Settled in

I guess it's been a few weeks since I've written anything. Things have been a bit hectic with getting settled with all the readings, joining groups, meeting new friends, and of course partying. We only have class once a week, so there is plenty of time in between to do the work, but the lectures and seminars can be intense, so it's usually vital that you know what the readings covered. This depends on the class of course, as a recent lecture for Political Strategy had nothing to do with what we read, so we were all rather confused.

I've found myself to be quite interested in what I've been learning, which is a departure from what I remember undergrad to be, especially the first two years. Back then, I had no goals, so I was basically just going through the motions, not really caring what the outcome was. My view changed somewhat the last two years, but my mistakes at the beginning have certainly caused me problems since then, making it more difficult to get internships and scholarships. But now that I'm here, I finally have the motivation that I should have had in undergrad.

On that note, I ran to be Vice President of our Student Council (JCR), which is sort of out of character for me. Nonetheless, I'm trying to get out there more, add new experiences to my resume and expand my horizons (as cheesy as that sounds). So, out of a three way race, I managed to win, though I have no idea by how much. I managed to bribe a few friends with promises of chocolate, but the rest voted for me on their own (I'm kidding of course, vote buying is a horrible thing to do and is never ever done in established democracies...).

I don't know exactly what my duties are, but I do have ideas of things that I want to change and expand upon. The way it works right now, those students starting in September elect a President, as well as several other posts, and those starting in January (such as myself) elect a Vice President and the remaining slots. After thinking about it, I feel this disenfranchises the January students, who never get the opportunity to be in charge. I've discussed it with other people, and I'm contemplating trying to get the constitution changed so that the Vice President would become President in September and the September students would then elect a VP. Then, in January, he/she would become the President and the incoming January students would elect a VP, thereby giving each person a semester at both VP and President. It also eliminates the problem of tossing a newly elected President into the deep end in the first weeks for the September group. Anyways, pretty boring stuff, as is the majority of everyday politics.

A couple weeks ago a few of us spent a Saturday in Brugge, an old port town about an hour train ride away from Brussels. It used to be a major import town, due to it being close to the sea and the many canals running through town. Unfortunately, the canals eventually filled up with silt and, being unable to clean them out, the town eventually fell into disrepair, becoming somewhat of a ghost town. These days, it's one of the most popular tourist destinations in Belgium, due to it's medieval architecture (really only about 50 years old) and it's easy going, romantic nature. It's also home to some of the best beer and chocolate in the world, which is certainly not a thing to miss.

So far that's the only traveling I've had the opportunity to do, but we've been out to dinner several times and gathered in numerous bars throughout the city. I've met a good group of people, and we all get along quite well, so it's always fun going out with them. Last Saturday, we were out at one of the more famous bars in Brussels, Cafe Belge, for a few drinks. We didn't stay out late, leaving around 1am. As I walked home, intent on donning my pj's and possibly watching a movie, I got a call from my roommate. He was picking up some people to go out to a club and wanted to know if I wanted to come. I guess I wasn't digging the movie idea too much because I said yes with little hesitation. We were headed to a place called Bulex, which is an old brick school that hosts a party on the first Saturday of every month (no word on what it is for the other 29 days of the month). We drove over there, and after spending 20min. finding parking, headed to the school. Once we got there, we saw a swarm of people, all trying to get inside. At this point, it was past 2am, and we figured it would be about an hour before we got inside, so we moved to plan B. Another club was open downtown and a couple other friends were there celebrating a birthday, so it seemed a logical choice. Now, I'm not one to find clubbing/dancing to be the best fun I've had, but this place was actually pretty cool. It was classic Euro dance music, loud bass, and lots of 20somethings partying. Somehow, through a mixture of red bull and vodka, we stayed until 6am. Needless to say, not much was accomplished the next day, but it was worth it.

That just about brings us up to today, though this evening starts another weekend that will no doubt provide it's own stories.

A new life begins...

