Not really too much to weite about today, since it was a well deserved day off. We couldn’t really sleep in because the cleaning lady kept walking in and waking us up.
So we slept in until about 10, then got up and got McDonalds lunch. We then came back to the hotel where we just sat around and relaxed for a few hours.
At 3ish, we hit up the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. It was easy to go through the museum pretty quickly, since all of the exhibits are literally the size of a small airplane hangar.
We then tried to go out to dinner at this place called the Brickskeller, which has over 1000 beers available. Unforunately, they wouldn’t let us in because we had several udnerage people with us. It was extremely frustrating because no where on the website or the front door did it say that you had to be 21 or older to enter. Oh well. Time for bed since we’re leaving the hotel at 4am tomorrow for the big day. Goodnight America!

Today we finally had a day off. We got up and went out for lunch at Capitol Hill Brewery. The food was delicious, and the beer was also great.
Though many of the members of our group went to the concert, we decided to just watch it back from our hotel rooms. It was a lot warmer, and we were freakin’ tired.
Pretty lame blog today, but that’s what happens on a day off, we relax and don’t do too much worth writing about. Tomorrow will probably prove to be different.

The first thing we did today was go to the Newseum, a museum dedicated to journalism. It was quite interesting, even for a political science major, who by definition is not a big fan of journalism. I seriously think it’s ingrained into our DNA or something. Anyway, a bunch of protesters showed up while we were there are started screaming about how we need to arrest Pres. Bush and Vice Pres. Cheney for war crimes. They had a big banner too, it was pretty crazy. I’d say it showed some dedication to the cause for all of them to pay admission into the museum just to protest and get thrown out before they could even check out the exhibits.
After eating lunch at the Newseum, we broke off into smaller groups and did basically whatever we wanted to do. TJ, Duffs, Kari, Mindy, Katie, Chelsea, and I decided to go to the Holocaust museum. Wow, I don’t even know how to start about that. It was really intense, and then I found the original spelling of my last name in a list of the victims…needless to say that hit home. It was a really amazing place to see, and well worth it, but we all left feeling quite somber.
We then ate dinner, and had some fun, including a dramatic re-enactment of General Sorokes leading his men (and woman) to victory by crossing the raging Pootomac river. Quite a night.

So today was our sixth day here. The morning session was a bit dull…which was kind of sad since it was the last day.
Sam Donaldson was the first speaker. He was alright, but very longwinded.
We then went to the Smithsonian. I got to see some cool exhibits from the presidential and military areas.
Then the night happened…
Started off fine, with Matt and I going to dinner, then catching a movie since we had some well deserved free time. We then got back to the hotel, to discover that the girls’ room and Dr. Brickman’s rooms on the 3rd floor got flooded by crap, literally. The toilets backed up, and covered their rooms in raw sewage. We were literally standing in water while we were in the room. We helped them move their stuff up to new rooms, and tried to help out as much as we could. When life hands you lemons, make lemondade; when the toilets back up, epic fail.

So today freakin’ rocked. Instead of gonig to the normal morning session, I went to the Senate with Dan, Cara, Sarah, TJ, and Duffs.
At the Senate hearing, we were able to hear Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton’s farewell addresses to the Senate. It was awesome to be so close to them. Joe Biden’s was way better though.
I then went to see John McAllister, who co-owns McAllister and Quinn Lobbying. We had a really good talk about the best way to start a career in the City here. I left the meeting having a really good outlook on what I want to do when I graduate. On my way back, I actually got to see President Bush stepping out of his motorcade and going into an office building. As much as I dislike that man, it was very cool to see him.
We then took a tour of the Capitol building. It was quite boring, but the building was beautiful.
The night brought an awesome experience at McFadden’s bar and restaurant, followed by an even better experience watching Mark Russel’s performance.
MArk Russel is pure comedic genius. He was soooo funny, we all laughed so hard we were crying. He also tossed out some Buffalo references, which got a huge applause from us, which just fed him to do more. The people in front of us were less than thrilled to be sitting in front of us. Ha, sucks to be them.

I swear if I hear that term one more time I might snap. Tony Cerise probably says it 76 times every session.
In other news, I would easily say that today has been the best day of the trip thus far. The morning session was amazing with Dana Palmero (Pres. Bush’s press secretary), Clarence Page, and the amazing Ted Koppel.
Dana was a very good speaker, though quite biased towards republicans. I shouldn’t complain sicne most of the other presenters have been decidedly liberal, but some of the blind faith in some of President Bush’s policies, that even the most objective observer would say failed, was quite hard to swallow.
I found Ted Koppel’s talk to be excellent. Some found it boring, but I was not expecting a high-energy upbeat discussion, so I suppose I had a slight advantage. He was extreme fair in his answers, and very knowledgeable in every regard.
Next, Clarence Page gave a very colorful talk about race relations in the United States, and its effect in the media. He was very entertaining, and very intelligent.
In the afternoon we visited the Algerian embassy, and got to talk to the ambassador. It was AWESOME. He was extremely intelligent, and did not shy away from any questions, even if the answer was…how you might say controversial. At the end we got pictured with him and ended our engagements for the day with me feeling very fullfilled.

