Home!

Here I am! Driving into Ohio territory and seeing the Ohio sign makes me giddy every time.
I'm totally pumped to be home, but I have a feeling I'm going to be lonely here and there. Considering I lived with 13 other people in D.C. I honestly thought I was going to hate my living arrangement. But that never happened. I never became sick of everyone, or felt like going home wasn't really home. I feel like a lot of people have a lot of adjusting to do when they move away for a quarter or semester. But I didn't. I got along with every single one of my roommates. Naturally, I had annoyances and wishes to be alone for an hour or whatever, but I never got sick of coming back to a full house. Now I sit here on a Sunday night at my mom's house, wishing I could go home and see all of my roommates like I've been doing for the past two months. Living with so many people made me appreciate and embrace all of our differences.. most of the time.. and I can cheesily say that it has helped me grow as a person.
Living on Capitol Hill was insane. The election was one of the best experiences I've had. I drunkenly ran down to a Capitol Hill bar from my house just a few minutes before they announced Ohio as a win for Obama, and from that moment on everything went crazy. Every morning I woke up I saw the Capitol and the Supreme Court. I rode a metro to and from work(I'm going to hate driving now) and walked all of the time. I loved being able to people watch throughout my commute, sprint to the metro before it left me almost everyday, run into everyone on the metro with my abundance of bags,etc. The metro makes me want to live in a city. Is that weird? It makes an atmosphere so much more exciting.
I interned at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs which is a Latin American policy research group made up of ALL interns and our lunatic, eighty year old director, Larry Birns. My first day was one of the worse days of my life. I was assigned a letter to the editor, and I had no I idea what I was supposed to do, and was given no direction. I stared at the computer screen for a good two hours and forced myself not to cry from my frustration. It was probably a poorly written letter, and I'm not even sure that it ever got published. But from that moment on, I learned so much about writing, words, and Latin American policy. I was able to publish three of my pieces at COHA, and was able to build on my foreign policy knowledge. I interned with people from all over the world; Italy, China, Taiwan, California, Hawaii, Honduras, Pennsylvania, Nebraska.... and slowly everyone bonded, learned from each others writings, and became comfortable enough with one another to constantly make fun of ridiculous Larry.

I already miss D.C.

But I am completely happy to be home, and to be able to reconnect with everyone and have an awesome winter break.
However, winter break brings the time to be closer to June/graduation, and I'm not sure I'm ready to take my life totally seriously yet since I'm debating whether to apply for the Peace Corps and/or Teach for America.
This is another long, and drawn out subject to talk about.
More on that later.

Crazy Calabaza

It was so awesome to go home this weekend. Even though I saw my friends for a short amount of time on Friday night, it made my heart content.
Halloween ended up being exactly what I wanted it to be. Highball was ridiculous, and I am so impressed with the city of Columbus' development in the past ten years. More people are coming to Columbus for special events, and I love to see the city growing. It sadly makes it harder for me to want to grow up and get out.
I somehow convinced Arvind and Mike to join me at Get Right for the Halloween madness. Other then Mike losing his keys, it was a successful, Kelis and Nas dance filled night.

I wish I lived at closer distances from my family so I could partake in events such as these:




That is my insanely cute baby cousin, Emma who lives in New York.

On an election note,
HOW IS IT TOMORROW?? I have been covering this since January 2007, and I cannot belive that a new president is going to be elected tomorrow. D.C's atmosphere on this election is not as hyped up as I thought it would be. Obviously, most of the coverage is in the battleground states, and what does two electoral votes mean to Obama or McCain? Not much. However, I suppose everyone is in their offices furiously working on articles and preparing for the big day. D.C better be on fire tomorrow!

MOST IMPORTANTLY, VOTE. Shutup for the next four years if you don't vote.

Me!

Friends,
Go to www.coha.org to read my first piece at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs! I will hopefully be getting something up there pretty often. (I imagine biweekly after editing and what not)
Also, it finally feels like fall today, yippeeeeeeeee.
Final thing,

I'm a pusher? What does that even mean?

So, this video is cheesy... almost too cheesy. But it makes me weirdly happy and makes me want to go back to Colombia asap. The little girls voice is sometimes too much too handle, but watch itttt!

Wooo, first blog.

Since I'm far away from home, I suppose an update on my life from time to time would be a good idea. And the fact that I sit at a desk for eight hours 4 out of the 7 days of the week gives me another reason to break from researching!

I just walked to Dupont Circle and had lunch with pigeons. Dupont Circle is two blocks from where I work and it's surrounded by benches, chess tables and a giant fountain in the middle. All sorts of people gather there at lunch time and eat, read, talk loudly on their phone, etc. etc. The chess tables are hilarious because there are an array of businessmen playing chess with scandalous homeless men. It's ridiculous. This morning I woke up and felt like I had been pounded with ten bricks in my sleep. This has led me to have zero motivation at work today. I just finised writing a brief about El Salvador's elections, and next I have to work on a country brief. I've been staring at the list of possible countries I can write about for awhile now, and have only researched two or three of the countries. Helping with my mood is a bit of homesickness I'm feeling due to being in Columbus over the weekend. I am absolutley in live with D.C, but sometimes wish I had better company. I'm still getting settled into work, and I'm not sure if that's normal since I have been here for over two weeks now. I haven't closely connected with anyone I work with quite yet, and living with eleven people is entertaining, but I wish I could focus on work more often when I need to do it. I know this experience is going to be worth while (and I swear I do like it), but all the changes are still sinking in.

On a lighter note,
I'm going to a vineyard in Notheren Virginia on Sunday and I am soooo incredibly excited. The last time I went to a vineyard I was ten, and visited Napa, California. Being ten years old in a vineyard amounts to excess complaining and no fun.

oh and,


even Fidel Castro knows how to pose for senior pictures.