From Jan 10 (Saturday)  to Jan 20 (Tuesday), 2009 I participated in one of the Washington Center seminars. The seminar's name was Campaign 2008; The Presidential Inauguration.

Before I went there I had no idea what was coming. I drove there with my teacher and another student and the first thing we had to do was to pick up our room keys.

I shared a room with five other students from my group. The 600 participants of the seminar were divided into smaller group under the responsibility of a teacher. My group contained of ten people from Tennessee and Mikronesia.

We had six days of seminars. Every day was alike, first we were in a auditorium from 8:30 am to 12:30 am listening to various speakers. After that we had lunch and small group meetings. I think the idea was that we were supposed to discuss the speakers and what they talked about. Which we did but due to the lack of some place to be, we struggled sometimes to find somewhere to sit.

The afternoon looked a little bit different depending on which day it was.
On Sunday we ha a three hour bustour.
On Monday we had the evening free.
On Tuesday we had a reception.
On Wednsday we had a tour of the Capitol.
On Thursday we had An evening with Mark Russell.
On Friday we met with the Washington Vote.


Friday was the last day of seminars and on Saturday we went to the Newseum and then it was just to wait for the inaguration.

During the seminar we were supposed to write a journal for every day and then a final essay. The essay should have the same name as the book we recived and red throughout the seminar, A memo to the President by Michael A. Genovese.

I will in this category post all my journals and the final essay. I will have a complementary category, Washington Center - Private Thoughts, where I will post things I scrabbled down durin the seminar that are more general thoughts I have that wouldn't fit in the journals.