Internships! Yay!

So the main reason I came to DC was to get an internship and it's been a long process, but I can finally say that it's over and I have an internship officially! I'm going to be interning at the NFIB, which stands for the National Federation of Independent Businesses.  It's basically a lobbying association that lobbies for small businesses.  It's a pretty big and influential organization, so I'm really excited! I'm going to be a federal public policy intern, so I'll get to work closely with the lobbyists and hopefully get to go with them to capitol hill often. 

I'm really glad I have an internship now, but it took forever! If you ever want to get an internship, make sure you start months in advance, especially if you want to get the really competitive internships! I'm so tired of working on cover letters, resumes and all that, but it was worth it in the end! I actually found some other really great places in the process that I would love to intern at for maybe a summer internship...?  Who knows?

Although I've been busy doing internship things, I have been able to do some fun things in DC! 

Last Friday, me Lindsey, both Christina's and Rachel all went to the National Zoo! It was freezing out but it was great because the animals that were outside were really active and not just sleeping all the time like the do in the summer because it's so hot.

The lions were going crazy! It was so cool!

The cheetahs were so cute!

Cute red panda!

Gorillas!

We also went and visited the new Martin Luther King Jr. memorial on MLK day.  It was a really cool monument with lots of quotes of King's from the Civil Rights Movement.  It was also funny because we got to see the quote on the statue that was quoted wrong so now they have to fix it. Embarrassing!  The original quote was: "Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter".  The quote on the statue currently says, "I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness." I think it's funny how much they shortened it, especially since it changes the meaning behind the quote a bit.  I feel like somebody got lazy and didn't feel like carving out the whole quote. lol

The temporary quote!

The whole monument

We also walked by the Washington Memorial, but no one's allowed to go up it for the time being because it got damaged from the random earthquake we had in the summer!

I also had my first official day in my Foreign Policy seminar today.  I love my Professor, he's hilarious but also extremely smart.  He's very Italian in a good way and from New York and sounds like he should be on Curb Your Enthusiasm or something! Anyways, we talked about a bunch of general topics relating to foreign policy and all the other students in my class seem really smart, or at least sound smart haha, so it should be a good semester. And he ended class on the lovely note that the U.S.'s biggest national security weakness is probably from cyber warfare and that hackers could hack so many important things in our lives like water purification systems or nuclear reactors! ahh!! Fortunately, I hope we have some smart people working in the government to stop them! haha 

Well I hoping I'll keep up with my blog , so I'll probably update it at least after I go to my first day of interning. Ahh!! I'm a bit nervous, but hopefully everything will go well!