Cultural Celebration and Connections to Home

Fall is beginning to settle in here in DC! The weather last weekend wasn’t great, so Saturday consisted mostly of staying inside,

Hanging with Dr. Patty and Mr. Mack

watching football, and drinking hot chocolate (sounds like fall, eh?). Sunday, we went to Lubbock Christian’s reception for alumni in DC (and, you know, me) at the Renaissance Hotel. It was very nice to get to spend time with some former LCU students, as well as some great professors. (The free crab cakes and sliders weren’t half bad either). As a matter of fact, there was leftover food for me to take home, which is always a great thing for an intern! After returning from the reception, we sat around watched the cartoon Hercules like little kids! (Definitely made me re-live some great childhood memories) Monday night was the long-anticipated TWC Gala in the National Building Museum (unbelievable building). As far as galas go, this one was certainly fantastic (considering it was black-tie, I was a bit out of my element). Getting to spend time and converse with the other TWC interns in such a formal setting was lots of fun, as was getting to be around Lubbock Christian alumni and staff again. However, as you would expect me to say, the food was the true highlight. A crab cake appetizer followed by a pomegranate filet mignon for the main course, all wrapped up with an apple pie-like treat for dessert (seriously though, I’ve eaten more crab cakes this week than I had in my previous 20 years, which is certainly not a complaint).

            The week at my internship was very similar to last week. As we are doing an in-depth look at poverty, it appears this will be a theme throughout the semester. Thus, as one would expect, I read a plethora of articles, ranging from MIT economists to Pew Research, and wrote my share of reports. It is still very interesting, as any discussion on such a large and important issue would be. However, I did get to spend some time on some short-term projects. I worked with presidential candidates tax proposals, as well as spending changes in response to such tax changes. We did, however, have quite a few lectures this week. Mainly, they covered the theme of liberty in the French Revolution, as well as George Orwell (an interesting reading). Perhaps the most interesting discussion we had this week was over free-market environmentalism and climate change, which wrapped up with a discussion over the role policy should/should not play in climate change.

Story of the Week: Friday, we had the Global Festival at TWC. In this, people from different countries set up booths, made presentations, and danced/sang to exemplify their culture. For this, Dee and some of the other Indians danced to famous Bollywood songs (they won best performance, and, as a result, we’ve taken to calling it Dee-Day). As it was so good, I thought I’d share some of it: