Adventures from DC: Patriotic Ponderings
Ellen Thomson
Issue date: 11/7/08 Section: Features
Greetings from the happiest place on earth! Well, at least this morning it is…I am sitting down to write this just hours after learning of our new President Elect.
What a whirlwind these last twenty-four hours have been! After watching the results come in at the Warwick House (our home for the semester), eleven of us DCers made a decision that I do not think anyone will come to regret any time soon. We crammed into a cab (yes, 11 people in one cab) and asked the driver to drop us off as close to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue as he could possibly get. I don't think that I have yet grasped what happened next.
People were filling the streets surrounding the White House. There were people singing, dancing, and chanting "Yes We Did!" It was an experience that, placing all partisan issues aside, illustrated the passion, hope and pride of the American people.
Being in DC during this campaign season has been one of the most educational, nerve-wracking, eye-opening and amazing experiences of my life. And I think that many of this semester's other DC students would agree with me. Politics is not a topic that people avoid in this city. Rather, people here welcome the conversations, debates and even arguments that so many political issues bring with them.
Everywhere you go people are talking. From the metro stop, to the office, to the grocery store, people are discussing the big issues.
The news moves fast, and if you don't keep up with it you can very easily be left behind. We've all mastered the news circuit, and are now capable of scanning CNN.com, nytimes.com and washingtonpost.com before the clock hits 10 am. And while we have reoccurring arguments over whether to watch MSNBC or CNN, we have all gotten pretty good about keeping each other informed.
Now that the excitement of the election is over we have one less excuse for why we aren't writing our theses. While I'm sure that we could find other excuses if we tried, the realization that we leave here in just over two weeks is slowly setting in. Our evenings, which were previously spent watching movies and exploring this amazing city, are now spent at the library or hunting down a quiet place to work in the Warwick.
What a whirlwind these last twenty-four hours have been! After watching the results come in at the Warwick House (our home for the semester), eleven of us DCers made a decision that I do not think anyone will come to regret any time soon. We crammed into a cab (yes, 11 people in one cab) and asked the driver to drop us off as close to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue as he could possibly get. I don't think that I have yet grasped what happened next.
People were filling the streets surrounding the White House. There were people singing, dancing, and chanting "Yes We Did!" It was an experience that, placing all partisan issues aside, illustrated the passion, hope and pride of the American people.
Being in DC during this campaign season has been one of the most educational, nerve-wracking, eye-opening and amazing experiences of my life. And I think that many of this semester's other DC students would agree with me. Politics is not a topic that people avoid in this city. Rather, people here welcome the conversations, debates and even arguments that so many political issues bring with them.
Everywhere you go people are talking. From the metro stop, to the office, to the grocery store, people are discussing the big issues.
The news moves fast, and if you don't keep up with it you can very easily be left behind. We've all mastered the news circuit, and are now capable of scanning CNN.com, nytimes.com and washingtonpost.com before the clock hits 10 am. And while we have reoccurring arguments over whether to watch MSNBC or CNN, we have all gotten pretty good about keeping each other informed.
Now that the excitement of the election is over we have one less excuse for why we aren't writing our theses. While I'm sure that we could find other excuses if we tried, the realization that we leave here in just over two weeks is slowly setting in. Our evenings, which were previously spent watching movies and exploring this amazing city, are now spent at the library or hunting down a quiet place to work in the Warwick.
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