Voices

I love trivia night. The Irish pub down the street hosts a trivia night each Tuesday and my friend Aaron and I always go. We usually just present a team of two (even though the rules allow up to six team members) and do pretty well. We each have our strengths…although mine are much more limited: pop culture, geography, current events, and some history.

Of all of these geography is my greatest skill. I can name all the countries in the world, put them on a map and give capitals to about half of them. Last Tuesday night I was positive that I was the only person in the pub who knew every country in Oceania (do you?). But they didn’t ask for the countries that make up Oceania, they instead asked a sneaky sports question hidden in a geography question: Known as the pinto bean capital of the USA, which is the least populous state to have all four major league sports teams (hockey, basketball, football, baseball). This is not a geography question… I felt cheated out of my strongest suit. The answer is Colorado by the way. The moral of this story is…let’s be honest, there is no moral. I just wanted to share.

To begin the actual blog: every Wednesday and Thursday I wake up extra early, put on my business wear and take the metro to the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center for my internship. This week was a little special because of my absences due to our New York trip. I came in as usual on Wednesday, but had to skip Thursday because of an intense cold/fever that had me on my deathbed, and then I made up some time on Friday afternoon.

I walked into my internship ready for a half-day of speech preparation on Friday. My co-intern was eating his lunch in the office, which is unusual, since we mostly eat in the lovely dining room of the Wilson Center. Unfortunately, the dining room was closed for lunch because it was being used for a special event. I went up to the café to grab some food to go and I see through the dining room door that the room is full of Wilson Center folks, and a very special guest: Laura Bush.

These kinds of things are what make Washington D.C. so exciting. I regularly see motorcades; my friend’s classmate met Joe Biden in CVS… There are a lot of opportunities to meet interesting and important people, attend events, and have great classes. For example, this past week my class went to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). For those who may not know, the IMF basically gives loans and technical assistance to countries around the world. Right now they are involved heavily with the Eurozone crisis. They also receive a lot of criticism for their methods and programs, most notably structural adjustment (conditionality of loans).

Our presenter was not the most eloquent of men, nor did he answer a lot of our questions very well, but it was almost enough to be in the building. We sat at a large table, each person had a microphone they could turn on and off in front of them, and we listened to a man talk about the work of the IMF as a field trip.

And what blog post would be complete without mentioning a little something about Lafayette. Lafayette played American University in basketball this weekend. I donned my leopard gear and went to the game. I found a small, yet strong contingency of alumni and had a great time cheering for the leopards. Unfortunately, we lost, but only by a small margin and the last five minutes of the game were pretty exciting because it looked like we might have been able to pull ahead. Alas. But it was amazing to feel so close to Lafayette, yet so far away (but at least we are on the same continent).