Week 3

It's so hard to believe that another week has gone by! I'm learning pretty quickly that there's never really a dull moment here in Washington. This past weekend was the first time I've really been able to get out and not worry about much homework. I'm taking two classes from Belmont on top of my TWC stuff, so it was a little hectic at first. On Saturday morning, though, I met a friend from work in Chinatown to do some shopping and hang out for the afternoon. We got some bubble tea and walked down towards the Capitol, where we'd heard about this huge anti-war demonstration happening. When else am I going to see 100,000 people march on the Capitol, right? If nothing else, we figured it was a great excuse for people-watching.

My friend and I managed to elbow our way into the middle of it and listen to people’s stories while snapping some decent photos. What an experience.

Things at work have been pretty crazy, too. Last week, many of my coworkers and clients celebrated both the beginning of Ramadan and the Ethiopian millennium. I’ve never seen so much food come through an office in one week! We’re also settling so many families right that we keep running out of supplies and furniture. It’s been really neat to see the entire office pull together and make do with what we have, though. It’s times like these where I really start to see that you sort of become a jack-of-all-trades when you work at a small non-profit. One minute, I’m designing a brochure. The next minute, I’m helping a client fill out a green card application. Today, I was digging around in a storage shed trying to find twin sheets to give to a family that’s flying in tonight from Iraq.

In between all of that craziness, TWC has kept me pretty busy. We got to go to the Department of the Interior this week to hear former Secretary of Transportation Norm Mineta speak. This sounded like it would be really boring, to be honest, but what a neat guy! He was apparently one of the Japanese Americans held in an internment camp during World War II, and somehow went from that point to serving under two presidents.

That’s all for now! As many of our clients say, ma'assalama.