Back, with a vengeance

Sorry for the delay in between posts- last Monday was the day after Spring Break, and as such, there wasn't so much to be writing about. The excitement of Spring Break came Wednesday through Friday with the arrival and visit of Nick and Steve, my brother and his friend. We had the opportunity to play tourist on Thursday as I gave the grueling 14-mile walking tour of all the monuments, museums, and important buildings DC has to offer. It was tiring but fun, and I really enjoyed having the guys here. Most of the rest Spring Break involved me lying on the couch sick, watching TV or reading.

Along those reading lines, though, I have a recommendation to make of a book I finished during the week. Anyone who doesn't know anything about the story behind Al-Qaeda and 9/11 should read this, but anyone who just is interested in Osama bin Laden and the "Why Do they Hate Us?" mentality would really enjoy it. The book is The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright and it tells the story of Al-Qaeda headmen Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri as well as American government officials like FBI's terrorist hunter John O'Neill, who has a truly amazing and interesting story. Wright won a Pulitzer for the book and rightfully so; it is researched incredibly extensively and is written in a interest-grabbing novel-like format as he tells the stories of the men who would later plan the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil. If you're near a library and aren't reading anything currently, go get it. I've moved on now to the book Cobra II by Michael Gordon and General Bernard Trainor, a very thick account of the planning and mentality behind the Iraq invasion and Donald Rumsfeld- should be an interesting one.

The big news of late, for those I haven't told yet, is my upcoming trip- yes, even more exciting than Israel. Last Wednesday, I got a call from Newhouse's Dean Grassi, who told me that Syracuse was offered a spot on a Middle East Journalism Bootcamp in Cairo, Egypt and Qatar, sponsored by the Carnegie Foundation- and I'm Newhouse's choice for the spot. I'll be going from June 1-19 with 11 other American students and 12 Middle East journalism students- other details are still fuzzy, but suffice it to say I'm about as excited about it as I've been about anything. Israel in May and Egypt/Qatar in June? Should be an amazing summer- hopefully I'll still be able to pull out an internship as well, even if it's with something not media or Middle East-related like Kirsten Gillibrand's office. More details on that is I get the orientation materials.

This last Easter weekend was pretty amazing in DC with Kate here from Holy Cross. It's been a bit of a rough semester for us with MCATs and summer program planning, but seeing here made everything feel a good bit better. We explored the National Institute of Health, the National Zoo, Georgetown, and the Mall at night with the lit-up monuments. I also did a pretty good job on a nice simple dish Saturday night, Fettuccine Alfredo, and we had good dinners out at Lebanese Taverna and the Afghan Grill in the neighborhood- I'd highly recommend both, especially the Taverna, where you get your food in about 5 minutes and it tastes incredible. Get the Schawarma- delicious stuff.

Classes this last week featured a good bit of work, with three memos to work on (just finished the last one) and a midterm in economics, which was fairly simple and I finished quickly. The work should get progressively heavier as we move through the semester and get closer to that final National Security Council presentation- but it still isn't as much work as I'd be doing back at Cuse, so the semester has been easy to enjoy.

Politically, the only comment I've really got is on McCain. I have to say that I've been a little disappointed lately after watching the video to see him speak in Jordan. He made a big mistake in accusing Shiite Iran of training Al Qaeda (Sunni) terrorists- he corrected himself after Sen. Lieberman whispered in his ear, but apparently he's made this mistake before. I feel like many lawmakers and all the candidates would have made the same mistake, but that foreign policy knowledge is supposed to be McCain's advantage over the other two. I definitely still support him, but I'm paying closer attention to what he says on foreign policy matters for sure.

Here's a wish for my brother Tim to feel better- he had a it of a problem diving for a basketball last week and ended up in surgery and on crutches. To help him feel better, I've got a video here for him that I know should cheer him up. Enjoy!