I made a giant mistake. I chose not to blog on Monday and Tuesday of last week because I didn’t have too terribly much to blog about. Suddenly, I haven’t put up a post in a week, and for the first time in three weeks I had zero hits on my blog throughout the course of Sunday. Whoops. (I know – this is a large, real life problem people struggle with every day.) As a result, once I did start to have things to write about, I had no time to write about them because everything came and went so quickly. Therefore, between the next two posts, I will be covering four main topics: a visit to the State Department, a day spent running around Capitol Hill, the last weekend, and the book I just finished. I’ll try and go in some reasonable order, so this one will cover the book (which I finished on Monday) and the visit to the State Department on Wednesday (which I am going to discuss first, even though it comes second chronologically).
Wednesday I got to leave work at 11:40 so I could run home and put on the rest of my suit. By 12:23 Paul and I were walking towards the State Department, located only a few blocks from our place. It was a rather warm day, so we started to break a sweat. This turned out to be the least of our problems. For starters, Paul’s shoe began to decompose. By “began to decompose,” I mean in about six steps it went from being a shoe to two separate parts loosely attached at the heel. His sole was completely separated and flopping around like a fish on a dock. Far more importantly, I had forgotten my sunglass at home, failing to both protect my eyes and complete my look.
Fortunately we had only a couple blocks to go, so my eyes made it. Our professor organized our tour of State, so all 22 of the Davidson students on my program went on the tour with us. Upon arrival, our professor just laughed at Paul’s wardrobe malfunction and said, in short, “It happens.” He proceeded to tell Paul that he usually carried an extra shirt with him on his way to work just so if something spilled on it he would have a backup. Paul didn’t find a terribly large amount of comfort in this, given that he clearly didn’t bring another pair of shoes with him. Our professor did, however, suggest to Paul that he find a way to reattach the shoe, such as a piece of gum.
Unfortunately, I was chewing a piece of gum. After savoring as much flavor as I could, I reluctantly turned my gum over to Paul. While this sounds gross, I was far more concerned that the security was going to see Paul take something out of my mouth and put it in his shoe and think we were a threat. At any rate, Paul also started chewing a piece of gum, and a half hour later his shoe looked almost normal. It was quite the interesting, gross, and effective solution.
We walked down one hallway that had a low ceiling and plain walls. Evidently the whole thing is color-coded so you can tell which part you are in, because besides that it all looks the exact same inside. We were led into a conference room (across from some really intense-looking “debriefing room”) where we sat around a table and listened to a variety of different speakers. Most were Davidson alums, each of which had previously believed they were the only Davidson grad working in the State Department. At any rate, we heard from people on recruitment and application to State, from people at the Iran and Somalia desks, as well as a couple other areas. A couple of them said things like, “Now don’t go blogging this, but…” Unfortunately I wasn’t able to write about it until now, so I don’t remember what most of those things were. I guess maybe that’s a good thing.
It was all very well put together. State is an interesting place and very firmly locked down. The Foreign Service sounds quite interesting and would certainly be one way to travel around the world after graduation. Unfortunately, I don’t have the “critical language skills” they’re looking for (Arabic, Mandarin, Farsi, etc.), nor do I have any particular desire at this point in my life to be posted for two years in a country not of my choosing overseas. Still, I guess that’s why I’m here this summer – to learn what it is I really want to do and what I don’t want to do. And what I need to do to even have a chance at doing what I want to do.
Similar to our trip to the State Department, on Tuesday night in class our speaker talked about managing crises and helping with stabilization in Africa. (I realize I’m working backwards in the week – my apologies.) I stayed after to chat with him, Dr. Menkhaus, and a few other kids for a couple minutes. In the elevator on the way out I asked Dr. Menkhaus (who plays tennis frequently with other professors at school) if he was interested in playing. While he said yes, our visitor also turned and said he played DI tennis at Davidson when he was there. So we’re going to play sometime this summer. I was pretty pleased with my accidental networking.
On to the second part of this post.
On Monday I finished reading J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion. It’s actually a collection of stories, but “The Silmarillion” is the longest one. Together they make a crazy, odd, and completely new creation story about the world. While I don’t think that Tolkien believed in the fantasy world he created, I’ve done a bit of research and I wouldn’t be surprised to discover otherwise. For example, he evidently referred to his wife as “my Lúthien” (a central character in the stories and a participant in a tragic love story), he also tells a tale of how the world was rounded into its current shape, and all of the tales (culminating with the Lord of the Rings) tell of the dawn of the dominion of men.
Anyway, there were a lot of names in this book, which made it a bit difficult to follow. Even worse was the fact that it was supposed to cover hundreds of years, if not thousands, and that meant that a lot of things happened. It was terribly difficult to keep track of who was fighting whom, who was the son of whom, and which people were “good guys” and “bad guys.” Now that I’m typing all of this out and thinking about it, it is kind of a compilation of every other famous story that was ever written. There’s a creation story, like in the Bible. Romeo and Juliet clearly make an appearance (at least once, if not a number of times). There are plenty of battles and evils that need curing. Jealousy and greed take center stage.
I guess what I’m saying is that, while hard to follow, it really made me think. I can’t even tell you exactly what it made me think about. But there’s something deep and thoughtful about the stories, and he makes the characters in them seem so fair, so elegant, that it almost makes you wish the story were real so we can believe we’re actually descended from people like that. People who are that genuine and noble and good of heart. Almost. Anyway, I’ve now read all three Lord of the Rings book and this prequel this summer, and upon finishing this book I discovered that I would much rather read for personal enjoyment than for class. Which is why I will be going to a bookstore soon to get a book to read so all I have isn’t a textbook. (Thanks to Keven O’Grady for letting me borrow your copy of The Silmarillion three or four years ago only to read it now. I’ll bring it back in August!)
Since this is already a super long post and I have another one to write by tomorrow, I’ll save my thoughts on Wimbledon for the next one!
Here's the virtual tour!
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| The hallway to our room. Ours is the door all the way at the end. |
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| This is right inside the door, our entrance hall with the "living room" on the left. Initially Paul and I found our beds in the living room. We've since moved so we could have a door to our room. |
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| This door on the right of the entrance hall goes to our roommates' (Ryan and Ben) bedroom and the bathroom. |
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| This is their bedroom. The far door on the right wall leads to the bathroom (which is a rather odd set-up). Also, it is unfortunately right next to Ryan's desk! |
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| Our small bathroom. One sink, toilet, and shower. I guess that's all we need. |
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| This is a little hard to see (you can click on it to see a larger image) but it is our living room. Paul and I both have our desks in here, as well as our two couches, dining room table, and four chairs. The door on the left leads to our room and the kitchen. |
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| This is a view through that door. To the left is the kitchen; to the right, our beds. |
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| A further view through the door, turning a bit left to see Paul's bed. |
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| This is the only divider between our beds and the kitchen. But at least there is something. And now we have a door. |
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| Paul, modeling our kitchen. |
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| I bet you can't guess which bed is mine. I'll give you a hint, I chose to bring the floral comforter over the Mickey Mouse one from my aunt and uncle's. I'm not sure I made the correct choice. |
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