The Week in Pictures

Well, really this is going to be a little more than just this past week, because I haven't posted about anything besides Supreme Court stuff in quite a while! I'll start with the Thursday before last...

THURSDAY, 6/21

Leslie and I took a self-guided tour of the Capitol and the Library of Congress. 
This is an artsy/awkward (call it what you will) shot of my head in the Capitol dome.
Proof I was there! 

And my artsy shot of Leslie's head and the Library of Congress's beautiful ceiling. 

We were then *directed* to leave work early (2pm) so that we could visit Annapolis, Maryland's capital of course (about an hour outside of DC, 2 hours from Leesburg). And after working in a Maryland district office for 3 weeks, we were excited to see what all the hullabaloo was about! And to try crab cakes...

We split a crab cake, each got a bowl of soup, and shared an Annapolis sunrise ;)

When we texted our host "mom" to let her know we got to Annapolis safely, she responded,
"Look out for the cute middies!" We soon gathered she meant the young handsome midshipman who
attend the Naval Academy...my response was "They're everywhere!" :) (they kinda were..)

The beautiful chapel on the Naval Academy's campus!
Andy Harris's office assistant insisted that we see it. 

Annapolis is right off the Chesapeake bay--and proud of it!

Very cute, quaint Main Street. After dinner we got famous ice cream cones from Storm Brother's, which Harris's scheduler insisted on. (We pretty much dedicated each of our activities to one of the staff members.)

FRIDAY, 6/22

This was our last day in Congressman Andy Harris's office, as I posted last week. It was a bittersweet day, and we got a series of photos to commiserate the occasion. 

Left: with the seals of Maryland in Andy's office (and our badges!)...

The very kind Sam, another intern who we really loved, took this picture for us. 

Right: every day leaving work, we would pass Todd Akin's office. We finally went 

in to say hello! Congress wasn't in session, so we didn't get to meet Todd, but we 

talked to his very friendly staff who took a picture of us with the Missouri flag! 

After work, Leslie, Chris and I decided to use our spare hour (since our bus doesn't leave West Falls until 6:55) to visit the Smithsonian of Natural History. 

I took this for my friend, Sam, who wishes she was Australian. Lots of cool stuff here, though!

Getting home Friday became another unexpected adventure. We made it to West Falls right at 6:50, with FIVE minutes to spare until our bus comes, right? WRONG. Buses can leave whenever they want, apparently. Well, it left without us, so we were again stranded... we decided to hop on a bus to Our Lady of Hope (which we had done once before back during the days of bus-time confusion), hoping that Dan or Maureen would be able to come pick us up before too long. We ended up spending a nice meditative 40 minutes or so watching the sunset through the rain. 

Though it wasn't in our original Friday night plans, it was pretty darn nice. 

Chickfila followed. I already posted that victory picture though :) We hadn't eaten dinner after the museum and before the bus-mishap, so naturally we were quite hungry. Plus the East coast is all about Chickfila, so we had heard about it so much since being here, and had a serious craving. I told the guy behind the counter when we arrived at our 2nd Chickfila (this one was thankfully still open!) that it was like walking into the Promised Land. I don't know if he understood how serious I was. 

SATURDAY, 6/23

no good pictures taken today, sorry

I posted real briefly about my plans last Saturday. After a 9am hour of adoration for the "Fortnight for [Religious] Freedom" (which ended up being a celebration of Mass, which was awesome), all the interns met up Saturday afternoon to see For Greater Glory. Then we spent a brief time at Arlington Cemetery, which was incredible. It was very brief because Leslie and I had to walk 8 minutes from the Arlington metro stop to one of Congressman Harris' legislative staff's house for dinner with him, his wife, and another of the interns at 6pm. We were on the 13th floor of an apartment complex with a straight-shot view of the Air Force Memorial and the Pentagon. It was really neat! As Leslie said, this is kinda  how she imagined our summer being--networking with awesome people and doing grown-up things, like dining on shrimp fettucine discussing what it means to be pro-life as the sun sets over a beautiful skyline. 

SUNDAY, 6/24

Sunday was very relaxing, 11am mass at St. John the Apostle, and then I took Leslie's car to Tyson's Galleria to meet up with my friend Melaine, who is also interning in DC! We had been wanting to get together for a while, so it was very nice. We ate at the Cheesecake Factory and then walked around a bit and looked at the extremely pricey items I would be able to or desire to purchase. (Try to prove to me that there's a pair of high heels worth $990.00...I don't think so.) 

This girl bought me a piece of hershey chocolate cheesecake! She rocks!

