Week Seven: Beyond the Metro
Week seven already? Wow, where did the time go? Seems like just yesterday you were settling in to your office chair, perusing the interwebs, and deciding on the summer blogs.
NCSC always has their interns develop a final presentation to give to the entire international team. It usually is the last day of the internship, but since Evan and I finish on different days and our boss is out of town towards the end of the summer, the presentation got moved up. A majority of this week was developing and preparing our project on immigration and asylum. Because of the changing political climates and the ongoing refugee crisis, this providing a topical and interesting discussion. We primarily focused on differences between the European Union and the United States, including the political and legal decisions by different parties. The European migrant crisis is the largest movement of displaced people since World War II, largely because of the Syrian civil war. We analyzed the reaction to refugees and immigrants has changed over time, organizations that have developed in response to the crises, and a variety of cases pending both in US Supreme Court and the European Court of Human Rights. The presentation went well and I learned a lot about a highly relevant issue.
This week I had some friends in town and we went to Annapolis to their beach house on the bay. Although, I'm not convinced it counts as a "beach house" if there is no actual access to the beach. Perhaps it be more aptly named the "water house". Either way, it was nice to get out of the city for a few days and spend time on the water. We kayaked across the bay and visited the harbor on the other side. I also discovered that I am allergic to crab, either that or I have early signs of the plague (probably not my best decision to check WebMD).
July 4th in the city! Very cool. I went to plenty of BBQs and saw multiple firework shows from a rooftop in Arlington. Of course, it started raining right when the fireworks began, but it only lasted a few minutes so we stayed outside. If I am in DC again next summer I would like to see the fireworks from the Mall, but will need to get there early because of the millions of people who have that same idea.
