Update and Happy 21st birthday, Courtney Walker!

Hello everyone! I'm managing to get an update started while I'm at work - have taken part of my lunch to do a bit of writing.

Sunday night, I secured plane tickets to go to Germany for my holiday at the end of October! One of the other interns, Chelsea, is going there with me. Cousin Kilee lives out there and I will be the first of our family members to visit her. I'm so excited to see her, Jeremiah, Caleb and of course the new baby that everyone else has only seen pictures of! We're leaving from London on the 25th of October and will be staying out there until the 1st of November. Ki is planning a trip into Paris, as it is only about a 3 hour drive from her house. She's pretty excited because she's never been there, and of course, I am ecstatic! I think we're going to try and get a train into Switzerland, as well and hopefully go exploring some of the Nazi history sites. Apparently the German government just released a list of 600,000 names of Jews that were killed in the Holocaust, which is huge for them because they've been trying to write off and tone down the Nazi stuff. It'll be interesting to see what it's like.

So this week has been a bit different than last week. It was the first week that everyone was back from the long recess they'd had. It was great to meet a lot of the Assembly Members that work in the offices in our corridor and also meet the rest of the support staff members that are here.

My projects at the Assembly this week basically involved getting the office sorted out and finishing up on my Child Poverty article and contacts. We're also preparing to launch a website for Alun, so we've been doing a bit of work for that, as well. Today is consisting of mostly filing and trying to get the Child Poverty Day event organised. I'm not quite sure what we're going to do with it yet, but I'm hoping that we get enough interest to make it a success.

I haven't done much of anything exciting this week - mostly just relaxing after last week's craziness. I posted the video on Wednesday of the football game - that was probably the most exciting thing I did this week and unfortunately, Cardiff didn't win the game. But it was enjoyable to actually see some intensity involving sport - something that I've been missing A LOT about the US.

I spent much of this week job searching. It's pretty terrifying to think that I have to start preparing myself for employment. While I'm here in my fanatical little European world, my friends are all getting their resumes perfected and sent out. I figured I should probably jump into the job market and make myself look as amazing as possible. I applied for a job with corporate NBA, the Cavs (actually, the step below my dream job) and TOMS. I've also started an application for a position with Senator Sherrod Brown in D.C. which would be very cool, also. And I'm in the process of doing a cover letter for a position with American Apparel. Soooo many different options. Strange that I've already started making plans for my arrival back in the states.

This weekend will prove to be quite amazing. A friend from HOBY (Katie Saylor) that is studying in North Wales for the semester is coming in after I get off work tonight for the weekend. She isn't able to get into her apartment until Sunday, so she's staying at my place for a bit. It should be pretty exciting. Tonight, I think we're heading out to dinner and then we'll probably go to a pub across town for one of the Labour Party Support Staff's going away party. Then tomorrow, Dianne wants to go on a quick trip to look at some ancient stones, which should prove to give way to some excellent landscape pictures which I'm sure you'll all be excited to see. And then I think we're going out to the clubs with Adam and possibly meeting up with Rhi, as well. Whooo knows.

Anyway, I'm heading out early today. I've gotta go find something to wear out this weekend since the package mom sent still isn't in.

Hope all is well on the homefront! XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

P.S. Happy almost 21st, Courtney!!!