Giving Back and Giving Thanks

Happy Thanksgiving! Thanksgiving week in DC was certainly different than Texas! As part of my semester through The Washington Center, I have to volunteer for 5 hours over the course of the semester. Saturday, I finally completed my hours, a whole 3 weeks before I leave (I swear I only selectively procrastinate). To do so, I helped with a thing called Cranksgiving (not a super title), which was basically a bike race to different stores to buy Thanksgiving goods (I didn't do the bike race, I took the food). The food was then given to low-income families so they could have a proper Thanksgiving meal. It was certainly rewarding to give back, but a bitingly cold breeze numbed the reward (and my hands) a bit. Then Sunday, my roommates and I finished the last museum on our list: the Natural History Museum. The museum was pretty interesting; however, after spending 45 minutes in the rock and gem section, I was already beat! Thus I spent the rest of the museum in a slightly catatonic state. Nevertheless, the rest of the museum was fairly good.

            As it was a short week, I didn’t get the opportunity to do much at my internship this week. However, I did get Wednesday off because both my scholar and his research associate were out! (Cato was open Wednesday, though most interns used one of their personal days). Though I did not do much work, I did some things to set up my upcoming work, which will be on inequality.

            Perhaps slightly unfortunately for me, all of my roommates traveled for Thanksgiving, leaving me in the apartment alone. TWC did host a potluck for interns who stayed in DC for the holiday; however, in my eternal brilliance, I missed the sign up. This turned out to be a slightly good thing, as I made my own Thanksgiving meal (yes, I actually cooked!). Before you feel sorry for me for spending Thanksgiving alone, think about it: I had an entire pan of cornbread, an entire pot of potatoes, a whole gallon of sweet tea, and plenty of turkey and dressing all to my self. In addition, I didn’t have to stop watching football to eat (though an excuse to stop watching football would have been nice considering how the Cowboys played…). Though not as good as spending time with family and friends, Thanksgiving turned out to be just fine!

Story of the Week: One of the things I’ve missed most about Texas is quality Mexican food (nobody up here knows what proper Tex-Mex is). To compensate for this great tragedy, I’ve been buying bags of chips and glasses of salsa (the desire for Mexican food is extreme…). However, some of my roommates (not the Indian) aren’t used to the "extreme spice" brought by a big ole scoop of some medium salsa. They clearly don’t know there’s a difference between medium salsa and ghost salsa, as they are in tears and drinking an entire glass of milk after just one bite! Maybe I should get them to try some ghost salsa and see what happens…?