Thoughts on Thursday…

Well, I would have described it as a relatively uneventful day but since it’ll probably be the only day in my life that I get a phone call saying I’m on Fox News, that would be a pretty high standard for eventful! I guess (mom says) a clip of my meeting Condi Rice this morning was on Brit Hume this evening. Kinda bizarre… not like I left there wondering if I would make the news, since it was a quick meeting and the whole welcome ceremony was very State Dept focused so I didn’t expect it’d even make news. Anyway, if I’d known I was going to be on the news I mighta brushed my hair or something =) Jk…
Anyways, so yeah, I met Dr. Rice this morning and my first response was that her handshake was weaker than I expected from such a strong diplomat. Strange reaction, I know =) So she started her little speech with this: (from transcript)

Thank you. Well,
> this is a little different welcome than the first time that I came to
> work at the State Department. Now, that may surprise some of you, but
> I was, in 1977, an intern in the Bureau of Educational and Cultural
> Affairs. Now, there's a lesson in that: Be
> good to your interns.

The WHOLE rest of the day I was getting comments about how I might be SOS someday…and I think they were being unusually nice to me ;) What’s ironic is that I my natural response is “Oh, no I wouldn’t want to do that” and I have to be careful cause saying that offends people… they, oc, think they question is whether I COULD do it…not whether I WANT to… and to me it’s a s simple as knowing that’s not my calling… and if it were I could but since its not I don’t want it. I come across as snotty saying I don’t want to be SOS or hold any high office… when my attitude is the exact opposite! Kinda ironic.

One more thought on the mtg: the guys who stood behind me while she gave her opening speech were snickering and mocking her the entire time. It was very angering. In her speech she was talking about the long-term vision and mentioned that she got to work in the White House when the USSR fell but she knows the seeds for that were planted by people in the State dept in 1947,48,49. Oc, my thought was that the State Dept had a lot of commie spies back then but I understood her point. the guys behind me were mocking her saying "yeah, it might take 50 YEARS for us to see freedom but its coming"... what a NOW attitude! How selfish to not care if we're fighing for peace for the next generation... it's this attitude that if we're have to pay the price for something we don't get to enjoy its not worth it... Really sad outlook to live for THIS generation...


Umm…so today at work… lots of research and processing papers on Cuba’s religious freedom position. Helped out a fellow staff member who got stuck in traffic by taking notes on the beginning of a mtg on telecommuting until she could get there…that was interested cause a few office directors were so tense they started yelling at eachother. I’m surprised sometimes at the open hostility people will express at the State Dept…over big and little things. I’ve never worked in a non-Christian office so maybe this is normal but it is new to me… Hmmm, well Staff mtg turned into two hour thing but it was interesting. Afternoon was kinda slow…I was super sleepy so research was slow-going. Then we had a mtg with someone from Vietnam’s embassy so I went to go escort him. That was interesting.. we’re negotiating the release of religious prisoners specifically and “political” prisoners in general… I can’t tell specifics (sounds silly but seriously I’ve taken a written and verbal oath so I figure I’m responsible to keep it)… but we’re very happy with progress with Vietnam right now…it’s very exciting. Actually, my dual internships are putting me in kinda a strange situation… I’m privy to lots of classified info on Latin America and I’m also responsible for reporting to my Heritage supervisor on the latest news from Latin America so I have to figure out a way to keep what I know from classified sources and what I know from public sources separate cause it all blends together in my brain—most classified info is NOT so surprising it stands out in my brain… it just blurs together with public news and yet it’d be really bad to do that in my reports to Heritage… strange problem to have…

Well, I think that’s all the random thoughts for the day… I’ve stopped getting emails in the past couple days so write me please!
Martha/marc/marco/#2/me