Three's a party - Davidson Life in DC

Living in a city is so much different from living at Davidson. The opportunity to live in a city with, near, around, next to, and close by a bunch of Davidson students is a delight. With no need to worry about cars, catcards, court parties, or social clicks, living in DC is going to make for a wonderful summer. The following is an account of two things – my social experience in DC thus far, and the class I am taking. But I guess I should probably give a bit of background on Davidon’s connections to DC in the first place. Oh and by the way, this is kind of a long post, and pictures are at the end so feel free to skip down if you like.

Each summer there is a “Davidson in Washington” (DIW) program that takes on roughly 15-20 students. This summer we have a slightly larger class of 22. Each student is responsible for securing his or her own internship for the summer. At the end of the program we receive two political science credits back at Davidson, one for our internship and one for a class we are required to attend two nights a week (Tuesday/Thursday). This year the class is being taught by Dr. Menkhaus who, ironically, also taught the DIW program when my boss was on it years ago. Ok.

For starters, I had a very fun first weekend in the city. On Friday I got off work at 6 (which is a little late for a Friday!) and went home and ate dinner. After spending some time with my roommates and neighbors, I headed to an apartment building about three blocks away to hang out with some friends from Davidson. One or two of the people there I would see on a semi-regular basis (namely Kellyn Sloan who is also from Kansas City originally), but for the most part they were all people I knew and would say hi to but never really spend time with. (I should probably note, they are all very friendly people, we’ve just never lived in the same place or hung out with the same people…but I like them all a lot!)

Our gathering grew over the next couple hours until we left to go out. Thus, we left and were walking around the city with a group of 15 people. This was an adventure by itself, making sure we all made it across streets at the same time and didn’t lose anyone. We (fortunately) only made one stop on the evening, a place named Sign of the Whale. It was really fun, but there was a cover charge and it was very expensive inside. As a friend put it, I’m not particularly fond of the idea of paying to pay for drinks.

The next day my roommate, Paul Ream, moved into our apartment. He lives in Richmond, so his parents just drove him up with his stuff. After he was settled in we decided to just go walk around. Our path took us past the White House where we witnessed a very small group of Iranian protestors. On a side note, it seems to me that security officials (and politicians in general) are (or should be) more than happy to let them stand there and protest in such small numbers as long as nothing threatening is going on, mostly because they were just yelling in Arabic or Farsi into a megaphone. I didn’t understand a single word, nor did most anyone else who was around I would guess. Doesn’t seem like the most effective way to protest…

That night Paul and I hung out in our apartment with our neighbors for a while, and then we went on a search for Davidson friends. At first the going was slow, and we met up with a couple people and just stood and talked for a while. Eventually we met up with Natalie Tagher and Nick Carney and went to a place named The 51st State. It was pretty fun, and we just sat and talked. Before we knew it we looked up and the place was mostly empty and it was 2am. At this point, my memories of being out in a city when I was abroad kicked in, and Paul and I decided we dearly wanted a kebap.

We walked about 20 minutes to a kebap place we found on our phone. Fail. It closed at 11. So we walked 20 minutes back and decided to head home. On the way, Paul convinced me it would be worth to go to McDonalds, which wasn’t exactly on the way. But we walked there instead, spent 40 minutes in line, but eventually ate two of the better McDoubles I have ever had (I don’t know if that is saying much). Since my mom reads this, I won’t say what time we got back to the apartment. Some things are better left unsaid.

The next day we ate lunch at Bennie’s with a few other friends from Davidson. Bennie’s is famous for their chili-covered-dogs with mustard, onions, and cheese. Let me tell you, I understand now why they are famous.

This week has been fairly routine, although I did start my class on Tuesday night. Dr. Menkhaus is currently out of the country, so this first week we are being taught by Dr. Rigger (whom I had for stats last semester). The first night was actually really interesting. Dr. Rigger is pretty easy to follow and learn from when she is lecturing about material she really knows. This course is on foreign policy, so we started by talking about the controversy brewing over Libya and the War Powers Act. I don’t know how Menkhaus will conduct the class, but we had lots of discussion throughout the class, which I love.

