that after I left high school I was never going to get another snow day.  I guess if I still lived in Minnesota maybe I would have gotten a couple cold days this winter, but I'm an adult now so even that.  In all seriousness, the thought of a snow day today never crossed my mind until I checked my school email.  Then double checked the website and saw the above notice.  Then after that I triple checked by emailing the research assistant for my class this evening and she confirmed.  It's true.  Washington DC has snow days.  Class was cancelled for maybe two inches of snow today, and that's the total accumulation on the ground as of 6:00pm.

So what did I do today?  I caught up on reading for school, wrote a short paper, watched Netflix, goofed around on the web, cooked, and twiddled my thumbs.  I got a bit stir crazy sitting inside so I decided to walk the three blocks to Starbucks.  I got there a little after 4:00pm only to see a sign on the door notifying me they were closing at 5:00pm instead of 8:00pm due to severe weather conditions.

I guess this is the same a multiple definitions of black ice.  There is the Minnesota definition of exhaust frozen on the asphalt so you can't tell if the road is slippery.  Then there is the California definition for when there is light rain and the roads are slick from all the oil beading up on the road.  I'm sure there are other definitions from around the country, but when you grow up in Minnesota a light rain causing black ice or 2 inches of snow causing a snow day just doesn't make sense to me.  A new city, so many new things to learn.