Leaving DC/Leaving U.S.

Today is my last day in DC. With everybody cleared out of the dorms and a lot of my friends gone for the summer (or gone for good), it doesn't feel too much like the end of a chapter. I did see Bob Briggs yesterday, my academic advisor, as I was carrying a huge garbage bag full of running clothes home from AU's campus. He provided the most sentimental moment I've had so far. Pointing to my garbage bag full of shoes and clothes, he said "Wow. That must be sad. End of an era, huh?" Thanks a lot, Bob. Make me feel worse than I already do about retiring. To add to that, Bob says to me, "Well, have a good time in Brussels. I guess I'll never see you again." Real nice of you, Bob.

I will definitely miss Bob, though. He was always available to see me if I was worrying about school or just to shoot the breeze. Bob always loved to talk about track and would follow AU in the papers and on the website, www.aueagles.com. He always pushed me to get my MA and helped steer me through the admissions process and the awful AU bureaucracy. There are a lot of indifferent people at AU, but Bob is not one of them. I encourage anyone thinking about an MA in political science to go see him.

Anyway, I'm out of DC tomorrow morning on the Vamoose Bus. When I get to NY, I'll take a cab to my mom and Ron's house in Astoria. It's being renovated so I'll probably pick up a sledgehammer and bust through a wall for a few hours, and by sledgehammer I mean my karate chop.

I fly out of Kennedy on Tuesday evening and get into Brussels on Wednesday at 11 after a short layover in London. My friend Kyle Taylor, who is really outdoing Magellan at this point, will meet me at the airport and show me his city. (Kyle is working with Youth Venture, helping young people around the world create change, and not al-Qaeda change, good change. Check out his website, here.)

On the 23rd, I'll be travelling to Brugges with my friends from class and Jerry Sheridan, our man on the streets in Brussels. We start our week-long European Public Affairs and Advocacy Institute the next morning, led by Dr. James Thurber. I'm definitely looking forward to that and learning more about the EU and how advocacy differs transatlantically.