To wrap things up – three important notes:

(1) At work today we sponsored the launch of a campaign for a congressional race in Montana. In fact, it is the only congressional race in MT because it is all one district. Anyway, this is the Facebook page for Dave Strohmaier’s race, and though I didn’t have much to do with the design, it was cool to be behind the scenes for all the prep work and announcement.

(2) My dad was in town from Sunday-Thursday of this week for work. He was kind enough to take me to dinner Monday-Wednesday night. Paul joined us on Tuesday and got to meet my uncles who were there working with my dad, Jeff and Chris (in order of age, not coolness).  Afterwards he remarked: “your dad’s brothers are really funny to be around. They just go on and on and on.” To which I completely agree. Wednesday night Dad took me, Richard (who visited Vienna and is in this post), Natalie (who was mentioned earlier), Paul and myself out for dinner. Thanks A BUNCH to him for that…we stumbled into a place we thought would be good, but it also turned out to be super fancy. The food was unbelievable though, so…thanks Dad!!

(3) Class tonight was one hour of lecture and a second hour of a visit from Tommy Ross. Mr. Ross is the son of Tom Ross who was Davidson’s president my first two and a half years. More importantly, he is currently Harry Reid’s advisor on defense and intelligence policy. He is a Davidson grad (majored in sociology) and has certainly carved a path for himself here. Quite the interesting viewpoint on the Republican sweep in 2010, what it has meant for the last few months, what it is meaning for the Libya situation, as well as what the relationship is between the President and Congress, etc. Really cool stuff, and it is going to be great to have people come and visit every class.

That’s about all for now (sorry it was a lot). Enjoy the pictures and descriptions. Paul and I would like to encourage anyone who wants to come out and visit to feel free. I’m mostly looking at you, Paul, Sean, and Pat. The best way to get in a blog post is to be in DC. Or, complain about not being in it so I feel inclined to include you.

My Uncle Jeff at his daughter's wedding in May.  His 4 brothers gave him a
Henry Repeating Rifle for a  retirement present.

Our fire pit out back. I took this at
some point before I came to DC.

My sister's orchestra concert!

This is the view from my office out over the river.

The escalator at the Rosslyn metro stop in Arlington.  One
of the bigger escalators I've ever been on.  I get off at
Rosslyn for work every day.

The building straight ahead is my office building.  I work on the 9th floor
though my office looks out over the other side.

This is the view of GWU's "quad" (as Katie Mixon described it) at night from the rooftop of one of the buildings that
surrounds the "quad".  Paul and I went on a bit of an adventure.  It was fun, except there is so much light pollution that
the big dipper is barely visible.

On the Job

The following is a brief account of what exactly it is I do at my place of work. It was my attempt to present it in the least partisan way possible, but I’m afraid I have likely failed. Anyway, here it is:

Monday thru Friday I am an intern from 9:30 to 6:00 with the Eleison Group. Our group also helps oversee the development of a non-profit organization, the American Values Network. You can click on those links to learn more about the groups themselves. Eleison is a political consulting firm specializing in progressive faith outreach. We are beginning to work with a few congressional offices to prepare for the 2012 elections, and we also work with a number of different congressmen on both sides of the aisle on specific projects, such as climate change and the gulf oil spill.

The American Values Network (AVN) has specifically directed its efforts at climate change, healthcare, and nuclear security over the last few years. AVN teamed with a coalition of pastors and army veterans in 2010 to help encourage the passage of the New Start treaty. Currently, AVN is working with veterans in the Los Angeles area on a lawsuit against the city (land was donated to care for homeless vets and it has been misused and turned into other facilities, leaving the vets to sleep on the street in front of the property).

