Natural Disasters

Readers,

After a long and eventful summer, it's good to be back in D.C.--Except for the natural disasters.
I'm living off-campus in Arlington, VA this year, so I was able to move in this past Tuesday. As I was driving in the trusty family SUV, I felt this strange shaking in the ground.

Weird, I thought. This is the border between DC and MD; there aren't any subway lines around here...?!

Well, it turns out that I was right: there were no subway lines near my route. It was an earthquake, the largest to strike the D.C. region in quite some time. Luckily, though, this is a tectonically stable region--the quake was only 5.8 on the Richter scale, or less than 1/68,000th the size of the disastrous monster that hit Fukushima, so no GW property or people were hurt.

We're in for quite a storm this weekend, though, as Hurricane Irene rolls into town. Move-in was extended to start today rather than tomorrow for most on-campus students, so let's hope everything is all right...

Let's hope nobody else is hurt and little damage results.

What a way to start senior year. Looking back, I'll be able to say I witnessed snowpocalypse, the quake, and Irene--not to mention Inauguration, the Bin Laden announcement, and all of the rallies in 2010. No other place makes you a witness to history like GW does.
--Adam
Questions? Comments? Let me know at ash1290@gwmail.gwu.edu

Volleyball Preseason!

As I mentioned in a previous post, I arrived on campus over 2 weeks ago on August 10 for the beginning of GW volleyball preseason! It feels nice to be back on campus, but at the same time summer flew by and now it’s back to business. Moving in was an adventure and very tiring, emptying out the car and storage unit. Initially, we could not move directly into my regular room for the year since it was still being occupied by summer residents, so we had to move into another room temporarily. This meant that for a while we really couldn’t unpack because we would just have to pack everything up again and move it. Finally, we got into our actual room and now we are settled in (I’ll share pictures of our completed room in a few weeks).

As for volleyball, preseason has been very productive and fun, but so very busy and exhausting. At the height of preseason, this was my daily schedule: wake up 6:20am, eat, conditioning at 7:30am, practice 9-12, lunch break, practice 2-5pm, weights 5-6pm (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday), and then followed by a team dinner at various restaurants. For a while, all of our bodies were sore, but I think by now everyone is feeling pretty good (well, besides still being kind of tired of course). Also, scattered throughout these two weeks, we have had a few days off to rest our bodies, which were greatly appreciated and relished (Target and Costco were frequented on those days for purchasing missing dorm room essentials).

In fact, on August 17 (one of our days off), in order to facilitate team bonding, our coaches surprised us and drove us to Annapolis, Maryland to go kayaking! It was definitely an adventure and so much fun! I was in a double kayak with Taylor (one of my roommates) and thankfully we didn’t tip over, although there were a few times that we teetered a little more than what was comfortable. In fact, nobody from out team tipped over as to my knowledge. Steering actually went really well considering how many times we’ve gone kayaking, which is basically never. We used great teamwork skills while having a blast. There were times where we would just float around and let the wind and current take us because our arms were too tired to paddle from all of the workouts and volleyball. For some reason, the kayak that Taylor and I were in, kept floating backwards without fail, even if everyone else around us were being pulled forward. Unfortunately, I do not have any pictures from the day to share with you, but don’t worry I will share tons of other pictures throughout this upcoming volleyball season.

Speaking of volleyball season, preseason actually ended today and we have our first match tomorrow vs. American University (at American 7:30pm) as part of the D.C. Challenge Tournament. And on Saturday, we play here at GW (our home openers!) at 11am vs. George Mason and 7pm vs Georgetown! If you are in the area and need something to do, PLEASE come and support us! We are trying to pack the gym on Saturday night for our match against Georgetown and once again claim our title as the best team in the D.C. area! Here is the Facebook event if you are interested and want more details:
GW Volleyball vs. Georgetown

For further info on the team, here is an article talking about our upcoming season:GW Volleyball Season Begins Friday With DC Challenge . We have been working extremely hard in the gym and I am excited for the season to begin! Go Colonials!

Feel free to email me with any questions! cbgraf@gwmail.gwu.edu

-Christie

The Goodbye Part.

To my dearly beloved GDub community,

Well, don't I have to start out with a massive apology?! I have left you all completely factoid-less for months now! I greatly apologize for my absence, but I got myself VERY caught up in the GW world and then trying to extricate myself from it for the summer. The good news? Since I've been a bit AWOL, there are tons of things I can write to you all about, so PLEASE keep checking back - the updates will be frequent here on out (seriously, though)!

I write to you now from my childhood bedroom on my last night at home before I'm back to the district. For anyone who knows me, it will come as no surprise that I am feeling disgustingly sentimental, as I always am at pivotal moments such as these. I feel like all of it should be eerily familiar, with the echoes of one year ago in the same rushed-hugs, spit-up goodbyes, loaded cars and tears on the driveway. But somehow, I feel not as if I am just going back to college once again, but that I am going home.

