After Dinner Speaking

I think that I am going to like this conference.

I met my roommate, Morgan, who went to Sweet Briar and competed in the Ethics Bowl. Her last Ethics Bowl was my first (Ethics in Medicine) - small world. Now she's a research analyst at the Heritage Foundation. Way cool.

Dinner was a buffet at the Hyatt. We all went around the room and introduced the people sitting around us, so I finally figured out who the other Duke student was (her name is Amanda, and she's an ecology PhD student). Then we got a rundown of what will happen tomorrow. We have three speakers (I'll put them below) who are going to introduce us to the conference, the issues, Prague, etc. Around three, we'll go to Dulles and one group will fly to JFK and then Prague, and one group will fly to Frankfurt and then Prague. I'm in the Frankfurt group, and please let me tell you - I am excited about the brezel options.

After dinner, a bunch of us hung around and had drinks at the hotel bar. I spent a fair amount of time talking to another girl in the environmental section, Coree, who works for Net Impact (which I may now join at Duke - she makes it sound super cool). We have a lot in common - right down to our "misadventure in Stockholm" experiences. It was really interesting - we've seen a lot of the same speakers (Matt Kistler cried in front of both of us) and last month, Net Impact did a showing of Carbon Nation, which ISD is showing next week. Crazy crazy. So now I'm going to bed.

Speakers for tomorrow:

Bix Aliu - Involved in the Ranbouillet Peace Accords as a member of the US Special Envoy to Kosovo's delegation and worked with the Special Envoy during the crisis in Macedonia, etc.
Joel Ruben - Deputy Director and Chief Operating Office of the National Security Network
Jiri Ellinger - Author of Czech Lands in European History after 1918 and a biography of Neville Chamberlain.