What exactly do I do? For both groups I do a lot of social media work. I was in charge of creating and maintaining the facebook spacepage for the conference the AVN partners are attending this weekend. I made a DVD of AVN’s projects for this conference. I have also been assigned the task of compiling facebook and tweeter (twitter) profile accounts for media relations in a specific state in which we are about to sponsor a candidate (not sure if I am allowed to name the state yet?).

Perhaps more interesting is all the emails I get to respond to after we put out videos and blog posts. Some are nice and thank us for our work, many ask questions about how we approach certain issues (what our stance is), and some are mean, nasty, and explicit. I’ve also written a couple of blog posts, but those mostly just ask for donations and are a bunch of fluff language.

Anyway, here is a video AVN recently put out about the doctrine put forth by Ayn Rand. We’ve received quite a few responses, both positive (donations) and negative, and a couple days ago Glenn Beck, a FoxNews host, attacked our video on his radio show (and then after listening to our ad changed his view point on Ayn Rand). Thus, we have had an even busier couple of days. That article, by the way, is by my boss, Eric Sapp. Here’s the video – I won’t go into what it is intended to mean as there has been plenty of discussion already, in the office, on youtube, and around the blogosphere.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TxCWbTqz9s&feature=player_embedded

I suspect that after this conference at which AVN has a panel most of my work will turn to Eleison stuff. Still, it has been interesting doing this much with a non-profit organization and learning how non-profits work.

That’s all I got for now. Feel free to email me questions for clarification or whatever: jpeterson@eleisongroup.com. I’ll probably post again pretty soon (maybe this afternoon/evening?) as my dad has been in town for the last couple days so I should probably report on that. Also, given the number of links in this post, I’m not putting in pictures (except one). Plus I haven’t uploaded them from my phone yet.

Hallstatt, Austria.  Katie Mixon (yeah, this it is a little annoying having to differentiate between the two) and I went through a couple of photo albums last night just looking at pictures.  I miss Europe a little bit.

"The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary."

Washington D.C.

On June 4th I flew out to Baltimore where my Aunt Carol Beth and Uncle Rick were gracious enough to pick me up. They were hosting a going away party that evening, so we ate some lunch, did some grocery shopping, and prepared a few things around the house. Then I took a nap because I had to get up at 5 to leave for the airport. The evening festivities were fun; I met all of their friends who came over, and then spent a decent amount of time playing ping-pong in the basement with two grade school age girls who had come with their parents. The next day I opted to watch the Nadal-Federer final instead of go to church, and I was fortunate enough to turn on the TV just as McEnroe was saying, “That was perhaps the best 30 minutes of a first set that I’ve ever seen.”

At any rate, it was still a great match, though it seems to be growing more and more difficult to assert Federer as the greatest of all time given his 8-17 record lifetime against Nadal, including a 2-7 record in majors and a 2-6 record in major finals. I guess we have to see where Nadal ends up in the major count, but it doesn’t seem to be necessary for him to best Federer’s 16 to join the conversation. Certainly he isn’t quite in that top tier yet with Fed, Sampras, and Lendl, but he’s getting there.

Anyway…later that afternoon my aunt and uncle were very helpful and drove me into DC to move into my apartment at George Washington University. My building is named The West End, and I am living in a quad. One of my three roommates is Paul Ream, who can be found in this post about my trip to Madrid and this more recent post about his visit later to Vienna. My other two roommates are from the University of Pennsylvania, and despite the fact that they’re both from Massachusetts they didn’t know each other before moving in here. Both of them (Ben and Ryan) are really nice guys and have been fun to hang out with so far.

Our apartment, however, has a rather odd set-up. Through the door is an entrance hallway. From this hallway to the left is the ‘bedroom’ that Paul and I share. There is not, however, any door to this room – it is completely open and there is no privacy (which isn’t really needed…but is nice to have). From our room, there is a door that leads to a living area and kitchen. Back in the entrance hall, on the right there is a door that leads to Ben and Ryan’s room, so they have more privacy, except that on the other side of their room is our bathroom. So both bedrooms are entranceways to other rooms, which to me seems to be a reasonably poor set-up.