This is what I can tell you, and it is probably the best advice I can give anyone, as I'm sure you read this amidst breaks from stuffing your minivans or stocking the fridge in your dorm room. It is more important than talking to you about admissions or my summer job or how to get involved on campus. College is the first brand new world you get, and you never get to relive stepping into it twice. I won't give the "appreciate it, it goes too fast" sermon, as I know every friend, relative and estranged middle school friends' parents have told you. But truly, it is all very fleeting and this is the moment where you get to create your own new world. It's terrifying, it makes your stomach curl, makes you feel bile in your throat, but it is exhilarating and pulsing and like ripping off old skin. There is no other freshman year, and you can take that truth from me.

But, I digress - I do not aim to depress. Yes, you only get to be a freshman once, and while I encourage with all of my being that you live it the way you always wanted to live your old life, there is something to look forward to: being a sophomore. And I mean that. Because here I am, after a year that changed my life, and I truly feel like I am going home. I have a best friend as a roommate and a beautiful dorm-apartment to make my own, I live in the epicenter of Foggy Bottom like I had daydreamed of all through my freshman year, I am on the board of the theatre company that welcomed me with open arms, I have rehearsals this weekend and reunions with my college friends at night, I have an interview Monday for my dream internship along with my first slew of classes and gym routine, all amongst going back to talking to you all from behind my computer screen or walking backwards through campus. I have made for myself the most inexplicably perfected brand new world, and the only thing better than building it is now coming home to it.

As always, I am here, new freshmen, prospective ones as well, or the rest of the GDub community, so I give you my ears: write me at gmdepalo@gwmail.gwu.edu. To all the prospectives-turned-colonials I will be welcoming onto campus this weekend, we are so happy you've joined us.

Thank you GW for all I have gotten.

See you around campus,
Gina Michele

¡Hola de Arica, Chile!

Hi everyone! I just arrived on Tuesday in Arica, Chile. I flew from Portland to Los Angeles, and then to Santiago (the capital of Chile) with a stop in Lima, Peru. Then I continued back north to Arica, where I am now. My study abroad program is just starting with an orientation to the city, the work, the research, and so we can get to know each other!

As a review for those who haven't been reading along, I'm doing a study abroad program through SIT (School of International Training). It is a research based study abroad, where we take classes until mid October and then have all of November to complete an independent research project. We are living in homestays starting on Saturday but get to travel to any part of the country for our independent study project in November. My program is based on health, indigenous traditional medicine, and community empowerment.

So far, the trip has gone really well! It is quite a shock to have to speak spanish all the time. We didn't even get an introduction in english- we just jumped right in conversing and practicing and talking about the program! Today, we finally got out of the hotel complex we've been staying in for orientation and took a little tour of the town in a bus marked "turista.." awesome, everyone knew we were "gringas" (white girls) anyways!!

While I haven't had the time to upload any photos yet, here is what Arica looks like (thanks google!) and hopefully I can show you guys some of my own photos soon!

A street downtown

View of downtown

"El Morro"- the hill Arica used to defend itself in the War of the Pacific against Peru

As always, email me! I'm only a continent away :) marisaw@gwmail.gwu.edu
- Marisa

Earthquake....in D.C?.......

I know I said my next post would be all about volleyball preseason and would be posted on Wednesday, but today was quite a peculiar day. As you may have heard, the entire east coast, but mainly the D.C. metro area, experienced a 5.9 earthquake earlier this afternoon. It has been the only thing people have been talking about since it happened. I was in the middle of my dorm room on the phone with my mom and all of a sudden everything started shaking. At first I thought it was someone running/ thudding down the hall or dropping a couch but then it kept going. And then I looked outside and the fence and street lights right outside my room were moving like flimsy trees in the wind. The entire time I was thinking “um…..what is that?......that can’t be an earthquake. D.C. doesn’t have earthquakes….I think…” Obviously it was an earthquake.


Right as it happened my roommates and I were on our way out to meet the rest of our team for our team lunch at Chop’t. Everyone was animatedly talking about where they were when it occurred, with most people either being in the athletic training room in the basement of the Smith Center or in the elevator of Madison, a freshman dorm (where I lived freshman year as well). The walk to lunch took longer than usual because every building in the area had been evacuated and were cluttering the sidewalks, talking on their phones (which by the way jammed the cell phone service and I could not make any calls for quite a while). Apparently the federal government closed down and all employees were sent home, which also created a huge traffic jam. When we got back to our room, the earthquake was all over the news. I heard that the National Cathedral here in D.C. endured structural damage as well as a few others, but I haven’t really heard too much as of yet. Once my phone started working, I got lots of texts asking if I was okay. As you can tell, today was exciting in quite an odd way. I am sure you will see coverage on the earthquake at some point. My grandmother said she heard about it on the news back home in Wisconsin soon after it happened. Hopefully tomorrow won’t be as eventful, but it seems to me that tons of big things have happened in D.C. since I began school at GW (ex. snowpocalypse 2010 and Osama bin Laden’s death to name two), which makes this a very exciting place to be.

