State Department Site Briefing

Part of our program is the opportunity to go on site briefings - basically where a group of us get to go sit in an important government building and hear about what is going on. We all have to dress professionally, AKA dress or pantsuits for girls. So on Tuesday morning my roommates and I spent much more time than usual fretting about whether or not our outfits were appropriate or not, tossing our normal purse objects about our room based on what we could and couldn't bring in, and prepping our feet for more walking in heels.

Outside of the Department of State, where our huge group waited for a good half hour to go through metal detectors and send our things through xrays but it was cool once we got in!


They modeled the room after the UN - it's 2 stories and numerous rows of really comfy chairs that have little plugins to hear speeches translated! Not ours though, we just got a briefing, everything in English...


Bernice and me so excited! It just felt really cool to be in that giant room where people that have an actual influence on how some things in our world work. I actually met Bernice that day and she is a complete sweetheart. She is from Haiti and we ended up talking about our families, things we do for fun, foreign languages, and singing and acting for a really long time. It's so amazing when people from really different backgrounds find their personalities and interests converge!













Three spoke to us on the various subjects related to western hemispheric issues, and it was really cool to get the spiel on what some of our government personalities are working on. And even cooler to hear kids from our program ask each one questions related or only semi-related to their main topics and try to get to the heart of a lot of issues and current events. The first guy was from the Bureau of Western Hempispheric Affairs, directed a number of programs related to South America, and even volunteered in the Peace Corps! He spoke to us mostly on the importance of free market economics to increase prosperity especially for those in what are deemed third world nations. Then a woman from the Latin American office of the Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs got pretty in depth about joint efforts between Mexico and the US to stem the flow of drug trafficking across our border, and I was pleasantly surprised with how much she clued us into her actual personal opinions - that is definitely not easy to do in that environment. The last speaker was Director of the Office of Mexican Affairs in the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, and I'll give him credit for even though he didn't emphasize the humanitarian aspect as much as I would have expected with the arguments he was making, it definitely seemed like he was also stepping outside his political bounds to push freer immigration laws in our national interest. It was also a fun experience to go to work that afternoon and have my supervisor say, "Tell me all about it!"

Random thoughts from today:
- Were politicians and civil servants in high places at some point passionate about what they're doing? Is there still a passion lying beneath the government politically correct speech that channels what they think the government wants us to hear?
- Who knew all these bureaus and departments even within the State Department even existed?
- Why do so many guys here wander around in preppy polo shirts and khakis?
- Every day I am re-reminded of why I switched to a Mac before starting college. I love the fact that I get a laptop at work, but it seems that not even the IT people realize there is something better out there than waiting around for your silly PC to catch up to you.
- Today I was also reminded that the Peace Corps is, albeit independent, a government agency. There was quite a stir up here on the sixth floor when somebody spotted a bunch of Homeland Security trucks and motorcycles parked in front of our doors downstairs. Thankfully they were just here to train our security guards.
- I had never heard anyone say "It's whatever" before coming out here. And I've heard it from both west-coasters and east-coasters! Perhaps the Midwest is just slow in general (not hard to believe as much as I love Minneapolis), but I'm kind of thankful it has not yet picked up on this colloquialism.
- DC has an amazing abundance of crepe restaurants. Thus I had been craving a crepe since I got here, and was finally able to fulfill that quest today as my intern buddy Rebecca and I chose the around-the-corner Crepeaway for today's lunch exploration destination. Twas amazing.