I Love Indian Food!

Tuesday was a good day, my good friend Kate left for Cordoba, Argentina in a study abroad program through USF. She will be there for a full semester about until August.This is her above with Zach Braff, she does a lot of work with our USF newspaper and USF TV and was able to interview him last year. Kate is also the on I went to Guatemala with for our spring breaks last year. Here she is on the map:


For lunch on Tuesday, I went out with my co-worker Johanna and met my two friends from my Foreign Policy Seminar and we met at Little India. The last Indian food I had was in Dublin with my brother and friends from Spain and it is amazing every time!!! Naan is incredible...anyways, I accepted the program that does sustainable community Development in Ciudad Sandino, Nicaragua. So I will be spending 9 weeks working there and living with a family. This will be my third time living with a Spanish speaking family, in Guatemala when I was there for a week last spring break, then in Spain last semester. I think international work is very important for me if I want to go into this work and this is a great time to do this type of work to gain experience and really strengthen my Spanish skills.
The Nicaraguan Flag:

Nicaragua in the Summer anyone?

Here is a letter I received today!!
Dear Devon,

Congratulations! You have been selected to participate in the University of San Francisco/Foundation for Sustainable Development Summer Service Learning in Nicaragua program. We are looking forward to working with you!

We will be sending you more information in the coming weeks, but for now we need to confirm your interest in participating. So that you can make your decision with full information, please review the next paragraph which goes over some crucial dates and requirements.

The program will run from May 19 to August 8, 2008. It will start with an intensive, team-taught, week-long seminar on campus focusing on issues of sustainable development in Nicaragua. You will then spend nine weeks in Nicaragua, working with a community organization as arranged by our partners, the Foundation for Sustainable Development. Finally, you'll return for a final week-long seminar to debrief and outline your final papers for the course, which, if completed successfully, carries two units of service-learning/elective credit at USF.

After you confirm, you will be contacted about the next steps in the process, including the phone interview with Nicaraguan partners, and a campus meeting with the other participants and the SF-based Foundation for Sustainable Development staff.

There was some other non important info....but I am super excited and really have wanted to do international work so this is a great opportunity! Now I just have to do some more research on the country. It is perfect too, because there are two women at Polaris who have worked in Nicaragua and speak Spanish. One gave me a book yesterday about the country called "The Country Under My Skin" by Gioconda Belli! It is amazing how things work out and now I am just waiting to hear from the Office of Residence Life to see if I will be an RA next year for Erasmus!!!

Salt Lake City to Georegetown

Last weekend I was in Salt Lake City meeting my family to ski. I had to wake up super early, about 3:30am to catch the shuttle to Washington Dulles airport for a 6am flight! I arrived in the SLC airport, transferring through Denver, at 10am which was perfect since my Dad, little brother and step mom came in at 10:30. After collecting all our bags and odd size luggage, we got he usual rental minivan and headed to John's house. He was on his way to meet us and was delayed for some reason, so we went in and my parents were a little stunned about the state of his house, though I thought it was alright for having so many people live in it. They said it was like a common house, but since he and a bunch of other people work at the wilderness camp 6 days on 8 days off, they rotate who lives in the house based on shifts.
At lunch, I had the best vegetarian sandwich I have ever had on amazing whole wheat bread at this little bread specialty deli called Great Harvest. Since Callan needed a haircut and Great CLips was right across the street, we decided to have that checked off the to do list. It is nice traveling and not being such a tourist and almost continuing normal day to day life in cool places like SLC. After meeting up with John and Lena, his girlfriend, we went up to Park City and checked into the Marriott Mountainside. After regrouping and unpacking we went out to dinner at this Asian Fusion place. MJ and Cal stayed home, since she was feeling sick, so Lena, John, Dad and I enjoyed live music at this restaurant and a weird mixture of food from sushi to jambalaya. It was definitely colder than in DC. Here is a picture of Lena and myself.




Sunday was really nice, after a nice sleep in huge white beds, Dad made eggs and English muffins. MJ, Cal and I went to the outlet stores to search for snow boots for me since there was supposed to be a snow storm back in DC and I was needing a pair. Then, MJ dropped Cal and I off at the kids center back at the hotel and we went sledding with a group, while she went to pick her mother, Mary Ellen up at the airport. Then they met us back up at the sledding hills and I was really surprised when Mary Ellen began to slide down the hill with her 7 year old grandson. After sledding, Mary Ellen and I took a walk downtown and shopped a little on the main street. We went into this bookstore / candy shop (a great combination) and I was looking at tour books on San Francisco; thinking about their nice weather; all those great places in my city makes me a little homesick, but DC is a great place to explore. When we got back, MJ and I went to the grocery store to get food to cook for dinner and since she was feeling sick I decided to cool pasta with fettuccine Alfredo sauce and mushrooms, onions, broccoli, and tomatoes. It was amazing and I ended up cooking for 8! John, Lena, Mary Ellen, Callan, myself, MJ, Dad, and our great family friend from home Josh Hohl. After dinner Callan went to race his infamous car at the kids center and Josh, John, Lena my Dad and I played poker. My dad is such a jokester when it comes to poker, it is great to laugh at him. Here is a video of Callan sledding.

