By angusmack101
Bernie Sanders' book tour is coming through GW next month, and the news of free tickets brought students out in droves. The box office was set to open at 12:00 on Thursday last week, but when my roommate and I arrived at 10:40 there were already over 100 people there. By noon there were closer to 1000. It's not hard to see why people are so enthusiastic about it here, my media classes are understandably packed with political discussions and the I've met several people involved with explicitly or tangentially political associations.
In my first blog post this semester I said that I was looking for exciting and unique experiences from DC, and after two months I'm confident in saying that GW has delivered. While I still think Hasan Minhaj underperformed as a comedian, I can't fault his drive to send a message. He filled a basketball arena with close to 1000 students and kept them engaged through what was essentially an hour-long anti-Trump pro-refugee lecture. A free ticket to Bernie was well worth the two hour wait for me, I look forward to writing about it.
Damn socialists at it again
This week has also been my first real experience of Halloween. Most Americans don't know this, but Halloween basically doesn't exist for most of the world. At home in Australia there might be a handful of parties and a few kids trick-or-treating each year, but we're talking tiny numbers. It's not a national holiday by any stretch; seeing a carved pumpkin would be a bizarre novelty to most Aussies.
A handful of exchange leaders took charge and organised some stuff at 1959 last weekend. It was my first taste of a Halloween being taken seriously, and I have to say it was a lot of fun. Most of the exchange students there hadn't ever experienced it before either, so it did take a while for us to work out what the deal was. The smell of freshly-carved pumpkin is a strange thing to the uninitiated.
Solid first attempt
I'm looking forward to more Halloween fun this week. I've still got a bunch of assignments to soldier through, but I'm confident that they won't stop me getting the cultural experience I came here for. Still have to wait almost a month for Bernie though.