Before I say anything else, it's impossible to write anything without mentioning the inauguration of Barack Obama on January 20th. I've had goosebumps numerous times during the long campaign, usually during major speeches such as his acceptance speech and of course the inauguration speech. While I know that it's a major event that we have elected the first black person to the Office of President (and more importantly the first non-white male person, as there was also a female and an Hispanic running), it didn't play a large role in my voting for him. I voted for him because it seems that there is an extraordinary opportunity for many things in the country to be changed. We have an antiquated healthcare system, dilapidated schools, a foreign policy that can't be trusted by any nation in the world and we were at the center of a global financial meltdown. While I'm not saying I'm happy with the situation we are in, it does provide an opportunity along the lines of the New Deal era. With a massive investment of funds to modernize infrastructure as well as schools and hospitals and invest in the next future of energies, we can renew the United States as a global force for good, instead of a global force that other countries see as reckless and impulsive.

I spent inauguration day (evening here) at the Hilton Hotel in downtown Brussels where the Belgium chapter of Democrats Abroad was hosting an inauguration party. Expats from the US as well as many other countries filed in to watch this historic event. I spent the entire time glued to the giant screen, absorbing everything about this day that will forever be remembered. Millions of people crammed onto the mall (and many more of you with Purple tickets stuck in tunnels and on streets), and who knows how many hundreds of millions, if not a billion, people watching it on TV across the world. We don't really notice it as much in the US, but the President of the United States is someone who is known worldwide, and is watched very carefully. You'd be hard pressed to find a person that can name the head of many other highly developed, industrialized nations like Russia, UK, France, Germany or Italy; yet the large majority of citizens in those countries would have no trouble naming our leader. It really gives me a striking idea of what kind of influence the United States has and that we can't afford to waste that influence, like we have for the past eight years, on policies that only lead to further conflict and suffering worldwide. But one only needs to look at the financial crisis to see that our influence is not just limited to military power, it is financial and cultural as well. What we do with the opportunity that our founders afforded to us over 200 years ago well and truly affects the rest of the world. It is our duty and moral obligation to not cause situations that threaten the rest of the world.

President Obama (so weird to say that) has the potential and capability to do this, but as he specifically pointed out in his inaugural address, he is only one person, but there are 300 million people in the US that need to get involved on their own. We can't keep living a live of handouts and expect that everything will be handed to us. It's time to take responsibility, as he said, and do our part to once more make this country a symbol of freedom and democracy, one that other countries seek to emulate, rather than of secrecy and executive hubris.

I've been thinking about all that for a while, so I finally took the time to write it out. I've been dragging my on writing this second installment, as every time I get started, I never finish and then I go back and delete everything that I had written before. Here in Brussels, we have finished the first week of classes, which really just consisted of overviews of what would be discussed. I had originally made a list of eight classes that I was interested in, although we only have room to take three of them. I also had the internal debate on whether to stick with my original plan of getting an MA in International Relations or to move onto a different track and take an LLM in International Law with International Relations. After discussions with several people, including former professors, I decided to stick with International Relations, and should I have an inkling to subject myself to the horrors of law later in life, I can still do that.

So, after attending five different classes, I settled on a class on Political Strategy, which includes military as well as electoral strategy; Foreign Policy Analysis, which is a must for any student of International Relations; and a course on Security and Liberties. I find this course perhaps the most interesting, as it considers the delicate balance that countries, specifically liberal democracies, must find between protecting their citizens and preserving their liberties. Obviously the last eight years have heavily tilted to the side of security (though if we're actually more secure now or if it's just a major inconvenience is difficult to tell) at the expense of seriously compromising our civil liberties, as well as those from around the world (Geneva Conventions anyone?).

I've also had the opportunity to meet many of my classmates, who hail from all over the world. Thinking of just a few people, we have Canada, Australia, Azerbaijan, Greece, Portugal, Belgium, Germany, Norway and Kenya represented. And those are only the people that I've spent time with. As we spend more time together studying, partying and traveling, the ideals that I have become accustomed to in the US will come in to sharper focus as they contrast with those of people from other countries and cultures. It should make for an interesting time.

