What an exciting time to be in Washington DC!

I feel bad because I get to blog to you all about this semester but there is no way of knowing the events that will take place during your semester. Who knew that the election was going to be so hotly contested? How about the failures of several banks and other institutions on Wall Street and bearing witness to the bail-out package? And it’s failure to pass the House! Or how about protesting Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? Then again, I would never have imagined that my semester was going to be so unpredictable before I left home, Amazing!

As you can tell it’s been an exciting week and it only seems to get better. This week we had a former TWC Alum, who is currently the mayor of Santa Cruz, speak to us about how he got to where he is today. I wasn’t all that enthused about meeting him only because his bio said that he was the vice president of a bookstore (yawn) and a mayor (yaaay). There are a lot of mayors in the U.S but what made him interesting is that he was once sitting in our seats and going through the same motions that we do here as interns through TWC. Not to mention, he ended up being hilarious explaining the crazy requests he gets from his constituents. He also mentioned something that had already been on my mind for a while, and re-assured me that going to law school without the desire to become a lawyer is an expensive bad idea and tax law isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.

Thankfully the Mayor of Santa Cruz didn’t come right after our next speaker: MR. ROBERT MCFARLANE. I didn’t put it in caps because I think you can’t read, but to make sure that you didn’t skim this paragraph. Lets see here, National Security Advisor to President Ronald Reagan, among many other accomplishments, speaking to us about national security, foreign policy, and the election?! I know this is going to sound so cliché, but it was one of the best days of my life! I’m a political junky, what more can I say?! Our contact doesn’t stop there; he said we can e-mail him if we have any further questions about anything. This man is a legend, what an honor to have him speak to us! Well I can’t say everybody had the privilege because he only spoke to Senator McCain’s civic engagement group. Every group had a speaker, but it’s safe to say that we lucked out. It seemed to me like bad karma for Senator Obama’s group, who were next door laughing at the fact that they had more students than we did. It’s a basic fact that college students are typically Democrats; not rocket science, so no hard feelings :)

In addition, the annual Black Caucus was held last Friday. Since one of our clients from my internship was speaking, they sent me to attend the conference. One of our speakers was actor/activist Danny Glover! They should have waited to have him speak last, because the second his speech ended half of the room cleared out! Bad logistical planning! It was great though because as I was leaving I came within an arms length from controversial Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, not your average American citizens!

As for this week, I have no idea what to expect! All I know is that I am cautiously excited for the VP debate on Thursday. Godspeed Sarah Palin!

Washington Monument and Iwo Jima Memorial