The next morning, Monday, was President's day, so I had off from my internship and stayed to ski in the morning with Josh, John and my Dad. We did a few runs then I came back for a little lunch and then Lena drove me straight to the airport. The weekend went by quickly but was overall very relaxing and nice to see my whole family. Going to Park City almost every year has been a great tradition and this may be the last winter John will be living in SLC since he wants to move off somewhere cold to Eastern Europe sometime soon, I guess it all depends on job availability and what will attract him.
It ended up taking me about 24 hours to get back to DC. Getting on two flights right off the bat from DC to SLC and flying in first class was a little too good to be true. Soooo many people were flying out on President's day. I made it to Denver alright, but then was stuck there for about 7 hours and finally at 9:30 at night made it to Chicago where I stayed the night and then woke up early to get to Dulles. It was nice to be finally home.
Classes this week were good, I had my first exam on the Political Theories in my Foreign Policy Seminar on Wednesday. Professor Maisch is such a jokester, he was teasing us that we were going to endure the Spanish-Peruvian Inquisition and he always makes silly jokes on our syllabi about the foreign students in our class, especially the French guy Nicolas. Then on Friday we went to the British Embassy and met with four young foreign policy advisers to London. They were cracking jokes and telling us how much they love America (partly I think because they have houses 3X the size as in London). They conducted the lecture / talk differently than any of our previous speakers- they asked us what we wanted to know about and what questions we had then talked about those issues and tried to answer our questions. They dressed very casual (partly because it was a Friday and they were young). The Embassy building was a huge brick long mansion! It was a great experience!
On Saturday I went to an all day conference at Georgetown University. I took the metro to Dupont station then the bus through Georgetown and it was so beautiful. The houses are amazing and the some of the streets are cobblestone. I overheard the bus driver telling someone all the famous people who live or have lived in the neighborhood and he was pointing to different houses. "This house was inhabited by John Kerry, and that one Madeline Albright...." I heard the Ambassador from the State Department who works on combating human trafficking speak about US initiatives to free mainly women and children from sex and labor work. The only other country that has a public official is Sweden, which is very ironic because literally almost every country in the world is faced with the issues of modern day slavery- that is people being exploited with force fraud or coercion to work in the commercial sex industry or in agricultural production and so many other fields. Everyone on the panel and all the speakers really know what they are talking about. There was a good point made, that most of the people there were young, in their 20's and 30's and this is because of the recent grassmovent effort and all the non profit global benefits that have popped up in the last decade to address the issue; also, that students and people wishing to pursue the field can rise very quickly among organizations can because young people today are really the experts on trafficking. Anyways, I learned a lot!
Monday and Tuesday were my internship days as always and they were good and I am learning more and more about non profits. My FP (Foreign Policy) class is headed to the Russian Embassy this week, I know my brother would have loved to come...so it will be interesting!

Celebration in the Office

Tuesday the 12th was not only Lincoln's 199th Birthday but it was my supervisor's Birthday as well. I made cupcakes for the office and a cake for CJ. Johanna, the office admin assistant and I got him a balloon and made him these fake business cards with all the jobs listed on it that he does, but never signed up for when he started working. It was great, we sang and he opened the cards and loved it, it had his title like "Plumber" "Audit Master" "IT Technician". So that was exciting.

Here is a picture of Johanna and I in the office.

This is CJ with his yummy cake, the candle we got on it says "Over the Hill" and plays the funeral march, very funny!
It is Polaris' 6th Anniversary tomorrow the 14th on Valentines day. Oh Johanna and I also sent out this great cards, the ones kids used from elementary school, and stuck lolipops on them and gave them to everyone at the office. Today was my first real experience with ice being everywhere! It is beautiful on the trees...hopefully it will get a little warmer though soon.

HAPPY VDAY!!!! HOPE IT IS SPECIAL!

Here is the update....

