Intern observes peaceful arrests at sit-down anti-war protest

Three’s a crowd has a new meaning. This is the week where everyone and their brother, as the expression goes, are staying with me. Although there certainly isn’t anyone’s brother here- after all this is the Young Women’s Christian Home where men are not allowed above the ground floor. Two of my high school friends are staying with me. I never appreciated how small the room is until the contents of two girls’ suitcases are spilled across the floor.

At first I was told that I wasn’t allowed to have more than one guest at time, which could have been a huge catastrophe, as my friends would have had nowhere to stay. However, this was cleared up and everything worked out just fine.

Probably one of the most eventful things of last week was watching the news everyday all day at work. Maybe it is to make up for a TV deficit, since I don’t watch it at the dorm but I always have MSNBC or some other news channel on and after a week I can already predict what the top stories will be. Inevitably, there will be stories on murders, bank robberies, bad weather, sandwiched between snippets of McCain, Clinton and Obama and 30 seconds of pundits sounding off on the latest Hillary and Obama drama. Sometimes the news will cut into press conferences, but mainly everything is summed up as nicely as possible in 30 seconds.

However, the most eventful thing last week was a sit-down protest in the Hart Senate office building. Members of various anti-war groups decided to make a statement by sitting in the lobby of our office building and refusing to move. As they sat, they sang songs like "Amazing Grace" and "We shall Overcome" and one protestor even played the flute.

Again, I was struck that the most active protesters are all over the age of 45.

Does this speak well or poorly of my generation, which doesn’t seem to have such a loud or maybe antagonist voice, I don’t know. The capitol police came and arrested them one at a time, offering them the chance to move so they would not be arrested. Whenever the police led away the protestors the rest of the group clapped. They clapped the loudest for a very frail elderly woman who was led away by the police without a fuss. Everything went down peacefully and both the protestors and the police were kind as people in that situation could be. Of course, all the Capitol Hill staffers, who don’t get a lot of excitement, stood outside of the office to watch all the drama.

People have even started to ask me at dinner what the latest headlines are, but this all has a downside. I feel a little depressed. There sure are a lot of bad things that happen. I think the moral of the story is that I will take Internet news or newspapers any day.

This week my sister is also coming to visit. As soon as my high school friends leave, she will be flying into the city and staying with me as well. I am taking off half day when she arrives and half day on Friday to tour D.C. with her.

We are going to the State Department, where apparently you can tour the diplomatic reception rooms. It might be a big let down, but I am pretty excited. We are also going to visit a lot of the more offbeat places that most tourists miss.

After her, my parents are coming over mom’s spring break--she is a teacher and therefore gets a break.

It will be nice to be someone’s kid again and get to mooch off my parents for things like meals and admission to museums and all. I feel like I go through money here so fast, but as they say, I guess there is no free lunch.