Hoosier Nostalgia

I bought a plane ticket to Bloomington today. Yup, I'm Indiana-bound next weekend to reunite with my favorite Hoosiers. I had previously convinced myself to stick it out in DC without any visits, but I miss my faves far too much to wait. Plus, it's Homecoming--and I'm not about to go an entire fall semester without a tailgate and a football game. The countdown begins. 8 days.....

Alright, in an effort to catch up, here's my weekend wrap-up (last weekend, that is). Friday was my roommate Jessica's birthday. She had two friends visit from Chicago, and a group of us went out for a fabulous dinner downtown at a restaurant called Central. BONUS: her mom flew in from California with her best friend and surprised Jessica at the restaurant with a private room, balloons and champagne for everyone to celebrate. We had an assortment of seafood appetizer platters that were so yummm.... I'd eat there every weekend if I didn't have a limited budget; it was sooo good. Then we had a lot of the TFASers over to our apartment to celebrate before we went out in Dupont. I should not have stayed out late because that was the onset of me getting sick... I'm actually surprised it took this long--the weather's been rainy and cool, and I definitely haven't been getting enough sleep. But, it was fun nonetheless. Lets just say I stayed in Saturday night with my sweat pants, tea and soup. It was much needed.

On Monday we volunteered at the DC Central Kitchen from 9-12. The guy who started the kitchen had the genius idea to use only leftover food from various restaurants and stores from the DC area, so the kitchen receives trucks of food daily from different locations across the city; they prepare nearly 4,500 meals daily to be sent out to various agencies and organizations that provide them to those in need, so they don't actually serve the hungry directly--but they did say that their partnered organizations ensure that the food goes to those who need it most. There are regular chefs that work there, and they instructed us and made sure things ran smoothly--my chef, Eduardo, was so sweet. I peeled potatoes, cut chicken, stirred pasta, and made a disgusting amount of chili-macaroni (the macaroni filled a big plastic storage bin that you would use for sweaters and stuff. HUGE. so by disgusting I mean the amount of food, not the actual food itself--which smelled pretty good:). And we weren't the only volunteers--I'm pretty sure we had some ex-convicts and court-ordered community service workers with us. No big deal.

Yesterday I got to leave work early to go with the journalism students to USA Today with our professor; he worked there for years and still has close ties with everyone. We got to meet and talk to the Washington Bureau Chief, whose husband (another journalist) actually spoke in our class a couple weeks ago. She talked about how we're at an advantage being in college now with this new media era--we're lucky enough to still have the chance to be educated with multimedia and social networking sites and such--all the stuff we hear everyday @ Ernie Pyle in B-Town, right Al? But she was very nice and really insightful, and she went to Northwestern so I naturally loved her. I expected the actual newsroom to be insane, but most reporters were out on the Hill covering stories, so it was fairly quiet. They also had a bunch of free books and let us go through them and take what ever we wanted--apparently they get them all the time from editors and publishing companies that want to get a piece written about them. I took one called 'Seeds of Terror' and started reading it last night; if I ever have time to finish it I'll let you know how it is. So far, so good.

Then last night after class we had the TFAS Alumni Round Table Dinner at the TFAS building. They had TFASers that were in the program only 2 or 3 years ago and now live and work in the city. At our table we had 2 journalists that were in our shoes in the summer program of 2007; one of them, Nick, interned with CNN when he was here and is now a video journalist with Cybercast News Service--he does a lot of interviews with members of Congress and even gets political opinions from various celebrity visitors when they come to DC. He talked about interviews with Kim Kardashian, Pierce Brosnan, Jessica Alba... he was very outgoing and he had so many stories/experiences to share with us. The other was Brittany, who does niche writing for some policy organization--I forget which one. She was nice, too--we may have coffee:) She clearly prefers writing for a small niche organization doing more aggregated work and that's definitely not the path I'm going down, but she's still a good resource to have; they both are. The rest were public policy alum--I think there were like 20 total?--all working with various groups/businesses/organizations. One was the chief legislative council for some congressman, some worked for law firms, others worked in international affairs. It was pretty cool. Plus, they had Buca di Beppo catered for us... it was yum.

ON A SUPER HAPPY NOTE, Meghan and Tasha come tomorrow night! We're staying at a hotel in Dupont and it's going to be fabulous. Actually, the rest of my stay here in Washington is going to be action-packed with visitors. Tasha and Meghan this weekend; Mitch and Nanette & Michael over Halloween weekend, Jess and Amy (& hopefully Christine) the first weekend in November, and Ali the weekend of the 11th! I can't wait!

AHH--and for those who haven't heard, I got accepted into my study abroad program in London! And yes, if I can figure out the finances, I'm going! Let the planning begin....

xoxo