Still, the building is in a great part of the city. Uncle Rick and Aunt Carol helped me check in and move my stuff up, and then they took me to the store and bought me a few necessary grocery items. Afterwards they dropped me at my apartment once more and turned around and headed home to prepare for their trip to Seattle.

Shortly after they left a good friend of mine from abroad, Katie Mixon, came over to say hello. A little more about Katie can be found in my account of the trip we both took to Hallstatt and Graz last year. She’s going to be a senior (International Relations major) here at GWU and lives close by, so she came over to say welcome and show me around for a while. We walked for a while and she pointed a few things out, but eventually I was just very confused, turned around, and hungry, so we ended up eating at a place named the Thunder Burger. She used to work there, and the theme was pretty interesting, but most importantly the burgers were amazing.

After we had eaten and talked for a while, Katie Lovett, a Davidson friend (and my roommate Patrick’s girlfriend) showed up to also say hello. (More on Katie Lovett and her visit to Vienna can be found in this post.) The three of us chatted for a while (the Katies know each other through me and Patrick and their time spent in DC) and then walked back towards my apartment. Katie Mixon went to see some other friends and Katie Lovett went back with me to help me put a few more things away and to see where I was living. This could get remarkably confusing if I see them both a lot more this summer. And I plan on doing that. Uh oh.

The next morning I got up and went to work. I think my next post is going to be mostly about what I do at work, so I’m going to finish this one just by saying that I live about 3 minutes from the Foggy Bottom metro station and I ride the metro one stop to get to the Rosslyn stop, and from there it is maybe 2 minutes to my office. So on a good day I can make the commute in 10 minutes, which is awesome because it has been super hot here so far and the less time I spend getting sweaty in the heat the better.

This week was reasonably low-key. I work from 930 to 6 every day, so most days by the time I get home I am really hungry and tired. Monday night I went to Katie Lovett’s apartment in the Georgetown area, cooked dinner with her and her roommate Whitley Raney (a Davidson student), and watched a couple episodes of How I Met Your Mother. Tuesday I went to TGIFridays with my roommate Ben to watch the Dallas Mavericks-Miami Heat NBA finals game. Wednesday I hung out with Katie Mixon (yeah, this is already annoying) again. We ate at a restaurant named Chop’t, which is a salad place with Chipotle-style ordering (you pick your kind of lettuce, what you want in it, dressing, etc.). Thursday I just ate at home and watched a basketball game with some guys next door. I’ll save this first weekend and work stuff for another post, hopefully that one will include more pictures too?

Ok - I'm a little bit worried.

Unfortunately I didn’t get to spend the entire semester playing tennis and basketball. For about a month my roommate Patrick (who I’m reasonably sure is mentioned in every single one of my blog posts so far) was preparing for or undertaking interviews for summer internships. He was eventually offered a summer position with Wells Fargo Investment Banking and is currently working with them in Charlotte. Oddly, one of my good friends from Kansas City, Thomas Henry, was also offered the same job in Los Angeles.

Right as Pat was done job searching, my job search kicked into full gear. I applied to a few different places, and had more success with some than others. The Davidson network in DC is quite broad, and I spend plenty of time on the phone with people trying to work out connections. There was one particular lobbying firm where I was told I made it to the top two candidates, but they chose to go with the other guy because he had a connection to one of the partners. That’s how it is here – it’s all about who you know.

In the end, I ended up accepting an intern position with the Eleison Group. They also oversee a non-profit organization, The American Values Network. A further explanation of what all we do and what my specific job is will come in another post or two, but basically this is all to say that for a while Patrick and I were busy at different points during the semester. Obviously we still saw each other often, but things were a little hectic and we didn’t get to hang out a whole lot.

