Welcome to Washington!

Hey folks,

Well, here we are! On Wednesday, I moved into my apartment in Arlington, VA and officially began my Washington D.C. experience. Traffic on the Beltway was pretty nasty and we had a little trouble finding the place, so it took us a little longer than expected but we finally made it and I finally saw where I was going to be living in person! It was really nice: a two bedroom, two bathroom apartment on the 11th floor!

Our living room( as you can see we're not interior decorators)

I met each of my four roommates: Russel is from South Africa, Andy is from Southern California, and the third, Alec, is from Arkansas. They're all really nice guys. Russel had never been out of the country before! Andy and I spent an hour trying to explain American football to him. It's a really diverse group and it's nice to meet people from all different walks of life.

On the right, you can see the view from our apartment balcony

On Thursday, we had orientation at the Washington Center. I was able to meet all the folks in the Political Leadership Program with me. We were told of all the requirements for the semester as well as some do's and don'ts for our internship.

Later in the day, all of the students in our program made a field trip to the Newseum. The Newseum is huge museum right on Pennsylvania Avenue that provides a retrospective on news and the media. It was a real treat for this news junkie! They had a really cool exhibit on "Gangsters and G-Men", which showed off really cool artifacts from the Unabomber's cabin to what John Dillinger was wearing the night he was shot. They also have a huge collection of historic front pages, the door from the Watergate break-in and the TV antenna from the North Tower of the World Trade Center on display. (Below you can see the antenna, recovered from the Ground Zero rubble and a lookout tower and large piece of the Berlin Wall)

But there are two things that I really like about the museum. First, it has a beautiful terrace that overlooks Pennsylvania Avenue and provides a great view of the Capitol. The second is the infamous dry-erase board used by Tim Russert on Election Night 2000. His insistence on the state of Florida being crucial in the hours before the polls closed became a historic moment in both politics and pop culture. He's a big role model of mine. On Sunday mornings, my Dad and I used to always watch him on Meet the Press. (By the way, Russert's book Big Russ and Me is all all-time favorite of mine. I highly recommend it!)

Well, that's going to do it for now. I start my internship on Tuesday and I need to get up to speed before then! Take care everybody!