Watching Wasteland

Jumanji, a game that tests your character. I always wished this was real.

Discovering one's character is easier when you stand on the outside and watch then when you are participating in the conversation or interaction itself. If you are interested in another individual that you are...'participating' with, and you want to find out more, do you a) act like an asshole b) play dumb c) interrogate?

What do each of these methods produce?
a) -a conflicted person who does not know how to react because they are interested in you too, but you're being an asshole...
-a violent person (physically or verbally)
-a confused and offended person

b) -a frustrated person who does not want to take the time to explain to an ignorant what he/she knows because you are not cooperating based on your intelligence level....not on the fact that you may just NOT know....
-a patient person who teaches you like a child while also feeling empowered by his/her knowledge and therefore feels superior
-someone who enjoys showing you and tolerates your mistakes....

c)-a scared bewildered person who does not understand why your questions are so direct and rude because they fire like bullets....
-an excited person who wants to play the game of 20 Questions..so he/she fires right back just as quick
-a person who cannot handle the pressure, so crumbles under the insecurity of his/her answers to your pointed questions.

So you get a reaction...
what is a good reaction to play acting? Is what you see is what you get good enough? For anything, job, housing, family, friends, etc.

Can you really twist something out of someone and should it be based on that particular moment where their true character shows? Who knows, but its fun.





Could not resist...

Byrd-Watching

While watching the live quorum Monday Night, I made a joke to the Kansan sitting next to me that it was kind of like birdwatching. Trying to pick out the senators and match them to a visual. Being all old men with gray hair it is always more difficult. This was nothing like Monday night football, where numbers would have helped.

What is hard and very disappointing is that most interns on the hill do not recognize the Congressperson that they share an elevator with, pass by in the hallway, or run an errand for. Some interns however did memorize the "Bird-Almanac".

How does Capitol Hill work so differently than other...'institutions'? Connections are key, Information is fluid, especially the myths about the physical Capitol itself. Even experts say that rumors spread through these walls like butter. This reaches Congress at many different levels of Congress.

Tours are my personal favorite. 1. you get to watch a movie 2. you look like you know everything 3. you are not condemned to a stinky old office. When not in session, life can get a bit dull. So fixing constituent lists by adding the Mr. and Ms. is usually all there is to do in a days work. And you ask how is this going to help me on my way to being Secretary of State?......





Well the answer to that one is not completely obvious to me yet either. So for the time being I can say I am happy to be here to meet new people. One thing is for sure I need to maintain those contacts. And coming from Kansas we tend to know how to do this in the friendliest ways. Gift baskets, fruit cakes, Christmas cards, frequent facebooking. Skype is new (my mom's fav).


The connections I make however, might be Congresspeoples and they might not be, those connections are important to maintain as well. But the most important people are those who you believe could support you in the future career-wise, and maybe you could do the same for them.

Some birds just go unnoticed sometimes.

What will this get me? Great pen pals. ;-)

Acronyming the Latino Routes

Although I live in the NE, lots of interesting things have happened in the NW, SW, SE of the DC.

Acronyms haven't been common for me in the past. Now I live in a place where everyone comes from everywhere and MIK (more in the kitchen), and ITB (in the barn) no longer are used but rather PTFO, LMFAO, FML, JB....etc. IGO, UN, UNDP and the list goes on. I feel left out because I was not given a dictionary for these 'short-speak' terms.

Above is a picture of (L-R) JB friend, me, Ambassador to Costa Rica(former president's daughter), and my Ukrainian/Chicagoan roommate. This adventure to the Costa Rican Embassy was for their Independence Day Parade Celebration. (Technically I was in Costa Rica for a couple of hours.)

My connection was through soccer of course. Having been recruited to the Kick Tease team by a guy in a law program at Georgetown University with a majority of international lawyers in it. One of the lawyers was Costa Rican and invited us to this event.












Food, dancing, meeting people, learning about a culture, I have never been to, completely excited my roommate and me to the point where we needed to check out other embassy events. However it seemed that the non-'third-world', non-'south', tended to be more expensive than we were willing to pay. And our research still needs to extend to the Senegalese, Sierra Leonean, Argentine, and other embassies.