Feel free to email me with any questions! cbgraf@gwmail.gwu.edu

-Christie

My Summer in a Nutshell....a Very, Very Long Nutshell...

Hello all! I’m back to blogging! Sorry about my absence, summer really got away from me. Before I knew it, it was August and I was packing up all of my stuff to move back to D.C. I actually have been back on the GW campus for 12 days already for volleyball preseason. But, before I get into all of that, I’ll recap my summer for you! My apologies in advance for a super duper long post. My summer was fairly laid back, yet fun and jam packed at times. I attended Milwaukee Brewer baseball games, spent a few weekends up in Wisconsin Dells, worked as a cashier, and of courses spent time with friends and family as often as possible.

Probably, the most interesting thing I did this summer though was going to more concerts than any person should ever go to in such a short span of time. Like very year, I celebrated summer by attending Summerfest, which is the world’s largest musical festival that is held in Milwaukee on the waterfront of Lake Michigan. Summerfest runs for about 9 days and I went to 7 of them. So, for a sold week straight, my daily schedule was wake up at 6am, work from 7am-3pm, workout for volleyball, go home, get ready, and head down to the lake front at about 6-7pm for either a 7:30 or 10pm concert, make the 15 minute drive home that actually took well over an hour because of all the traffic leaving Summerfest, get home and go to bed by 1am-ish, and wake up and do it all over again the next day. It was an extremely busy and fun week, but truly exhausting. My Summerfest concert total ended up being 14 concerts in 7 days; all for only $140. I saw Britney Spears, Nicki Minaj, Katy Perry, Sugarland, Maroon 5, Third Eye Blind, Gaelic Storm, O.A.R., Goo Goo Dolls, BoDeans, Michelle Branch, Dropkick Murphys, Styx, and Sara Bareilles. However, believe it or not, those are not the only concerts I saw over the summer! I also saw Journey, Foreigner, and Night Ranger in concert. Like I said, I went to more concerts than any person should ever go to, but they were all awesome. However, if I had to choose favorites, I would say that the Sugarland and Katy Perry concerts were the best of the bunch. Here are some pictures and video from my Summerfest extravaganza (I did not film this video, my seats were not quite this good; if you want to watch more, every song from the concert is on youtube, just follow the links http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7P7JwaLRToM).

Believe it or not, during Summerfest week, I took the day off of work and played in an all day grass volleyball tournament. It was exhausting, as we played 6 matches between 8am and 5pm in the hot summer sun. We did well and I got to see and play with one of my GW volleyball teammates who also lives in Wisconsin! Then, right after we finished playing, we drove back to Milwaukee, got ready and went to the Britney Spears and Nicki Minaj concert.

my teammates for the day (and my GW teammate is on the left!)

Needless to say, I was dead tired by the end of the day. Well, that was my summer in a nutshell. Sorry again about the long post, but I wanted to catch all of you up! I’m off to bed now so I can be well rested for another day of volleyball preseason! Look for my next post soon (probably Wednesday) and it will be all about my return to campus and the beginning of volleyball season!

Feel free to email me with any questions! cbgraf@gwmail.gwu.edu

-Christie

Fall 2011 Schedule

I think I already posted my schedule, and I probably said then that I wouldn't have any changes.  But as per usual, I made a last minute schedule change that I couldn't be more excited about!  Sometimes you just hit gold and you can't go back, ya know?

So here's my absolute final fall course list.  Really, this time.  I swear.  No going back after this:

CLAS 2105-10 --- Modern Iran: Media & Culture
HIST 3001-13 --- History of Modern Iran
REL 3175-10 --- Zoroastrianism
REL 3990-11 --- Shi'ite Islam
REL 5770-80 --- Islamic Civilization & the West
(and 2 exercise classes I may change around for better sections: Yoga and Self Defense & Safety Skills)


Sense a pattern?  Yeah, I'm going HARD on Persian stuff this semester.  I actually have enough courses to have an Iran minor, but we don't really offer that... not sure it'd be that popular.  But I am finishing the requirements for my religion minor!  Woot!


I also have room for my internship 3 days a week.  But more on that later!


