Typical DC- Cherry Blossoms, Hillary Clinton, & the Supreme Court

I haven't written in my blog for soo long! I've been pretty busy and pretty lazy at the same time, which is not a good combination for keeping up a blog. But I'll try to give an update on my exciting times in DC!

Right now I'm currently writing this blog from home! I decided extremely last minute to come home for the Easter weekend since I got Good Friday off from class.  I literally bought my ticket during the 20 minutes in between classes and I had to pack then too since I would go straight from class to the train!

Taking the train was definitely different, but it didn't end up being that bad.  I took the train from Union Station in DC on Thursday at about 4 and arrived in New Haven at 9:30.  I got to sit in a really nice car where everyone was questioning if we were actually in coach or in business class lol.  It was really cool taking the train because I got to see places I've never seen before like Philly, Baltimore, and Trenton, NJ? lol But I did get a sweet pic of NYC at sunset:

Anyways, it's been a long time since I've update this blog so I'll try to remember most of the interesting stuff I've done.

For my Foreign Policy Seminar, my Professor always takes us places and gets us invited to events and speakers a lot.  This event was definitely the best so far.  It was an event at the Institute of Peace about "The Week That Changed The World", when President Nixon visited China for the first time and established diplomatic relations with the PRC.  At the event we got to see the Ambassador of China, Henry Kissinger, and even Hillary Clinton speak!  Plus there was tons of free food and drinks, which makes any event a winner.

 Hillary Clinton giving a speech:

Then I pictured her like this after:

 

Awesome place where the event was held:

Finally I took a picture of my room with my messy desk and my roommate Lindsey on our mondo bed we had to make since our room is definitely a single lol.

Weird statue thingy inside one of the Senate building, I think it's called Clouds and Mountain or something... lol

New Haven style pizza!! We found this place up the street from my dorm! It was sooo good, I ate about a third of the pizza by myself lol.

And then I went with my roommate to anther pizza place called 2Amy's where the pizza is certified by the Italian government that it is made in the legit Italian way.  And I knew this for sure because I tweeted the picture and Caitlin DeCortin, Italian food expert, told me that it looked like real Italian pizza right away haha. It was amazing!!

Unfortunately I felt like this after all this pizza haha:

Besides eating all the pizza in DC, I have been doing some typical DC things like enjoying the cherry blossoms and going to protests!

Blossoms at Tenley Campus!

Lindsey with cherry blossoms near the Japanese Embassy

Instagramed cherry blossoms for the hipsters!

One of the coolest things I got to since my last blog post was go to the Supreme Court during the healthcare arguments.  My internship is very involved in the healthcare lawsuit.  The NFIB's lawyer was actually arguing in the Supreme Court against the healthcare law.  He actually was arguing against the constitutionality of the individual mandate, which forces everyone to purchase health care.  Besides all the politics involved in the case, it is so cool to be working at a place involved in this historic Supreme Court case.  The only other time the Court has allowed this much time for arguments was in Brown vs. BOE and I can say I was involved in a very very tiny part of it as an intern! haha

On the second day of the arguments, my work let me go down to the Court and hang out with the media team.  It was sooo cool! I got to hold the NIFB sign since there wasn't really anything to do. lol But I watched the media team do their job, which was really neat.  They would go around trying to get interviews and would do interviews and give statements on behalf of the NFIB.  They also set up interviews for the head of the legal department and the NFIB lawyer for when they came out of the the court with places like CNN or Fox News.  It was amazing to see them all so focused on their jobs.  I saw the head of the media department give an interview while there were tons of protesters chanting all around her and I could barely hear her myself. She was so focused! I definitely think this made me realize I like the media aspect of politics too, so I'm actually gonna take a journalism class next semester! ahh!

Obamacare supporters

View from behind all the media

CNN umbrella! lol

Extremely smiley tea party guy!

Tea Party flag

Another cool thing I got to do was go to the Newseum.  I was a little rushed since I had to catch my train but I really was a cool museum and I definitely wanna go back and take my time to go through the museum. 

Some of the cool things I really liked were that they had lots of stuff from comedy shows from the last election, like Saturday Night Live and Steven Colbert and Jon Stewart. 

They had a really cool exhibit where they had newspapers of the day from all over the world.

I found the Hartford Current and the Boston Globe!

They also had a 9/11 exhibit with an actual antenna from the twin towers and newspapers from the day from all over the world.  They also had a really good documentary, but I didn't watch it because I didn't have time and would definitely be crying. 

Twin Towers antenna

Cool view of the Capitol from the Newseum building, notice the Canadian embassy next door! lol.

It's been a great experience for me these past couple of weeks, but it's nice to be home.  Even if my father and brother try to chop a tree down in our yard and this is what happens:

Yeah... that was supposed to fall the other way... lol. Gotta love being home!

Happy Easter everyone!! :D