What a great morning! I had an omelet with cheese (of course), tomatoes, onions and mushrooms and a waffle I made on the grill, and half a grapefruit for Brunch this morning. Then for lunch I had a great cheese sandwich, and still love being a vegetarian! Such a perfect start to a day full of reading and homework! I am actually in the process of applying for a summer sustainability program in Nicaragua for ten weeks through USF. I have to translate my resume into spanish, which will be interesting. I also just finished applying for being an RA for my Senior year. I really want to stay involved and keep connected with the USF community and be on campus next year. I am hoping to be the RA for the Erasmus living learning community which I was a part of last year, plus the school is in such a great location in the city. All my friends this year have been complaining about how different it is not living on campus, feeling disconnected and having all this responsibility buying food and all that, which I look forward to but would not mind putting off for a little while, plus then it gives me more freedom and flexibility to travel if I don't actually have an apartment and have to pay a million dollars a month.
Last night I went out with my roommates, Ashley (with the red hair) and my adorable french roommate Noemie.

We went to an Irish pub where there was a dance floor and so many students from our program, so that was a blast. Then earlier on Saturday I discovered I like going to the gym because I have my own private treadmill or elliptical with my own TV with over 50 channels, so it makes working out go so fast and easy especially since I don't really have access to one in the dorms. I know horrible right, no TV in the room, no friends with TV's and the ones in the lounges do not work. But I can watch the news online so it all works out.
On Thursday, my Foreign Policy Seminar Class went to Fort McNair in DC to the National Defense University to do a simulation on agencies working together for an international problem. The context was that there was an outbreak of avian flu in South East Asia and we all were in different groups divided under the Health and Human Services, Department of State and Department of Defense. We had to negotiate and problem solve while figuring out our policies and strategies communicating with high government officials and other countries. We learned how difficult it is to make decisions with such little time and information and how that process would actually work. It was an interesting and tiring day and I definitely learned more about this potential pandemic which actually could occur in our world someday.
On Wednesday nights I have my International Children's Issues elective course with my Professor Heather Heckel. Not only does she talk a million miles a minute, she spits out so many facts and is so smart. I had an hours conversation with her after class, with another woman in my class as well, about everything from the Presidential election to the unstable situation in Kenya with the government officials and the mass killings to the poor DC public educational system. Although we talked about such dreary subjects, as we always do in the class (like last week we talked about child poverty), I came out with a sense of hope feeling good about knowing more and believing that I can make a difference.
Last Monday and Tuesday were my second week days at Polaris Project doing my fellowship. I am getting to know everyone in the office which is great and learning a lot more about what the organization does and everyone's background with human trafficking. I am working under CJ Adams who went to Brown and now is the Operations and Human Resources Coordinator- he is great and has a huge interest in Latin American and trafficking which I think is really interesting as well. So last Thursday I went to Polaris's Happy Hour at a bar/restaurant in Adams Morgan (right by where the office is) and had a bunch of my friends come and eat and drink since a portion of that went to our organization. We had a raffle too and caught up with everyone at work, it was great. I am excited for more events like that in the future. I am going to a Georgetown University Conference on Students against Trafficking all day on the 23rd which should be great. I love how everyone is connected inside and outside the office on this whole anti-trafficking movement. I had a great idea, which I already think people do, but I think it would be great for when someone gets married to have a wedding list registry with all non profit organizations and have people donate like 50 or 100 dollars to one they want to contribute to, instead of just getting funky gifts from your tenth cousin once removed (although I can imagine it is nice to get gifts for you new home or life or whatever). Anyways, just thinking out loud (which is basically what this blog is!)
Getting over my horrible throat based cold last week I stayed in all of last weekend and was so not productive but at least got better. Although last Friday I went to Hillel or Shabat Services with the Jewish community for the second week. My friend Sarah and my roommate Noemie are Jewish and I thought I would try it out and really enjoyed it. Reform service is the less intense I think and there are people my age who lead the group in prayer and song. I have definitely learned more about the religion and the singing is beautiful. It is really a tight knit community and then they have dinner afterwards. We had Motza (no clue how to spell it) ball soup and it was amazing.
Last week, on Friday we went to the Russell Senate building on Capitol Hill to meet with the Foreign Policy advisers of Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut. We got to wait in his beautiful corner office and see some of the other Senators and Committees offices. Here are some pictures from the whole amazing experience:






This is my friend from Croatia Iva

Next Tuesday is my supervisor's Bday so the admin assistant who works in the same room as we do and I are making cupcakes for the whole office, so that will be a highlight. Then next weekend I am headed to Salt Lake City to meet my family to go skiing! Yay! more snow....
until next time..I will keep trying to add more pictures...