Week IV: A New Pope

Four weeks into it, it’s hard to believe how quickly everything has gone by! Less than 2 and a half months left! The Pope was here this week, which meant about a million other people were too. Nevertheless, Saturday we went to the H-Street festival in an attempt to find some cheap food. We managed to walk the mile long festival full of mini-concerts and food stands (not to mention strange people) without getting anything to eat, just going to Moe’s instead (way to go, us). Sunday, the American History Museum was on our list. While the museum, as a whole, was slightly boring, it did have some fantastic parts. In a room full of cultural mementos of American history, there were Mohammed Ali’s gloves from the George Foreman fight, not to mention an Apple II and the original Kermit. They also had a section on the wars of American history. As the room was so interesting, we did not even make it past the Revolution before the museum closed, planning to finish it later. Sunday evening, some of us went to the National Mall to see history under cover of nightfall. It was quite nice, much better than fighting the crowds of the day, and the quiet certainly makes each monument and memorial seem more important.

It rained Monday! Yeah, finally! And guess who forget an umbrella that day? This guy! I managed to make it back to the apartment with my jacket in my backpack, but the concierge thought my struggle was very comical (it took a bit for me to laugh about it). The Papal visit was certainly interesting. As a result of the traffic from his visit, many TWC interns got a day or two off from their internship, but not me. Wednesday, I got back to the apartment at 6:00 only to find Mike and Dee, who did have the day off, completely asleep (it took everything I had not to hit them with a pillow!). They can enjoy their moment in the sun now; I will have the last laugh on payday! The work this week was fairly interesting. With my scholar in Slovenia, nearly everything consisted mainly of “long term projects,” reading studies and writing abridged reports over them. I did, however, get to type the transcript for Cato’s “Reforming the Federal Reserve’s Rescue Authority” panel discussion with Elizabeth Warren and David Vitter.

Story of the Week: Arthur tends to take one of the chairs from the kitchen to study. It had never been a problem, but Arthur said he heard a loud pop when leaning back toward the end of this studying. Thinking nothing of it, he simply put the chair back. However the next morning at breakfast, in the dead quiet of tired guys in the morning, the chair gave way, the leg breaking off, and Arthur (along with his rice crispies) being thrust onto the floor. This has prompted an inundation of jokes toward Arthur about when he plans to break the rest of our furniture with us betting on what will be his next victim. So, when he does inevitably break all of our chairs, we have planned to have him break the table as well, allowing us to sit on the floor in the midst of our wasteland of broken furniture without having the table too tall for us to eat.

In the Presence of History

Standing with history is always cool! Saturday afternoon we went to the National Archives. It is slightly amazing that they have a massive building, filled with dozens of exhibits when almost everyone that is there came to see three documents: the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Bill of Rights. The documents were not what I had expected: the Constitution looks good, but the Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights are faded far beyond any consistent readability. Nevertheless, it was obviously very amazing to be in the presence of such important pieces of history. Saturday night, we went out for Belgian food (apparently they eat more
 than waffles!). I had something called
 Vlaamse Stoverij, which is Dutch for Flemish stew, but it was essentially beef tips (with Belgian fries, obviously). However, it was fantastic! Very high quality meat covered in a very peculiar, but tasty, sauce. Sunday, the only early NFL game on was the Redskins, which essentially meant I would have to wait until that night to see any real football. How about them Cowboys, though?? My international roommates had no idea what was happening, believing the only logical explanation being that I had found a large sum of money in the couch.

This week the new interns started at Cato (the internship was supposed to start September 15, I just started early). It’s obviously nice to have new people, but even more nice (nicer?) to no longer work in the very large, nearly empty intern room. However, because the internship has officially started, we now have multiple lectures and discussions every week. As a result, the rest of my semester at Cato will consist of a steady diet of Frederic Bastiat, John Locke, and Adam Smith (not too bad, when you think about it). The work at Cato is still very interesting. While I did not have to write any emails in any foreign languages this week, I did get to work Constitution Day (a huge deal at a place like Cato, considering we give away/ sell pocket Constitutions like Tic Tacs) while also working with European income mobility and new poverty numbers from the Census Bureau. In fact, I was literally reading the report the minute it was released at 10:00 Wednesday (without question the first time I’ve ever waited for the release of a government report). Finally, Friday, we had Career Boot Camp, a full day event put on by TWC to prepare interns for the professionalism needed in the working world. It was very different, learning tips for interviews and how to properly negotiate a salary. Nevertheless, it was a good experience to prepare for the uncomfortable, yet necessary parts of life.

Kabob-eques on a 4 day week

Holiday weekends and short weeks make for happy interns. As last weekend was Labor day weekend, I had the opportunity to explore the museums more extensively. Saturday consisted primarily of touring the Capitol, which was slightly disappointing, as they don’t let one see very much due to the construction. We simply saw the Crypt (lots of statues) and the old Supreme Court room. In addition, Sunday consisted of the below-par Museum of the American Indian, which was really weird: for the most part, it didn’t tell the history of the Indian tribes, but instead focused on their cultural idiosyncrasies without explaining them. Nevertheless, Labor Day meant the air half of the Air and Space museum. By far the best museum to which I’ve been thus far, it takes one through the history of air travel, from the Wright brothers through the World Wars to the age of commercial air, with some of air travel’s most important pieces, such as the Spirit of St. Louis. Monday evening we attended a kabob-eque, which started as a casual evening for a few TWC interns and finished with an interesting and intense economic debate among three of us.

            Short weeks are the best weeks for an intern. The week at my internship primarily consisted of doing research on Chile’s pseudo-privatized social security system (I even emailed a company in Chile in Spanish to try to get the empirical numbers from a study they did). Cato also had a conference on the Magna Carta and the history of law and democracy since then. It was a fairly interesting conference, considering I sat outside and did registration. Nevertheless, I got lunch out of working it, which was convenient considering I had forgotten my lunch that day. After a cold front moved through Wednesday, it was finally cool enough to walk to and from my internship without the walk being miserably hot. Fall in DC looks to be very exciting (experiencing fall in a place that actually has trees has the potential to be very cool).  The evenings thus far have consisted mostly of economic debates with my roommates (monetary theory, consumer rationality, Pigovian taxes, etc.), as well as enjoying the comedy stylings of The Big Bang Theory and Friends. The entire room sits around to watch Friends almost every evening, proving one thing: regardless of whether one is in Belgium, India, New York, or Texas, Chandler is hilarious.

Story of the Week: Sunday, we went to Moe’s for dinner. As Dee had never had a Moe’s style burrito, it set up to be a very interesting meal. Knowing the first bite would generate quite a reaction, we videoed his response: