Presidents Race

Hello! So I'm out here in Washington, DC for the summer! It has been two weeks and I have ten to go. I'll be back towards the end of August. Things here have been great so far. I'm out here with a group of students from the University of Utah's Hinckley Institute of Politics. We are interning at a variety of places, from the RNC to the DNC. I'm working for a company called Pal-Tech, it is great! The company works off of government contracts and does a large variety of things. I work with two other interns, one from Utah State University and the other from Weber State University. We aren't really involved with what the company does, we mostly just do research on the Middle East. I love DC, it is a great city with so much to do, but at the same time I'm sad that I'm missing another summer in Utah. I am going to make a attempt at keeping this blog updated throughout the summer. Here are some pictures from my first two weeks in DC.


Here is the Washington Monument. I took this picture just as a bus drove past, it turned out pretty cool.


This is the building i work in in Arlington, VA. It is right across the river from the District. It is a nice area and is really close to the metro! However, it does take about 40 minutes to commute from where I live (Van Ness, DC) to Arlington.



This picture was taken out of the window of the chairman of our company's office. You can see (from left to right) the capitol building, the Washington monument, the Lincon monument, and the Jefferson monument.

If you look in the other direction, you can see the side of the pentagon. It doesn't really look like a pentagon at ground level.

Here are Virinia and I waiting for the metro. Virinia is an intern from Utah State that I work with.
Here I am in front of a pretty sculpture at the Woodrow Wilson center. We found out that there was a symposium about Iran, Iraq and the United States at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, so we were able to go during work. Our boss wants us to take advantage of being in Washington DC. He says that we are interns here to learn, not to work so he will be sending us on more things like this. The thesis of the speaker's presentation was that in order to build a new, stable, Iraq, the United States needs to have talks with Iran, since Iran plays a huge roll in Iraq and has great influence there. The US, however, has been unwilling to have talks with Iran because the US accuses Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons. I personally think that if the US closes its doors to talks with any country or organization it is putting itself at a disadvantage. I don't think there can be any peaceful resolutions without dialogue. But anyway, it was a very interesting talk and I'm glad we got to hear it.



Dr. Kader, our boss, wanted the interns to watch some films in his office while he was out. We watched Bush's War, a PBS font line documentary, I highly recommend it. We still have a long list we need to watch. This is a picture of me trying to choose which delicious chocolate to eat.

The first weekend I was here a group of us, all interns from the Hinckley Institute visited a few embassies that were having Open Houses as part of a foreign embassy open house event. This photograph is of a painting in the Colombian embassy that I really liked.

Here is our group in front of the Colombian Embassy. We also visited Pakistan, Ghana, Ethiopia, and Bangladesh embassies.


Many of the embassies were closed and we had to just pass by without going inside. Here is a picture of the crest of Singapore in front of the Singaporean embassy. It made me miss Singapore a lot. Majulah Singapura!
There was a very entertaining fashion show in Ghana's embassy.

Here are the other interns who work with me at Pal Tech. Jake (Weber state) and Virinia (Utah state.)

Here I am reading in my mini cubicle. The book I'm reading is titled Negotiating Arab-Israeli Peace. It is a great book, It is not very long. I haven't finished it yet. It was published in early 2008 and gives a history of the peace talks between Israel and countries of the Arab world during the Bush 1, Clinton, and Bush 2 administrations. Then it gives 10 suggestions on how to negotiate Arab-Israeli peace. It is great, I think the authors need to send copies over to Obama and McCain.

Here I am looking out over the Potomac river at the Kennedy Center.

Every day at 6pm the Kennedy center has a free performance. I went twice last week to see a jazz performance and chamber music performance. They were both great. I love DC because there is so much free entertainment!


Here I am at the Kennedy Center with Megan (a girl from the Hinckley Institute.) The building on the left in the foreground is the Watergate building, where the Watergate scandal took place, and on the right is the Saudi Arabian Embassy.

Every Friday after working hours there is a free jazz concert at a sculpture garden near capitol hill. So I met up with some other interns from the Hinckley Institute for a little picnic after work. The weather was perfect!


Here are Christine (left), Erin (Right) and I in the Metro on our way to the Jefferson Memorial.

This is my fourth trip to Washington DC in the past year and the first time I've ever been to the Jefferson Memorial. We decided to take a walk over there at night time. It was beautiful! I want to go back during the daytime. This picture was taken on the other side of the tidal basin.



Here is a shot of the Washington monument from the opposite side of the tidal basin.


This Saturday, after spending the day laying out by the pool, a group of us decided to go to a Nationals game. It was my first major league baseball game!

After the 4th or 5th inning Lincon, Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Washington came out for a Presidents Race. These are seriously the cutest mascots I have ever seen.


Lincon won!