As I've begun to think about the summer, next fall, next year, ideas of travel destinations have popped up. Possibly Brugge this weekend, Greece in February, Switzerland/France for the summer and Israel/Palestine to do research on my dissertation next January. It's a long list and depends on many factors for them to work, but with my mind having been firmly set on succeeding here for a long time, I'm not going to let the opportunity slip by.

As a closing note, a good friend of mine from High School, Mia, is getting married next June in Cancun, so not only will it be a great wedding for her, I'll be celebrating having finished my MA and finally moving into the "real world." 

That's it for now, until next time...

First post from Brussels and a bit of history as to how I ended up here.

I've never had a blog before, or even really thought about starting one. But I figured an adventure in Europe for many months, away from friends and family, would be a good opportunity to start one. As a disclaimer, I apologize if any of you find my postings boring and drab, it's more of a way for me to sort out what's going on in my life then to entertain all you folks back home.

I always thought that after undergrad I'd be done with school, start a career and go from there. It wasn't until two weeks from graduation that I thought a Masters might in fact be a good idea. Luckily I knew going right after undergrad wasn't what I wanted, I figured maybe two or three years later. Well, four and a half years later, I'm finally here. Not that I mind. I was originally supposed to go in the fall of 2007, but as I was preparing everything the summer before, I got a call from a presidential campaign in Iowa, that of New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, to go be a field organizer in Des Moines. After initially declining on the basis that I was going to school, I called back a few days later saying that I was interested in learning more about it. I figured that the opportunity to gain experience and meet many people involved in politics was too good of an opportunity to pass up.

It was for the better. I didn't have the large portion of my visa requirements ready, almost nothing in savings and had not yet applied for student loans. So, I said goodbye to DC and headed out to Des Moines, Iowa to start a new adventure. It was one of the best decisions that I have made. Not only did I learn a lot, but I met many new people, some of whom I count as my very best friends (PK, Bluto, that's for you). For those of you who follow politics, you'll know that the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3rd 2008 did not turn out the way we on the Richardson campaign had hoped. Ultimately the future President, one Mr. Barack Obama, won a resounding victory in the first contest of what was to become the longest primary campaign in history. Now, I would like to point out that our campaign did have a role in Obama winning.

It became clear to us that we had little to no chance of securing very many delegates during the caucuses, so the upper leadership instructed us of what our strategy was to be for that evening. While our first priority was to get as many delegates for Richardson as possible, we were to push our supporters to move to the Obama camp if we were not viable. Whether this was designed to boost Obama so that we could separate him and hopefully defeat him later, as we were told, or if it was a prearranged agreement between the two camps to give Obama a boost for the following primaries, I don't know. However, Huffington Post had an article the day before the caucus that described our strategy in detail, obviously obtained from someone in the know, so it wasn't going to be a surprise. Nonetheless, we did in fact succeed in moving supporters to Obama when our own attempts to get delegates failed. I know this has nothing to do with going to grad school in Brussels, but it was the culmination of 4 months in Iowa and a major part of one of, if not the most exciting campaign in US politics.

Needless to say, after a disappointing result for us in Iowa, we were all out of jobs. Luckily, based on the people I met in Iowa, I managed to get a meager job as a committee attendant for the month long session of the New Mexico Legislature. After that, I started working as an Executive Assistant at the New Mexico Regulation and Licensing Department. Worst. Job. Ever. Nothing like being a glorified secretary to boost your resume. Knowing that I was going to school in January, I figured I could wait it out for 10 months. But with each passing day, I became more and more bored and frustrated with what I was doing.

Thankfully, a number of coworkers from the Richardson campaign were joining a congressional primary race in Boulder, CO and they asked me to join them. Having only started my job a couple months before, I felt bad about leaving so soon. But as the lure of joining my friends on another campaign outweighed my bad feelings, I was soon driving the six hours up I-25 to join them.

