My Five Day Weekend.

Hello again!

I had a 5 day weekend for Labor Day and the activities of those days will be covered here.

We’ll get the work stuff out of the way first. I’m currently writing a memo which is supposed to be for Obama’s campaign manager. It covers the current political climate, his strengths and weaknesses as a candidate, and suggestions for making the 2012 election successful. It’s like no other writing I’ve ever done before. I’m used to being verbose and that’s absolutely not what we’re doing here. It only needs to be between 2 and 4 single-spaced pages and any phrases, words, ideas that aren’t necessary should be cut out. It’s also entirely based on facts and statistics that we need to find and interpret. I definitely am enjoying this new style of writing and its simplicity.

Now on to the other stuff. We’ve been doing a lot of sightseeing as well as the work. We went to Arlington National Cemetery the other day. It was my second time going but it doesn’t get any less moving. We saw the changing of the guard, which is one of the most beautiful rituals in America if you ask me, and took a long pause at the Eternal Flame.

Last night was the highlight of the long weekend, though. We went to the West Lawn, the one in front of the Capital Building for a free labor day concert with the National Symphony Orchestra. They were joined by an Army Choir as well. They played music from early American movies, some Gershwin, some Indiana Jones and other scores in the first half. In the second half it moved into the more patriotic music. Joined by the Choir, Battle Hymn of the Republic was performed along with America the Beautiful and The Stars and Stripes Forever. Overall it was a highly exciting, highly patriotic night under the shadow of the Capital Building with a view down the mall toward Lincoln before and after sunset. Video of Battle Hymn of the Republic

This is a picture of me in front of the Capital Building as the sun was setting and it gives you an idea of the size of the crowd. By nightfall there wans't a single place to stand!

Here's a fun little aside. For our class we went to the Newseum, which is, as you might guess, a museum dedicated to the history of the news! In the bathrooms they had these little tiles with funny newspaper cutouts. I particularly liked this one because if they hadn't tried to tell anyone about this, people may have understood it better!

That’s going to be all for now. In the future I’ll be posting more pictures associated with things that I’m up to!

See you soon!