Since I last updated, I’ve taken a tour of the Washington Post, touched Woodrow Wilson’s student notebook, and experienced a Washington DC 4th of July.  This trip has flown by; I only have one more week left!

One of the highlights was seeing the “School of Rock,” a group of kids who learn to play in a rock band through their school.  The group performed during lunch at the Woodrow Wilson Plaza, right next door to my office at the Wilson Center.  The lead singer was a very talented 8-year-old girl!  She had the head-bang, the 360 spin, and an awesome voice…everything you need to be a 8-year-old rock star.

My friends who intern at Capitol Hill encouraged me to go to a congressional hearing.  So, during a lunch break I went to the hill to see a hearing about “The Humanitarian Crisis in Pakistan.”  The hearing had a live video feed from a human rights advocacy group in Pakistan.  Also over the past few weeks I visited the office of Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and Rep. Jim Cooper (D-TN) to talk to the foreign policy staffers.  This week I’m visiting the offices of Rep. John Tanner (D-TN) and Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN).  It was also really exciting to watch the passage of the Cap and Trade Bill in the House.

Through events sponsored by the Harvard Institute of Politics, I was able to tour the Washington Post and Politico.  We had lunch with the Post’s media lawyer, Eric Lieberman, who is responsible for representing the newspaper against libel suits.  He told the incredible story of the Valerie Plame case and other accounts of investigative journalism.  He probably has his hands full now with Post’s recent lobbyist scandal.  A few days later, we met with the founder and some editors of Politio.com, a newspaper started in 2007 by ex-Post writers.  The political-guru writers talked so fast it was hard to keep up but nevertheless, very exciting.

In other news, on June 22 one DC metro train smashed into another one and killed 9 people.  It happened only one metro stop from where I live…wow.  Luckily, I was sick that day from work and no one I know was injured…Whew!

Earlier this week I visited the Library of Congress to find one of Woodrow Wilson’s student notebooks.  The Wilson Center is updating their small Woodrow Wilson exhibit and asked me to help locate a book that shows Wilson’s shorthand, a type of note taking, to recreate in the exhibit.  After I passed though security and got my official “Research ID card,” I proceeded to the manuscripts section.  A librarian helped me find the notebook in the special Presidential Collections section, and to my surprise, I was able to touch the presidential notebook with my bare hands!

Yesterday, I got to experience the 4th of July Washington DC style!  At noon on the 4th, a group of us from the hostel headed to the National Mall to watch the parade and check out the Smithsonian Folklife Festival.  By far, the highlight of the parade was a Barack Obama superhero dancing and jumping around…so hilarious!  After the parade was over, we found some free Indian food and sat down to watch an Indian music performance.  That night we saw Aretha Franklin, Barry Manilow, and Natasha Bedingfield perform at “A Capitol Fourth,” broadcast on PBS.  Barack Obama came on screen during the concert and asked for the audience to scream so loud that he could hear us from the White House…I think we did it.  Immediately following the concert we watched the spectacular fireworks over the Washington Monument.  Woo Hoo America!