Well, my week here in D.C. has been busy for me. After a relaxing weekend, I returned back to work at Homeland Security. I have been working on spreadsheets as well as planning for a presentation that my supervisor has assigned to me. I also have been working on to prepare myself for Java programming as well. The presentation I am planning is all about my office's operations and what we do and I'm going to give it to the deaf employees within Homeland Security so they can be more aware of what we can do and that they can contact us as well as other employees with disabilities.
On Thursday, a group of people from my home area in Kentucky is visiting D.C., so I paid them a surprise visit at a restaurant and spent some time chatting. Meanwhile, I found out about a night event on Thursday being hosted by Deaf & Hard of Hearing in Government (DHHIG) over there in DuPont Circle by Maya, one of the interns and my new friend. We both went over there, hoping that we would make several new connections in our network. We sure did, with many people that we couldn't believe it. We were so glad we went. We met several people, especially Charm who works for Department of Education, and she's on the board for DHHIG. She invited us over to the DHHIG's National Training Conference (NTC) on the GWU campus. We appreciated the invitation and inform her that we couldn’t make it because of our work.
The next day, a new friend of mine, Katie, who also works for Homeland Security emailed me and told me to come over to the NTC. My supervisor was off on Friday, so I asked my acting supervisor, and he said yes! I was excited and left my office 1 hour after my arrival. At NTC, there were a lot of conferences as well as many different booths regarding deaf & hard of hearing people and the federal government combined. Charm ran up to me and hugged me. She was surprised to see me there. It was a terrific day, and I had lunch with the President of the DHHIG among other people, including Katie, another employee of Homeland Security, and an aide of a senator. All of them gave great tips and suggestions to me.
After that, I hopped on a bus to go to NYC/Long Island for a weekend. Both my friends and I all went to Six Flags Great Adventure (in New Jersey) for Deaf Awareness Day. We all had fun! Right now, I'm riding on the way back to D.C. on a bus writing this post. After this… It’s time for me to write up a report before my staff meeting tomorrow. :-)
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