So the day started off great. We took part in two live C-SPAN tapings, and one that will be shown on Sunday night. They were really good, and very interrsting. TJ got very happy because Brett Hume was there, and I took his picture with him. I figured my liberal friends would have killed me if I got a picture with him, so I declined to do so.
After session ended, the day just seemed to drag on. We visited the New Democratic Network. They told us nothing we haven’t heard for weeks and weeks since Obama elected. This was Simon Rosenburg’s (the creator of the NDN) basic speach was this: Blah blah blah, Obama was a genius in his campaign, blah blah blah republicans are Nazis, well, not all of them, but the ones in power exploit race relations. It was awful. It would have been nice if we could have ended the day right there…but we couldn’t.
We went to the Chamber of Commerce for a recpetion dinner. The food was definitely not the best. The bar did not serve alcohol either, even though there were bottles of margarita and cosmpolitan mix at the bar. Go figure. The night was saved by Bob Schieffer, who gave an excellent presentation and also answered some good questions, if it weren’t for him, the night would have been a loss. This is not to say that we didn’t make the best of every moment.
The trip really have been awesome so far, although rather dull at moments. We got back to our hotel at roughly 8pm, which made for a very long day since we left the hotel at 7am. Now, it is time for a well deserved break. Goodnight!!
By the way, thatnk you Mrs. Volkosh for baking us some delicious cookies.

So, what do you say about our second day?
Started off nice and early again, which honestly isnt really a big deal for me since I usually get up pretty early for work. We got to the UDC auditorium an hour before we needed to be, which actually worked out very well because we were able to go get breakfast before our session, which was nice since we didn’t get to do that yesterday.
Our first speaker today was Special Agent David O’Conner from the Secret Service. He was an awesome speaker and talked for a while about what it was like top work in the Secret Service. A lot of technical problems sort of plagued his talk though. He answered some questions, which were very good. I would discuss them, but he made us promise we would not talk about them in blogs. Seriously, his exact words were “I’ll answer any question if you promise not to write about them.”
The second speaker….wow. Oh my god in heaven he was boring. He talked endlessly about Presidential portraits. It was the most boring thing I have ever sat through. By far the longest hour 75 minutes of my entire life. At one point I couldn’t stop laughing because I looked behind me and the entire section of students sitting behind me was completely asleep. I pointed it out to Matt and TJ, and we all started laughing.
The last two speakers, Cal Thompson and Bob Beckel, saved the day. They were such good speakers and extremely entertaining. They advocated bipartisanship of solving problems, which they called “Common Ground.” It was swesome, and they were hysterical. At one point, Bob said “My greatest fear in life is waking up in bed next to Ann Coulter without my shotgun.” Absolutely classic.

Today was our first official day of the inauguration trip. It started off bright and early by getting up so we could be out the door by 7:15 as we were instructed to do. When we got to the University of the District of Columbia’s auditorium we started an ice breaker activity. While I could appreciate the goal, it was kind of pointless because of how many people were in the in the auditorium. It was pretty impossible to move around. There were also a few people that were extremely full of themselves that I found hard to deal with.

The speakers were all very good. Kevin Nunley, the director of student life, was very entertaining. He made the crowd laugh but all the while gave us important info about our trip and gave us some good survival tips for getting around DC.

The program overview given by Dr. Gene Alpert and Tony Cerise was pretty basic. They didn’t really tell us anything we didn’t know just from reading the Washington Center brochure. The best speaker was definitely Dana Bash. She gave a really intersting account of what it is like to be a CNN correspondent to Congress. She told us what it is really like to meet with Congressmen and Senators on a daily basis. She then gave a very lengthy question and answer period. The students who asked the questions generally asked good questions, but it seemed like half of the questions were all the same, basic, “what is he really like?” kind of thing.
She was also followed the McCain campaign and got to know him quite well. It was really cool to hear her account of following him around the campaign trail.

After our session we got lunch and went on a bus tour of DC. Most of the sites we visited I had seen before, but I got to see the World War II Memorial for the first time. The last time I was here, the monument was still under construction. We then went out to dinner at an awesome Irish restaurant called the Dubliner. It was delicious. Tune in tomorrow for the next installment!!!