The campaign for Jared Polis was quite different from the Richardson campaign. For one, we actually had money to spend, albeit mostly from the candidates one coffers. We also had a comparatively big staff, and one that knew what they were doing, at least on the field and press staff side of things. When we all arrived, there ended up being 14 former Richardson staffers working for Polis, we were down by 20+/- points in polls, but we ended up winning by 4 points, upended the former State Senate President and by all accounts the assumed winner in the months before. This post here is a good interpretation of the effect that our work had on the campaign after all of us joined it. Anyways, Jared Polis is now Representative Jared Polis CO-2 and has already made waves by being appointed to the House Steering, Rules, and Education Committees, so he has the opportunity to be a great member of the house and have a lot of influence. We'll see what happens.

I didn't mean for this to be a long post, but I think a lot of what has happened in the last year and a half has led me to where I am now, although the next part only had one advantage and that was "filling the ol' coffers."

After the primary, I was once again out of a job, though I anticipated it this time and contacted my old boss back in DC at Cafe Milano, in Georgetown, where I had worked before. Luckily I left on good terms and he agreed to hire me again (although I didn't tell him it would only be for four months). Why did I go from working on campaigns to a restaurant? Well, in one word: money. School is not cheap, and I knew that the only way the be able to save the amount that I wanted to for school in January was to work here. Now I love DC, it's a great city, and I liked the majority of the people that I worked with, but restaurant work is the last thing I want to do. Ok, second to last. Executive Assistant is the last thing I want to do. So, I worked through my displeasure with restaurant work, even sneaking in a first trip to Las Vegas where I, amazingly, actually left with more money that I went with. In the end, I nearly achieved my goal and flew back to New Mexico for a few days rest before flying out to Belgium.

I was not looking forward to January 6th. Getting up at 5am to make a 7:45am flight in Albuquerque set the stage for a long long day. After a brief layover in Chicago, I arrived at DC Dulles and a four hour layover. Luckily two friends from the campaign (PK and the Nest) decided to come have dinner with me and keep me occupied in the airport as I awaited my flight. On a side note, Dulles is quite possibly the worst airport in the world. I hope the $2billion that they are spending to "upgrade" it actually makes it worthwhile. My flight took off at 7:55pm and was scheduled to take a little less than seven hours to Dublin, where I had an even longer lay over of five hours before my flight to Brussels.

The first thing that I saw in Brussels was  snow. Apparently more snow than has fallen in the last 12 years to be exact. Perfect timing. I've always had a desire to travel, and have several times gone off by myself to different countries. But this is different. I'm actually living in a different country for a year and a half, not just a couple months or a few weeks. A year and a half. And I signed a lease the day after I got in. If that doesn't mean that I live here, I don't know what will (maybe when I open my bank account tomorrow or find a part time job/internship). My sleep schedule is still screwed up, going to bed at 5am and waking up at 1pm. But orientation starts tomorrow, so I better sort it out soon.

I have two roommates, and we live a short 10 minute walk from campus, so it's very convenient. One roommate, Christina, also will be going the my school (University of Kent, Brussels School of International Studies) and while having been born in Cuba, has lived most of her live in the US, but also spent a year or so of undergrad here in Brussels. The other is Alexandros, a Greek who is going to a different University in Brussels and has lived here for several years. Both know their way around the city and have friends here, so it's nice to be living with people who know the city, so it's not quite so much of a dramatic jump into an unknown city.

That's not to say it's been easy. I go to bed and, in addition to not being able to go to sleep because of jet lag, I think about what I've gotten myself into. Away from friends and family for an extended period of time, working on a Masters degree that will, in large part, be a major factor in what kind of career I end up having after I graduate. I've heaped a lot of pressure on myself to do well, but it's been many years coming, so I think that I am ready to take it on and rise to my own expectations. I have no idea how often I'll post on here, but I'll try and keep up. Now, it's time to go pack my bag for tomorrow.