*Edit* In March for their spring break my family came and spent 4 or 5 days with me in NC.  It was a little bit warmer than home, and it as nice to see them because I didn't have that much time at home over winter break due to my delay in London.  The day they left, Katie Mixon, a friend of Patrick and I's from abroad who lives in NC, came to visit over her spring break.  It was really nice to see her and we went and saw a few people she had met when they came to visit Vienna and then just hung out for a while.  Good thing I left these all out the first time, right? Sorry!!  Anyway, it was great to see all of them, and I hope next year a few more people from abroad get to come again.  I'm looking at you Dürergasse 18/6 roommates, Morgan, Julia, Allison (given), Michelle, Annie, Ashley, Roger...was I friends with any other guys outside of my apartment? *End Edit*

Anyway, as the course of the semester went on we both secured summer internships, as did most of our friends (Paul Britton was the last one, but in the end he still got one so he was happy…I think). This made April pretty fun as most people were content to relax a little bit between securing an internship and finals. We beat Elon in club tennis and lost good matches to Wake Forest and UNCC, both of whom we could have been with full lineups. Actually, I lost both my doubles and my singles matches in tiebreakers and we lost to UNCC 7-5 – after we choked against UNCC at Sectionals. Still, I made the decision to play our lone senior at #1 doubles and sit our top team, so I’ve no doubt that next year we’ll beat them. But I still wasn’t particularly happy, and it kind of reminded me why I don’t miss playing competitively.

For Easter we get an extra two days of classes off, so for the second year in a row a few of us went to the beach. This year, Jonathan Fisher’s aunt (he will be known as Fish from here on out in any and all of my blog posts he shows up in – he lived across the hall from me freshman year) was nice enough to let us stay at her place for free. This means we only had to pay for gas and food, which made it a far cheaper trip than last year. On this trip was Fish, Patrick, Paul, and myself, as well as two girls – Minisha Lohani and Nicole Haug. The water wasn’t particularly warm (meaning it was pretty cold) but once we got in it was ok. After driving down on Friday we spent most of Saturday learning to skim-board, swimming, and building sandcastles.

I got absolutely fried. My shoulders were the color of cranberry juice. It certainly minimized my farmers tan, but not in the exact way I wished. The next day I could barely be outside for 15 minutes before it just hurt too much and I had to go back inside. We did play our traditional round of mini-golf, which Paul unfairly won (a – he plays golf, and b – no one has ever had that many lucky hole-in-ones in a single game of mini-golf in history). Two other girls had joined us, Molly Crenshaw and Jenna Ptaschinski. We had a great time though – plenty of long laughs and hilarious quotes, and Tuesday and the drive back came all too soon.

The rest of the year went by as the end of any semester does. I had a weird combination of finals, papers, and projects due over the last couple weeks, but I successfully turned them all in on time, got good grades, and was done by my birthday on May 10th. For those who don’t know – I turned 21.

Two days later I flew home to drive up to my cousin Sarah’s wedding in Minneapolis. Though it was rainy most of the time, their wedding was great, they’re really cute, and it was wonderful to be around all of the Peterson family for a couple of days.

I spent the next 2 weeks or so working at the country club, spending time at the lake, and hanging out with friends. Eventually, I got everything packed up and ready to go (and by eventually, I mean all day on June 3rd I spent getting ready). On the 4th of June I flew to Baltimore where I was picked up by my aunt and uncle, and I stayed with them that night. The next day I moved into my apartment on the campus of George Washington University – but that starts a whole new chapter - which I will save for another post. Here a few pictures – I’ll hopefully be caught up to real life by the end of the weekend!

Artsy beach picture?

One of our castles.

Pat, Jenna, Molly, Fish, and Paul

One of the least exciting mini-golf courses I have ever seen.

Looking down the pier.

Our castle at sunset.

Molly and Fish on the beach.

