So here's the update. The other day, out of nowhere, lightning struck. The House appropriations committee voted to slash three million dollars from our budget. Now, it wasn't a personal attack or anything-- there were cuts made across the board to give more money to veterans because Bush has sort of been screwing them over and the Republicans who control the House want to undo some of that pre-election. But it was a real blow, to our [my] morale as much as anything. Think about it: The budget had been at 43 million since 1991, and was nowhere near enough for 2005. The President proposed a three million dollar raise to 46, which still wouldn't be enough but would be a step. We were campaigning for 9 on top of that to make it 55, which still wouldn't be enough, and anyway we didn't expect to get it, but figured we'd get something in between. And here we lose three million to bring us below where we were thirteen years ago. That is just so frustrating.

The next day, we went into a surprise meeting with Chakah Fattah, a House member from Philadelphia, and spoke with his education staffer. As luck would have it, she was a big service-learning proponent, and we so struck a deal with her: if the Congressman could propose an amendment the next day to bring back our funding, we wouldn't expect it to go through, but it would help us because it would engage these people in dialogue about service-learning and the reps who knew nothing about it would have to think about it for the first time. This one was pretty much in the bag-- there was no reason for him not to do it; service-learning isn't a divisive issue. There would be no repercussions except that it wouldn't go through, which isn't really a repercussion because that's where things stood anyway, and we were willing to accept that for now. All we needed was for him to use the time and voice that he had among his peers to stand up for us. It would take him all of three minutes. We wrote the legislative language for him, gave him talking points, and everything. It would've required no work on his part whatsoever except to stand up and read.

And of course he didn't do it.

So that was another blow. We haven't officially lost the money, because discussion still has to go to the whole House, and then to the Senate, where we have another set of allies. But still. It feels pretty crappy.

On top of that, I had a stomachache all day Thursday, and went home early and slept like a little larva girl.

Yesterday, my last day of work, was much better. I was in decent spirits and Shanti [?], Nelda [?], and I went to dinner for my last day. We went to this restaurant America, which sounds really lame, but it was really good and really nice and cool. And our Armenian waiter was really nice and very earnest.

Today we're going to the zoo. Me, Nelda, Karen [?], and Lesleigh. Lesleigh is Nelda's hilarious nine-year-old cousin.

I think it'll be really fun (even if it rains, which it will) because the zoo is one of the few things I specifically wanted to see. I love zoos. And this one has pandas! It's basically my last hurrah in DC because tomorrow I leave for New York. Very early.