T minus 14 days!

My trip to Cyprus is so soon! I'm so incredibly excited and starting to get anxious. I'm focusing my research paper on education in Cyprus so I have to do tons of research before I get there so I am able to ask the right questions and can get as much out of my interviews in the field as possible. I've already contacted a few people in Cyprus (!) who I'm going to have some one on one interviews with.

I honestly don't remember all of the things I've done since the last time I posted a real update here so I'll just mention a couple of things that have been happening.

I haven't been doing any tourist-y sightseeing things at all. I have been to 2 DC eateries that I had been planning on going to while here, Ben's Chili Bowl and Busboys and Poets. Both restaurants have connections to history and delicious food. Ben's Chili Bowl has been around for many, many years and usually has lines out the door. The walls of the restaurant are filled with famous people who have enjoyed the chili (beef or veggie!) and there are signs proclaiming that the Obama family and Bill Crosby both get to eat for free. Busboys and Poets is named in honor of Langston Hughes and is a bookstore, restaurant and fair trade market. I'm pretty sure I had the best veggie burger of my life there.

This past week for class, we visited the Embassies of Cyprus, Greece and Turkey.

 

At the Embassy of Cyprus, we met with the actual Ambassador which was pretty exciting. He told us all about the history of Cyprus according to the Republic of Cyprus (I just realized that I don't think I've said much about the conflict in Cyprus on here yet so I'll explain it in a later post). He also told us about lots of places in Cyprus that we need to go to and got us all very excited for our trip.

 

The next day, we went to the Embassy of Greece where we spoke with a woman who is a political adviser to the Ambassador. There, we learned more about some of the other things that continue to strain relations between Greece and Turkey.

Then, on Friday, we went to the Embassy of Turkey which was a brand new, very swanky building with some of the prettiest light fixtures I've ever seen. There, we spoke with 1 political adviser and 1 spokesperson. The embassies of Cyprus and Greece were both very diplomatic and didn't really tell us much that we didn't already know. The two guys at the Turkish embassy seemed to actually treat us like intelligent human beings and spoke somewhat openly with us (as much as any diplomat could). The political adviser is currently studying International Conflict and Resolution at George Mason University, a program that my professor here used to teach at. Because of this, we had a common language and lens to look at the Cyprus issue through. The spokesperson was actually a Turkish Cypriot, who grew up in Cyprus and is actually the grandson of the man who was the leader of the Turkish Cypriot community on the island from 1974-2003.

My classmates and a political adviser to the Turkish Ambassador

On our way back from the Turkish Embassy, we found this! And I look like a crazy person in my excitement.

This week is Spring Break at American University so the dorms are pretty empty. This past weekend I went out to celebrate a friend's birthday and learned how to say happy birthday in Norwegian (gratulerer med dagen!). Yesterday and today I went to my internship at ILRF. This has been a pretty exciting week in the office- the new Executive Director is really starting her work, the invitiations for the organization's big fundraising event just went out and today, Killian from the Not For Sale Campaign was in the office to meet with a staff member at ILRF whose office I work in. It was a good surprise to see a familiar face from San Francisco. Not For Sale and ILRF have a joint project, Free2Work. This week also saw the launch of The CNN Freedom Project, an initiative by the media organization to bring attention to modern day slavery.


I know that the work I'm drawn to doing leads to me asking you lovely family and friends for help every once in a while. This time, I want you all to enter a contest! ILRF and its partners at the "Raise the Bar, Hershey!" campaign are hosting a Brand Jamming Contest until March 24th. So create a mock tagline, print ad or commercial to encourage Hershey to raise the bar for responsible cocoa sourcing! While come chocolate companies have taken steps to rid their supply chains of forced and child labor, Hershey's is lagging behind its competitors.

Tomorrow I'm heading to Williamsburg, VA to visit with my Dad and broski for the rest of Spring Break (and to work on my research paper). I'm excited to see them and get out of this dorm!

Hope everyone is doing well, I'll have free time for the rest of the week and will welcome distractions from my research so give me a call this week, I'd love to hear from everyone :)