Davidson in the Spring of 2011

As I have never before written about my time at Davidson, this will hopefully be brief and I will be able to push through the semester in a post or two and move on to covering my time in DC. Since I am already in DC, it is going to all be in past tense. Here goes:

Last semester (starting in January of 2011) my courses were: History of Modern Philosophy, Political Science Statistics, American Public Opinion, and Campaign Strategy. I am now an officially declared Political Science major and Philosophy minor. Here are a few highlights (by which I do not necessarily mean they were all good events…I just mean they were important events) of last semester:

In January I passed out in our health center when they were trying to draw blood. As a result I decided to tell my professors as well as a number of other people I was close to (or who I thought should know) that this was something that may happen, but that I didn’t anticipate it happening again and that I was working to control it, but that I figured they all should have a heads up just in case. This started a cycle of me worrying about it all the time, everywhere I went, and the more places I went the more people I told, and the more people I told, the more I worried. Eventually (like…late March) I just had to drop the whole thing and decide I just didn’t care. And that seems to have worked out ok so far. (I do apologize to Patrick again though – he’s now had to help me recover 3 times. Whoops.)

On a lighter note, it was great to see everyone at Davidson again, and Patrick and I lived in a pretty decent room. I decided to play 5on5 intramural basketball, and one of my friends who I saw quite frequently abroad, Paul Britton, was on my team. In our third or fourth game, I took an elbow to the ribs (ok…my own elbow was shoved into my ribs) and I tore the cartilage between my ribs. I tried to play tennis the next day, which made it a bit worse, so I talked to the trainer and she told me to sit for 4 weeks. I sat for 3 (though I did sub in briefly in one 5on5 game to score 5 points…and we won that game by 4). I was back for the playoffs, and we finished out our undefeated season and won the B-league championship (a couple of the games were very, very close, including a 42-41 thriller). Pretty darn fun.

I played tennis most afternoons and transitioned into being the president/captain/ceo/coo/czar of our club tennis team. Over the first weekend of spring break (which was at the end of February) we took 4 guys and 4 girls to Auburn, AL to play in the club tennis Sectionals event. It was actually a lot of fun; we rented one big van to all take together, stayed in a hotel, and actually played pretty well. We placed 2nd in our pool, losing to College of Charleston – though they ended up getting 5th and it was a lot closer than I think they would have liked it to be – and beating Valdosta St and Kennesaw St. The next day we choked against UNC Charlotte (both a coaching and player error) and ended up placing 13th after beating Ole Miss and UNC Wilmington. We likely should have been in the top 10, but for our first trip we did pretty well, and our goal next year is to qualify for nationals (which requires a top 5 finish). Unfortunately, for all of this, I was unable to play due to my ribs, though I tried to sneak in a time or two.  Jay Lanners Jr., who graduate this spring, was very very helpful in making this happen, and I also received a large amount of help and support from my sophomore captains, Mark Angel and Lucy McMurry.  Unfortunately they're both going abroad in the fall, and we will miss them dearly.

The rest of spring break I spent with Jonathan Fisher. Of all my close friends he was the only one who didn’t go abroad, and it was great to spend a lot of time with him. Basically, we woke up late, played video games, worked on an art project, played video games, watched tv, went to sleep, and then woke up again. It was pretty darn relaxing.

This is probably a sufficient start, I’ll try and find a couple photos to put up of the tennis stuff if I can!

Mom and Dad dancing over winter break,

This is Jonathan. Dunking.

I'd include everyone's names, but that'd take lots more time.

Patrick and I in our new room.

From left, Mark Angel, myself, Lucy McMurry, and Jay Lanners Jr.

Jay Lanners Jr. Initiated the revival of Davidson College Club Tennis.

Anne Meredith Baldy - our girls #1 player as a freshman.

Our team at Auburn.  Two of our matches we got to play on clay, which was lots of fun.  Or would have been if I had been able to play.

Final Days in Vienna

I will see you again. But not yet…not yet.

After Paul Ream left, I became all too aware of how close finals had crept, and that I still had a variety of papers to write as well as a significant amount of studying to do. Thus, over the next week (Wednesday, December 8 through the 15th) I was largely concerned with schoolwork. A couple notes though:

1) I attended the final concert of student performers, and they did not disappoint. I took some video and will try and figure out how to post that on this blog at some point, but they’re an amazing group of performers I was privileged to be able to hear. The grammar on that sentence seems completely wrong, but I’m now in the car on my way home from Madison so I’m not going to attempt to correct it.

