Informations

Well, I almost skipped blogging tonight because I need to work on my assignment for school, but I figured I’d forget today by tomorrow night.

Today, since its Tuesday, was a double day with morning at Heritage and afternoon at State. This morning was not particularly eventful. I had to go get “database training” for this massive database they use so I can help Steve Johnson with it. I was skeptical, of course, that I really needed to learn anything I couldn’t figure out myself. It is pretty expansive (20 million contacts…with everything down to their children’s names on these people!) which makes sense on why Heritage does such a great job fundraisin… I heard they have like 200,000 donors annually giving something like 60 million or more/yr. Pretty overwhelming figures. Anyways, the “training session” which was one-on-one turned into a conversation between me and the IT guy, who is from India, came to the states for his education at UF when he was 21, 28 now and wants to go back but is trying to decide how to make a true contribution etc… And talk his girlfriend (relationship seemed really serious) who is also Indian but raised in the US, into going back… Anyways, very interesting life story so we talked about India and debated UF football and Fl State school’s academics etc… After 50 minutes of talking, he showed me things about the database for 10 minutes and that was that =) Then we had an intern lunch with a briefing about the Leadership Inst. And that was a good time to chat with other interns. A couple of girls asked me to help them start a weekly morning Bible study there at Heritage so that should be good…

By the time I got to State I was rather crushed with things to do. Lots more calls on Saudi Arabia. Got completely bashed by this libertarian psycho who refused to give any information he knew about SA or Islam because he was so concerned the US govnt might try to DO something to keep Muslims from freely killing non-Muslims which they have a right to do under his concept of religious freedom. I tried to convince him this is about the US Govnts dealings with the SA Govnt and not about individual Muslims but he was very firm that the SA Govnt should be freely permitted to send people and materials to the US to incite people to kill non-xians if they chose because that was true Islam. This guy, btw, was a prof at NYU and NOT a Muslim. He also tried to convince me that the Vatican was equally guilty because they “export” the Bible and the Old Test is just as violent. When I pointed out the Old Test doesn’t say it is every Jew (or xians) responsibility to kill unbelievers, he wanted to bring up the Papal bulls during the time of the crusades. I just laughed at him, and once again pointed out that the Vatican, nor any other govnt, affirms those as valid commands for today. I don’t even know of any cult that does! He didn’t really have much of a response to that and I kept trying to bring the subject off of Islam itself and back to the SA Govnt but that was unsuccessful cause he thought if he convinced me he could change US policy I guess. Anyways, that was a pointless call. Others were much better. I also keep getting these misc. projects from the Ambassador that are “secret” because they’re related to Christianity and not very related to religious freedom (just info he needs…in this case for his mtg with Collin Powell Thursday) so he doesn’t want me to tell even other people in the office what I’m doing for him… It’s kinda strange cause he gives me these projects cause I’m a Christian and he trusts me more than because I’m the intern there or whatever… but it’s not a big deal I just wish he gave me a little more time on them.

I’ve been really homesick today missing Careathon. It sounds silly cause it’s like the only place I could be and be more stressed and hectic than I am here right now but I still miss being in the center of everything. I hate that I can’t even hear it at work cause of computer probs and that means I get to hear nada of the live portions including Thursday night and the wrapup. I’m just trying not to think about it cause it makes me so sad.

I’ve also really been missing Tookie all week. I’m sad she’s not coming with everyone else next week to visit. I know it’s not practical because Anna’s still so little but I really want to see her anyway. Oh well…I guess I can’t keep her at work with me =(

Well, gotta get some work done. Write me please.