One Week in Brussels


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January 25th 2009
Published: January 25th 2009
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I made it through my first week!

It may have only been a 4-day work week for us, but it was full of briefings, intense work and celebration. As I had mentioned earlier, Tuesday was my first day. I couldn't even believe it when I walked in and was shown to MY office, fully equipped with my own computer, telephone and satellite TV. When I worked at the campaign headquarters in Chicago, there would have been about 7-8 people working in the amount of space that I now have to work in! So, you can imagine my excitement after realizing this was where I get to work for the next 3 months!

On Tuesday, being that it was Inauguration day, the U.S. Mission to the EU held a reception for other Ambassadors, European Union community members and journalists. Being the intern that I am, I spent most of the time checking them all in. After all the work I'd done over the past two years to ensure Barack Obama would be inaugurated as our next president, I was rather distracted checking Ambassadors into a cocktail party as the oath was being administered to him and he was giving his speech. Not quite the moment I had been expecting. Though, in the end, considering where I am and what I'm doing, it's not a bad trade-off. And we definitely did our share of celebrating afterwards.

The rest of the week was spent getting acclimated to Brussels, the State Department and the work I will be doing. Basically, I get to watch the news and read newspapers all morning and then work on different projects in the late afternoon. Sounds great doesn't it?! It's really quite a bit more intense than that, but that's pretty much what I do everyday. Then, I help to compile a report of media analysis of what is being said and reported and where it's all coming from to send to lots of really important people in D.C. All within a very strict time crunch. It's actually rather stressful and intense, but a lot of fun and really makes the day go by very quickly.

This weekend some of my roommate's friends who are studying abroad in London came to visit us. We showed them all over the city and took them out to a club last night. We also had all of the other interns over to our apartment last night and cooked dinner for everyone. This weekend was a lot of fun, but we spent most of today just resting, cleaning and doing laundry. I'm actually excited that tomorrow's Monday and I get to go back to work.

With two weekends in Brussels down, Rachel and I have started thinking about other places in Europe we want to visit. Next weekend we are going to Paris and are staying in a hostel in my favorite place in the whole city, Montmarte. We also booked tickets to Amsterdam for Valentine's Day weekend since we get a 3 day weekend that week. I can't wait!

I hope everyone has a good week!

(Sorry for no pictures with this post! I've been too busy working to take too many pictures!)

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