2) As this weekend was our last weekend, our program contacted a local bar, the Travelshack and asked if they could support a full group of people. While we were there, they let us put up a screen to show our semester DVD, which had been compiled by my friend Allison and another guy from our program, Tom. Largely a compilation of pictures set to music with the occasional video, it was very well done. We would all receive a copy of the video after our last final on Thursday.

3) If you look back two posts, you may read a brief synopsis of the friendship that developed between my friend from Davidson, Paul Britton, and Allison Meyer, a friend of mine from abroad. Since that point, they had remained in contact through a variety of social mediums – so much so that Paul undertook a leap and flew back to Vienna (via a discount airline through Bratislava and then a bus) to surprise her. She was, indeed quite surprised when he showed up outside the Travelshack, and they spent the majority of the rest of the weekend together, though Pat and I did get to see Paul some as well.

After my two finals and papers on Tuesday, things relaxed a lot. Wednesday night most of the guys in my apartment went out to Schnitzelwirt for one last hurrah. Beforehand I met Felix, a friend of mine in Vienna who had worked with my Uncle David in New York over the summer, at a Christmas market for a cup or two of punch and to say farewell. He actually helped me pick out a couple gifts to bring back to friends.

I still had my German final on Thursday, but that wasn’t difficult, and by Thursday afternoon I had packed and was ready to get up early Friday morning and head to the airport. For dinner I actually ended up going to Schnitzelwirt with a different group of friends, and I was lucky enough to meet Annie Wolfstone’s parents. That night many people from my program convened at the Travelshack again to spend our last night together and say our goodbyes. It was fun, and relatively emotional, but I finally said goodbye and made my way home. Once there I made sure I had everything completely together, and then realized I had to wake up in about an hour, so I decided to just stay up and talk to Patrick, Tad, and Evan for the rest of the night. (David, by the way, had departed shortly after our German final was finished, so he missed out.) About 4:30 I lugged everything down the stairs with Patrick’s help, and said a sad (and later unnecessary) goodbye to him. I lugged everything up to the U3 stop Neubagasse, which I then took to Landstraße. Evidently the S7 wasn’t running on the schedule I thought it was, so I ended up just taking the City Airport Train. Once there I checked in and went through security after checking my two bags. I ran into a group of about six other kids from my program, most of whom were on my flight from Vienna to London (where I was to connect to DC and then to KC). We ate a small breakfast and then went to our gate. 

The rest, as some say, is history. Some day I may write a post about all that happened in the next few hours and my 5 day delay in London. But at the moment, I’ve chosen to do all I can to look past it and remember what a fantastic time I had abroad.

Needless to say, by the time I got home, I was very, very glad to be there.  And due to my delay I didn't miss Vienna right away.  Not until a couple months later.  But I'll save all that for a different post.

Paul Ream Visits Wien!

Evidently, I somehow left Vienna without any record of a post of Paul Ream coming to visit.  So here is a very (very) brief synopsis:

My friend Paul Ream (we met at Davidson and you can read about my visit to Madrid to stay with him in this post) arrived on November 30 late at night.  We (Tad and myself - Patrick stayed behind, I don't remember why at this point) took him to get a käsekrainer and our trip was quite eventful.  By the time we got back it was near 3 so we pretty much went straight to bed.  The next day Paul toured Vienna with a couple friends David had visiting as well, so he had some company while we were in class/working because finals and papers were due shortly after he left.  Paul's birthday is December 2, so on the night of the 1st we threw him a birthday party and had people over to hang out.  We went out to a karaoke bar afterwards.  Patrick left even though he didn't have his keys, so we found him a little later when we went back curled up on our doorstep.  It was reasonably amusing.

The next day Paul left and flew to London where he visited Paul Britton (who has come up in a number of posts, and will again in the next one).

This is likely the shortest blog post I will ever, ever post.  And I am very proud of it.