#Week One Fact - courtesy of my fantastic work supervisor Julie (to show how much I'm learning!):
The north-south streets of Arlington, Virginia are laid out alphabetically by first letter and by their number of syllables depending on their distance from the Potomac River
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It's so hard to believe that we've been in Washington now for almost a week and a half and even harder to believe how much we have crammed into that space of time! The last week has been a complete blur of activity that has seen us all navigate our way around the metro system, meet outside the White House, visit the news and media filled Newseum - the newest museum in DC (see what they did there?!), discover our true colours (I'm a green-blue apparently surrounded by a lot of yellows and reds - that'll be interesting), visit Arlington cemetery and the Lincoln and Roosevelt Memorials, survive seriously hot weather, take in the Library of Congress, meet a Senator, tour the Capitol, sing and dance for 60 elementary school kids (a special mention should go to Alan Ralph who had everyone singing "who let the dogs out") and of course celebrate Neal's 21st. Not bad for Week 1!
On Friday, myself, Gary, Elaine and Andrew also experienced our "leadership moments" as we gave speeches at a luncheon hosted by the Northern Ireland Bureau and held at the National Press Club. Huge thank yous have to go to Jonathan, Megan and Rebecca for all their help last week in listening to our speeches and offering us such good advice. To Rebecca in particular, thank you for keeping us so well fed in the process!! (The peppers weren't really that hot!)
Friday was rounded off by the 1990s host family party which was a brilliant night (Thank you Lenore!) With Britney, Princess Diana, Dame Edna, The Celtic Tiger, Barbie, the Saved by the Bell crew and the Genie from Aladdin (complete with blue body paint) among the characters all in attendance, everyone definitely seemed to enjoy themselves!
This week promises to be just as hectic as the last. It's only Tuesday and we've already had a seminar on speech-writing, met with the 2008 SAWIP team and today, started our internships. Thank you so much to the Management Team and Jonathan and Megan for putting in so much work to make our first week in DC so enjoyable.
Good luck to everyone for their internships! Roll on week 2!