Weekend adventures have proved promising. Karaoke in Alexandria, Festival on H Street in the NE, exploring, and meeting new people all falls into what I wanted to discover about a big city.

Country Roads

Almost heaven, West Virginia
Blue Ridge Mountains
Shenandoah River -
Life is old there
Older than the trees
Younger than the mountains
Growin' like the breeze

Country roads, take me home
To a place I belong
West Virginia, mountain momma
Take me home, country roads.......

Having planted new routes in the town of Washington DC, I am energized, focused, and developing new opportunities. Refreshing is hard, changing routes was never my thing and I try to establish a routine everywhere I go.

Leaving the past two years behind is so relieving and liberating. College is a bubble, 2 years may be enough to get what you need and get out, 4 years will be enough to make an impact while you're there.

During the summer of no destination, a.k.a job searching, I discovered;

• how working hard for something doesn't necessarily mean you should.
• Taking things with stride tend to leave you with better results.
• Being open to things you weren't before can change you for the better.
• Surprise is a feeling that guarantees you're alive.

*Don't ever settle.

"What We've Got Here is..a Failure to Communicate"

Do not let the conflict between men and women stop you. Let your light shine and do not let the other sex define you. Let you and your gender be there, no need to impress or fear being a woman or a man.

No race should interpret your culture or heritage. No socio-economic forces should determine who YOU are when you strip yourselves of clothes, money, food, and just BE.

Let the women glow like the sun and shift like the crazy wind. Sometimes what one needs to get on is an exasperation, an exhalation, a scream, a yell, a holler. More so an act of powerful force done. Hopefully positively.

Insanity is not as insane as it looks because there is even something more insane, unexplainable, irrational, and unstoppable.

Let her go free.
Let him be simple.

Let them collide and separate.

Let things be - do not force and you will always be free.

Control is not the answer. But love, trust, honesty, understanding, and personal touch is key.

Roots Sweet Roots

Although it is the season for potato planting, these are not the roots I am referring to. I am referring to coming home for Spring Break after a long, annoying winter. It did snow, however, which was not very nice but the fish were, and are, still biting. And now that it has melted and my bogs are going crazy I took a lovely 8 mile run/walk around, took the Evening Star route - gorgeous! Might have to do this every other day, because this afternoon my knees are throbbing!

Bourriaud commented on how modernism is a return to your routes..oh I mean roots, and how altermodernism is the picking up of those roots and planting them somewhere elsewhere, while having the option of continual connection to the original root. Well, as I am applying for jobs and connecting to all of these networking improvements, such as LinkedIn and Twitter, I question whether I want a job here, in Kansas, or there, wherever there is. I would take anywhere, in fact I'd prefer it, being so young and all, but getting there would hopefully be paid for.

But if I would get a job in my hometown, where I would love to eventually settle, I would have numerous set connections and I would no longer be a stranger (having gone to a high school and elementary school out of town and all I really have 'displaced roots')

Another question is whether I even have the original roots at all or are they loosely placed and ready to fly away? Adventures always seem a logical solution to this dilemma, but how much credibility to they actually have in the job market? Probably none, dealing with people and not escaping them is an asset one needs to build on. Creating roots seems to be another solution that may be harder, but perhaps more beneficial. Wherever these roots are created, Wisconsin, Texas, Kansas, abroad...I plan to always keep them planted because if you burn one of those bridges sometimes you end up not being able to go back.

One week isn't enough to build a root system, but can be a good start. So I guess we should go plant those potatoes.

The Missing Link

Lawrentian look into media and the society where they live or have visited or are visiting. Americans having visited, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Togo, Benin, and Uganda comment on their first impressions, their realizations, and describe the profound change they have undergone after having been there.

Africans from Ghana and the Sudan comment on their first impressions of America and Americans, and how the media plays a very important role with the expectations they had before they came.

These comments and opinions about media within the two VERY DIFFERENT societies puts our generation on a level playing field with media but the perspective of the media creates an uneven playing field yet again. If media were to "show the good side of life" in Africa as well as what it has been showing, and then also show the hard side of life in America as well as what else it has been showing, then it would be a level playing field.



Final Project is complete.