Til then, email me with questions and the like: shireens@gwmail.gwu.edu


~~~Shireen

REL 3175 - 10

How I scored my summer internships

Hi guys,

I had a question awhile ago about how I was able to score two different internships in a "smaller" town. While New York and Washington, DC have a wealth of opportunities, it's hard sometimes to come home and find things that will put you on the same level as other people who are able to afford housing for the summer in the big cities!

For my position at Mercy Corps, I simply did a lot of research into while nonprofits were around in Portland. Luckily enough, they do offer internships through their website and so I was able to look at the postings that way. I made sure to include relevant information as to previous jobs, volunteer experiences, and academic interests in order to show the staff at Mercy Corps how interested I was and to show them how perfect this position really was for me. I applied in February and was interviewed in mid March. I received notification that I got the internship late March and I started in mid May. Now, mid August, I am wrapping up my work here.

 It's a little bit of a different story for my internship in Tuberculosis Control at the Oregon Health Authority. The Oregon Department of Human Services just split from the Public Health Division, so while my position technically would fall under the Oregon DHS, it now is categorized differently. There were no listings I encountered when looking up the DHS, so I set about finding a big list of names within the Public Health Division. I composed an email about myself again listing relevant information, but particularly highlighting my study abroad in Botswana and how I supervised the Directly Observed Treatment for tuberculosis patients in a clinic there. While I emailed many different people in infectious disease between January and March, I finally received a response back from the Tuberculosis Controller at the end of March expressing her interest in getting me on board. I probably sent 50+ emails (being really annoying to the whole office, I'm sure) until I received a response, and it worked!! I really love the experience that I have had there and am glad I was really adamant about emailing.

Questions? As always, email me at marisaw@gwmail.gwu.edu
- Marisa

Skyping around the world!

Hi everyone!

I have been hole-ing myself up a lot this summer and been out of touch with a lot of my GW friends. Thankfully, most of them have been out of contact (either out of the country or otherwise) so I haven't felt as bad! Yesterday though, I was able to spend the afternoon on Skype catching up with several of them-

• My roommate for the spring semester has already started her study abroad program in Buenos Aires, Argentina through the GW study abroad program. She is having a lot of fun exploring the city after her language intensive program in Costa Rica for the summer which she thinks definitely helped her be prepared! We skyped from her homestay apartment in Buenos Aires.
• My roommate from last year also participated in the Costa Rica program for the summer and now is doing research in Costa Rica (flying solo!) until her semester program starts up in San Jose. She is talking to real deal people and getting really good information for her research which is exciting. We skyped from her hostel in San Jose where she was repeatedly interrupted by some woman who wanted to sleep in the bed she was sitting in.. weird.
• My boyfriend is in Fiji leading a group of 11 high schoolers on a summer program, which is mostly scuba diving, community service, and cultural studies. I for one am really jealous and it seems like they are having an awesome time. He had to hike up to the top of a hill to get reception to call me.
• My friend from Portland was stuck in the Seoul airport because of some typhoons off of the coast. We talked while she was sitting waiting for a new flight assignment. She finally is home though and we hung out last night!

It definitely was exciting to talk to people in South America, the South Pacific, and Asia all in one day! I can't wait until fall semester begins and I'm skyping my friends in foreign countries from Chile.

As always, email me! marisaw@gwmail.gwu.edu
- Marisa

Freshman Recipe Book: Pasta for one!

And now for another addition of the Freshman Recipe Book! This one's a favorite, so enjoy!


What you'll need:


2-3 cups water (3 if you're doing 3 oz. pasta)
2-3 oz. small pasta, like elbows, penne, ziti, or mini rigatoni

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon vegetable oil

1-1/2 quart microwaveable bowl or pot (NO METAL!)


Instructions:


Pour water into your pot, and cook for 2-1/2 minutes, or until the water boils.  Be careful!  Add salt and oil to your water, and stir.  The oil will help the pasta not to stick.


Pour your pasta into the bowl, and stir, separating any pieces that clumped together.  Microwave the pasta for 12 minutes on 50% or low power, if you can change the settings, until the water is absorbed.  


Top with your favorite sauce!  Pesto is a personal affinity of mine, but any store bought red sauce does the trick as well, or even butter, garlic, and cheese if you're into that.  But mix it up!  


Try an easy carbonara:  crack an egg over the hot pasta (you heard right, raw egg over the pasta!  the heat of the pasta cooks it enough to make it safe to eat).  Add 1/4 cup parmigiano or pecorino cheese and some prosciutto or already-cooked bacon pieces.  If you like your carbonara a little creamier, add a splash of milk or cream for that consistency.


I'm telling you, that Penne alla Carbonara is tried and true.  Give it a try!


As always, shoot me an email at: shireens@gwmail.gwu.edu


~~~Shireen