2nd Blog from DC

So this week was pretty epic. I am still loving the city. I've been able to see and do so much! Last Saturday we went to the Air and Space Museum. Pretty awesome stuff! On Wednesday, I sat in on a House Judiciary Subcommittee meeting. One of our scholars at Cato, Dan Griswold, testified about immigration. It was pretty exciting. It snowed so much that day! They let us leave at 3. On Thursday, we went in 2 hours late. I'm really glad we actually made it because the founder of Cato, Ed Crane, spoke to us. I also put together 2 faxes and emails about new material we had. On Friday, we had a debate and a bunch of students came from organizations all over the city. I ran around with a microphone for questions and answers. It was really epic. The discussion was about welfare and poverty.

Yesterday we went up to the Washington Monument. Boy was that awesome! The view was amazing! Today I went to Ebenezer's (NCC) again for church. They gave all the new people food after the service. For dinner I had Armond's pizza (AMAZING) and we're watching Chaos Theory now. (ALSO AMAZING). Peace.

Moving and a Little Bit of Consistency

So I recently moved to Washington, D.C. Not permanently of course (I'm a country boy), but for an internship. I'm working at the Cato Institute (flipping awesome) and I'm wrapping up my final semester at LU through their online program. In order to keep up with my oh so exciting life now (it really is!) I'm going to try and blog on a weekly basis. I'm keeping notes each day about what I do and on the weekend I'll blog about it.

I just finished my second week but it seems like I've been here for months! In a good way though. I was scared to death to start at Cato but I absolutely love it! The atmosphere is not Liberty Way per se, but its definitely an atmosphere of liberty. I work with the Government Affairs department and their goal is to get Cato's libertarian information out to Congress and other leaders. So in other words... I've been compiling databases with contact info. No that glamorous I know, but incredibly important. Jagadeesh Gokhale, a Cato Scholar, wrote a study on the costs of medicaid on the states in regards to Obamacare. We are trying to get this out to all the states and this is where I come in: get all the emails, addresses, phone numbers, etc. for a bunch of people. Tedious, but important.

We've been to the hill (Capitol Hill for all you people back home. haha) a couple times for events and I've been to a lot of cool places. I've delivered Cato books to several house and senate offices. I haven't seen anyone, but eventually I will! On Wednesday, we took a taxi to capitol hill for an event. First time in a D.C. taxi. Ok. When we got back to the office we found everyone outside because there was an gas leak in the building and they sent us home at 3. Heck yeah.

The next day I delivered a couple packages for Jason Kuznicki to the American Enterprise Institute, the Brookings Institute, and Americans for Tax Reform. They're all kind of close to Dupont Circle, one of the famous D.C. landmarks. On my way I passed the embassies of Australia, Trinidad and Tobago, and Peru. And for the finale of the day, I was stuck in the elevator between the 1st and 2nd floors at Cato. I was there for about 30 minutes but I had coffee so I was fine.

Today, we went to the hill again for an informal pizza lunch/discussion with staffers. It was pretty cool. Afterwards we delivered more books around the hill. Today was my first happy hour at work. It was a Chinese New Year theme with a bunch of Chinese food and sake. I didn't have any because I don't like alcohol and because of my commitments to LU. It was hilarious. They had a huge dragon that people walked around in and they had pictures of Chinese and Korean leaders everywhere. I had a good time socializing and discussing.

Last weekend we toured a bunch of museums (we being a bunch of the LU students in the Washington Semester.) We've got a great group of people and we're all hanging out and getting along. We've been to the National Community Church the last two sundays at Ebenezer's Coffee Shop. It's epic. We're watching Clue right now. Also epic.

This was a lot but its my first post. Hopefully this will be once a week so I'll tone it down a bit. Thanks guys.

Oh, the grocery stores here are outrageous!