Annoyingly Long Blog Post

SORRY.

I totally meant to finish this last week, but forgot. Forgiveness, people.

ZOOM ZOOM RECAP ZOOM ZOOM

Sunday: Mother's Day! We had an awesome church meeting where a bunch of mothers in the ward got up and spoke about their experiences raising families. There was a baptism and a Munch and Mingle after church ended, and we got caught up talking to an Afghan man in our ward. He speaks like eight languages, one of which is Arabic. I chatted to him briefly, and he said my Arabic sounds good because it comes from deep in the throat (high praise for any student of the language!).

Monday: All the interns from Utah were invited by Senator Hatch's office to attend a briefing given by Justice Scalia. Yes, the Justice Scalia. You have no idea how excited I was for this, and I was not disappointed. I love him even more now than I did before.

I sat this close to him!!!

Me standing under a bust of Oliver Ellsworth: drafter of the Constitution, key figure in fomenting the Great Compromise, third Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and my ANCESTOR!

After Scalia's words, we were given a tour of the Supreme Court chamber, which was stunning.Did you know there's actually a basketball court above that room? It's literally "the highest court in the land." (Nerdy political science joke...) Also, the justices don't really play much.

They just sit on the bench.

Tuesday: Normal day.

Wednesday: My co-worker, John, invited Brock and I to play some volleyball in Crystal City after work. There's some sand pits not too far away from the metro stop there, and he'd helped coordinate a group of about ten people to get together and play. It was way fun! We played until it was too dark outside to see the ball.

Also: Brock got an internship ! And not just any internship. An internship with one of the most prestigious law firms in the DC! . . . Which happens to be located ONE BLOCK from where we live.

When we got home from volleyball, Brock received an email from one of the lawyers at this firm asking him to come in for an interview--at 10pm! (The lawyer had been on a conference call with someone in Afghanistan, so it was a late night for him in the office.) He told Brock not to worry about dressing up or even showering, so Brock just threw on some jeans and ran over. They chatted for almost two hours, and Brock came home ecstatic. There are so many great, substantive projects for him to work on.

The best part? This firm has offices in the Middle East. Meaning: There's a possibility that Brock could work in either Doha (Qatar) or Abu Dhabi (UAE) while I'm studying in Amman. But that's getting way ahead of ourselves. We'll see how everything goes . . .

Bottom line: The Lord is truly looking out for us.

Thursday: Brock had another internship interview today at Brookings. And whaddaya know! He snagged that one, too. He'll be working in Brookings' communications department, and will be able to split his time 50/50 between both internships. That kid is ridiculous.

Thursday evening we went to a networking event put on by the BYU Political Affairs Society. The keynote speaker was Congressman Jeff Flake of Arizona. He told a lot of funny anecdotes and seemed like a really nice man (he's well-known in Congress for his staunch opposition to earmarks).

Our friend Alex was in town for the networking event, so we went out to dinner with him at Good Stuff Eatery. Soooo good. Their toasted marshmallow shake is a gift from the gods.

Friday: Started the morning out with a lecture at the Capitol Visitor's Center from Senator Reid. I really wanted to like him--but I left that lecture extremely disappointed. I really feel as though years of petty politics have gotten the best of him, which is sad. (Congressional term limits are so needed...)

After Senator Reid's remarks, we got together with a group organized by BYUPAS and headed to the National Defense University to listen to another speaker. The families of top military generals have nice houses right on base at the NDU, and it was cool to literally drive by a line of houses belonging to the most respected men in the country.

The best part of the day was our visit to the National Reconnaissance Office--the intelligence organization responsible for US spy satellites. We even got to talk to Bruce Carlson for 30 minutes--the director of the NRO! Talk about beyond cool. For this guy to take thirty minutes out of his day to come talk to anybody--let alone a group of liberal arts majors who have literallynothing to offer his organization--was just incredible. (In case you didn't know, he's also in the Second Quorum of the Seventy, as if he wasn't enough of a baller already...)

Everybody who works at the NRO has a top-secret security clearance, so we had to wear these bright red badges on our chest so people knew not to talk about sensitive information when we were around. We learned a ton about all the different types of orbits and the various spy satellites that operate in each. The declassified satellite photos shown to us were insanely detailed--and those were the dumbed-down versions of originals! To think that these photos were taken from 18,000 miles away is just mind-boggling. No other country's space reconnaissance program even comes close to ours.

America is the freaking SHIZ.

Saturday: Brock and I headed into Georgetown on a mission: to buy him a couple of new suits. We got some good deals on a nice tan one and another that's a light navy blue (sort of retro-looking, I love it). People, my husband can fill out a suit like it's nobody's bidness. Seriously. We dropped them off for tailoring at Ms. Lee's (a hilarious Vietnamese seamstress who owned a shop right across the street), and then headed off to the Capitol, where I led a tour for a group of really nice guys who were in DC on business. It was only the second tour I've given, so I made a few mistakes--including saying that the Statue of Freedom on top of the Capitol weighs 9 million pounds. Yeah, that statistic definitely raised a few eyebrows. In reality, it weighs only a little less (15,000 lbs...hehe). To my credit, the entire dome itself weights 9 million tons, so it was just a little numbers mix-up! I knew 9 million somethings was a statistic somewhere. Luckily, the group was understanding and we all had some good laughs!

After the tour, we met up with Alex again and headed for the Museum of American History. We saw the huge American flag that the Star-Spangled Banner was written about! In the War of 1812, Britain launched an aggressive attack on Baltimore harbor. This flag (and the city) survived the attack, and an amateur poet named Francis Scott Key was so stirred by the sight of it flying that he wrote our nation's anthem.

The other exhibit we saw was called "The Price of Freedom"--which basically takes you on a journey throughout all the wars America has fought. I'm one of those annoying museum people who likes to read every placard--after an hour, I hadn't even gotten to the Civil War! Brock and I will definitely be heading back to that museum to finish that exhibit and go to others.

Sunday: After Church ended, a bunch of us couples living at the Barlow Center were invited to a ward member's apartment for waffles! We had such a great time visiting and getting to know each other better.

. . . If you're still reading, that probably classifies you as my grandma. Hi, grandma.