So its been a little over a month since I first got to DC, and at this point I’d say I’ve adapted to life as a real-life working person.  I don’t really think I’ll ever be too eager to wake up at 7am 5 days a week, but at least I have found a temporary solution to early-morning exhaustion: cappuccinos.  I never wanted to be one of those people who needs a java jolt in the morning to function, but it’s really not that bad.

I’ve been pretty busy at work lately helping my supervisors with a number of different things.  Definitely my favorite thing about my internship is attending different meetings and conferences on behalf of my supervisors and then reporting back to the firm what was said.  Since the firm I work for caters to clients from across the globe, they really need to stay on top of everything that is happening in the government that pertains to the ever-changing atmosphere of international trade and international business.

Interning is a full-time job, so obviously I spend more time at the office than I would normally spend in class back at school.  However, this also means that I don’t necessarily have homework, which is nice.  The academic side of TWC assigns us bi-weekly reflections and other personal assessments due periodically but its definitely not as involved as the 20 page Political Science papers I normally find myself writing.  However, everyone in the program is required to take one class that meets once a week.

The class that I’m taking this semester is called International Organizations and Humanitarian Law.  My teacher is really great; he’s traveled to all different parts of the world and has a lot of first-hand experience dealing with matters that have to do with international law.  We were assigned a paper that required our class to visit one of the war monuments in or around DC and then write a personal reflection on it and on our personal view of what exactly a war is.  I’ve always been interested in WWII history, so I visited the WWII Memorial on the National Mall last weekend to take a few notes and pictures to use in my paper.

The WWII Memorial

New favorite spot in DC - this park is actually part of a memorial honoring the Founding Fathers

The last few weekends I haven’t gone to Philly because I’ve wanted to try and get to know the city of DC a little bit better.  I’ve gone and walked around the mall, visited a few of the famous monuments, gone shopping (baaadd idea for my bank account) and have started to explore the DC social scene with a few friends from the RAF.  DC is a pretty college-oriented town, so there area always tons of people my age out and about.  Even though I really do enjoy my days working, spending weekends pretending to be in college again is a nice reprieve.

Christy and me in front of the Capitol