MONDAY

Our introduction to the Students for Life internship rotation came with a bang--meeting at the Supreme Court in anticipation of the release of the ruling on the Affordable Care Act. It didn't come out Monday, obviously, but we prepped for Thursday. Then we worked a bit from Brendan's, one of the staff, house nearby the metro stop. After work Leslie and I went over to Ruben's host family's house for a while, finishing our weekly blog posts and killing time. Becaaaause we all met up at Pat Troy's in Old Town Alexandria for Catholic Trivia night with Arlington's young adult group! 

Catholic Trivia was great fun. We didn't do so shabby either!

TUESDAY and WEDNESDAY were pretty uneventful. We worked normal hours at the SFLA office in Manassas. We have gotten to know the staff better and I've been working on some office administration projects with Tina, the office manager. 

We did get ice cream together Wednesday evening. It was nice for all the interns to chill together and talk about our anticipations for the next morning, the "big day" with the release of the Obamacare ruling. I would have put up the photo of all of us with our ice cream, but I didn't take it, and Ruben still hasn't put up his pictures!!

THURSDAY

See previous post about Supreme Court ruling day.

Here's something I didn't mention in that previous post, though. After getting home at about 4pm and showering, I was exhausted (we woke up at 4:45 am that morning). I went down for a nap, intending to get up a few hours later, but I slept thru to the morning!! 13 hours of sleep. That's probably a record for me (though I've always loved to sleep). I guess I needed it!

FRIDAY 

Another normal day at work. We're still getting into the groove of what kind of work there is for us to do. The office runs pretty smoothly, so we're trying to find our place. I did a LOT of reading Friday on Obamacare, particularly how it affects abortion. More to come on that business later :) 

In brainstorming something fun to do with our evening, Chris came up with going to the Kennedy Center to see a 7:30pm showing of "First You Dream: The Music of Kander & Ebb" (http://www.kennedy-center.org/events/?event=TMTSG), and we very spontaneously decided to buy tickets from StubHub at 5pm, and we barely made it to the show. To be specific, we walked in at 7:28 in our casual Friday workclothes, and were directed to our seats which were... 

in the front row!!! Holy schnikeys!

This place was fancy-schmancy. 

That was pretty amazing. Amazing luck, and amazing show. It was a musical revue with songs from musicals such as Cabaret and Chicago. The songs were a lot of fun to watch and listen to. We grabbed dinner (another late dinner) at Roti Mediterranean Grill right near the FoggyBottom metro stop. As we were eating, a massive storm rolled in (more luck). The rain calmed down long enough for us to get back on the metro and make it home safely (though not without our individual difficulties...finding a gas station that still had power, dealing with trees down in neighborhoods, etc). The greater DC area is still recovering from that storm. Ruben (pictured in the middle above) is still out of power at his house. 

SATURDAY

After a late night, we got up early to meet Ashleigh, one of the SFLA staff, at the Eastern Market in downtown DC, just a few blocks from the Capitol. It was your typical Farmer's market, which means it was AWESOME. 

By the end of the day, I had probably consumed a whole peach from all the samples I tried (which were delicious, by the way). There were so many neat crafty things, like the wind-chime type decorations pictured to the left with Lindsey and Leslie. 

We also ventured inside "Capitol Hill Books", 

which was THE most intense bookstore I've 

ever been to. Every nook and cranny was covered in 

books. Bookshelves lining every wall, even the staircases!

This picture only begins to illustrate. 

We then continued to Pennsylvania Avenue to have for lunch the Hill-renowned "Good Stuff Eatery". 

I don't make superlative statements like this very often (at least, not this seriously), but I think I actually had the best burger I've ever eaten there. 

from left to right: Ashleigh (SFLA staff), Ruben (who's a real-life hipster), Leslie, Lindsey, and Chris

We rounded out the day by visiting the Smithsonian of Native American History. 

Aren't we cute? This is outside Native American museum. Super sweet architecture. 

Oh, 2 more things. 1) I became a celebrity among the other interns because I can speak Spanish and when we got lost on our way to the L'Enfante metro stop, we asked a woman if she knew where it was, and she was looking for it too, but she didn't know English. So we searched for it with her, and I had a lovely conversation with her, inter-cambio style (me practicing Spanish, she English). She was very nice, and we all made a friend (she gave us a hug and "beso" on the cheek before she got on her metro car. 2) I also got sunburned yesterday. Real bad. 

Well folks, that brings you up to speed on everything that I've been up to! (for the most part). Today has been very relaxing. We went to 10:30 mass with the Whalens (the power was out, so it was kinda toasty, but other than that it was your normal amazing Eucharistic celebration), and then lunch at Not Your Average Joe's (this is the 3rd time Dan's treated us there--it's one of his favorites. The place we got Arnold Palmer's with sugar-coated rims at, remember?). Today is a special day though because it is Dan and Maureen's 45th anniversary. Leslie and I got them some flowers and ice cream sundaes. Can't wait for what's in store this week... I'll keep you posted! Sending love to you all!