When I became the RA for the program called “Spanish in the Community” I knew that I would have a relatively easy time in the class that I would have to take. All we do is get new vocabulary and practice talking in Spanish. In this case, both are for people in the intermediate level, and therefore both are completely unnecessary for me. Even though I learn new stuff, like different immigration policies and such, the class has ultimately become a waste of my time and also, most ironically, one of the most time-consuming of all my classes.
One of the reasons is that we have a community service requirement, where we have to serve at least 20 hours and then prepare a project about it. The other reason is that we have multiple conferences we must attend, all of them off campus, for which we must write summaries.
One of these was a trip to D.C. to take part of the opening for the “Latinos Leading in a Global Society” conference, hosted by the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute (CHCI). For this trip, we had to wake up at 5:30am, on a Monday, in order to be in the van by 6. We ended up getting to D.C. at about 8:30 and we were all more than ready for breakfast.
I gotta give it to the people who organized the whole thing. We were all treated like kings (and queens) at the conference. The food was amazing and we had people looking after us all the time and making sure we were comfortable and that we had everything we needed. A lot of important people were also there, and President Obama was even giving a speech the following days.
The Secretary of Education (Arne Duncan) was there.
The Honorable Ciro Rodriguez was there
 
This lady from CNN whose name I can’t remember right now was there…
And, of course, I was there!
Haha!
Anyway…I learned a lot from the D.C. experience and had a great time. Even though it made me miss a whole day of classes (not exactly a good thing when you’re getting into classes for your major) and didn’t get us back to campus until around 9:30pm, I was glad I got to go on my first trip to D.C.
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