Summer update

Tonight, for some reason, Houston began to feel like home. Something to do, perhaps, with being distinctly comfortable with being by myself in the city, and knowing the city as well as I do now. Perhaps a sense that only comes into being when you are alone, and the knowledge that the city surrounds you surfaces at the forefront of your mind. In other cases, your mind is too occupied with relationships. Interesting, right? That people love others, but that they also love places. I don't know. Just rambling.

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Spent my day learning about really awesome special law enforcement things, shooting more guns (and grenade-type launcher), riding in an MRAP (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MRAP), and shooting and being shot at (with fake bullets, in a room-clearing/SWAT team-type exercise). So much fun. And so much fun learning. Seriously, being an intern with the U.S. Attorney's Office here in Houston is one of the best things that's ever happened to me. And it is, I believe, the only legal internship that would afford interns (or any civilian) these kinds of super cool opportunities......visiting the FBI, NASA, ATF (shooting all kinds of guns/rifles), FDC (prison), HSI SRT (today's thing at Homeland Security with the Special Response Team), DEA (tomorrow—laser shooting in a virtual scenario), and CBP (Customs and Border Control, aka behind the scenes at the IAH airport), among others.

And it's not just the field trips with our super-VIP access to all the cool things. I really love working as a semi-federal prosecutor (in my internship). I mean, now I want to be a federal prosecutor (specifically in the division that I'm in right now, the one that deals with human trafficking among other things). If I had known what this job entailed back before I started law school, I would probably have known that this is exactly what I wanted to do with my life. I'm lucky (I've been told, and I'm realizing now) that I know what I want to do, in law and in life, and that I'm doing it, or have the opportunity to do so. Leading to the next point.

Getting great advice from various people. And am seriously considering throwing my original plan out the window...that is, instead of going into a law firm first (in order to pay back student loans, get training, etc.), I would just go straight to the D.A.'s Office if possible (and be a state prosecutor). And then hopefully make it back to the U.S. Attorney's Office later on as a federal prosecutor. Not sure though. But I'm thinking of the long nights I'd have to do for a law firm and......I might be depressed if I had to do that. Well. We'll see.

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I leave for China in 10 days. Will be there for 3 weeks, traveling and seeing some family. Am super excited actually!! And then school starts one week after I get back. And I have (potential) interviews and clinic orientation that week before school (and reading homework gah). You know what? 2L year will be very busy for me. But because I am now more comfortable in my skin with being a law student, I think 2L year will also be very enjoyable. Getting to know more law people, making lots of good law friends. At least in this part of my life, life is good. It's really good.