- Day Four .

POLITICAL:
Today was a huge day. Department of State, Dupont Circle, Swiss Embassy ? That’s like mom’s dream.
The Department of State was extremely interesting, though the monotone aspect of his presentation weren’t the most captivating. The security in that place was out of this world . Once I was able to look past the tone of his voice, the issues and solutions he was addressing were extremely interesting. Some people asked extremely controversial questions about foreign affairs and thought (as a US representative must), he avoided the answer at times. After the Q&A was over, he said he’d never had questions as well stated and well thought out as ours were. Though the presentations dragged on a bit, and lost some peoples interest, I was captivated the whole time. I was sitting beside a girl from South Africa that scares me, and it was so funny to see the reactions between her and other South Africans as soon as he started taking the credit for the transformation of South Africa in the ‘90’s.
Dupont Circle, amazing .
After lunch we went over to the Swiss Embassy and heard from a representative there. Switzerland is an absolutely beautiful country with so much going for it. If I wanted to be an engineer, that’d be my dream, to live on a beach with palm trees while seeing the snow-capped mountains from my beach chair, while being employed at one of the amazing companies that are in such need for engineers. Regardless, I’d love to visit there. From a political aspect, an industrial aspect, and any other aspect you can think of, the Swiss life is a good life.
Once we finished with the Embassy’s, we went to 4 memorials. The Lincoln Memorial, The Korean War Veterans Memorial, the National World War II Memorial, and the Vietnam Veterans and Women’s Memorial. We started at the World War II Memorial, which was absolutely stunning. The Korean and Vietnam war memorials were a little bit heavy, but they were really nice. Some people were sketching names off of the wall of names, and at the base of the wall, there was a newspaper placed with a message to one of the guys who had passed with a basic “over-coffee conversation” about how things have been and such. I took a photo of it because I was almost in tears. The Lincoln memorial was huge! We didn’t have much time with it because we were running short , but it was nice as well. My camera had died by that point so I’m glad that some of the other girls got a bunch of pictures. I almost cried because the part in Forest Gump when he runs across the water to Jenny, that whole part was under construction, so it was all dried up and torn up! At least I got a picture of that?
After the memorials, we continued back to the hotel for dinner and a 3 hour LGM as preparation for tomorrow’s Peace and Security Simulation. It was long, but the topics were decent. The Peace and Security Simulation is a settlement of land between the Turkish and Greek people of Cyprus from the UN Security Council. We spent a lot of time figuring out what was in the best interest of India, which really didn’t matter because India just cares about the best interests of the U.S.
The evening social was decent, but still they cut it short! We ended up in bed early , but I’m not fully complaining. Sleep sounds so nice right now.