Graeff´s Blog

time is flying, this is already the fourth and last day here in washington. After having a nice run through 18th street down to the mall, directly to lincoln memorial, back to monument running a round there to inhale the great view over washington back to the hotel bypassing the white house and going up the hill on the 16th street – an hour of fun and sunrise.

rushing for a coffee @ caribou coffee, and yes, they are doing there the macciato not the starbucks way .

After hading at least some coffine in my body today´s lectures started:

• Economic Development: Where do we Stand Today? – by Karen Macours, Assistant Professor of International Economics. Some interesting Points about doing Micro Economic experementials in the Area of Education Programs in Developing Countries.

• Terrorism: Keeping the Barbarians Out – by Jakub Grygiel, George H.W. Bush Assistant Professor of International Relations. This lecture is about the idea of fighting terrorism like the roman´s and other players dealt with barbarians on their borders – and there are indeed some interesting analogies between terrorist networks and barbarian tribes

• Wrap-up Luncheon – by Charles Doran, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of International Relations and Director of the Center of Canadian Studies – a short overview of which topics we touched the last 4 days

So this was SAIS, as I have another 90 minutes before I have to leave to the airport I decide to visit Phillips Collection, which is by feet 10 minutes from SAIS campus.

Look here for some nice pictures of the exhibition.

After taking again an one hour morning run – this time down 17th street to white house, over the mall to Congress, and back to hotel over massachusetts avenue day three started.

• International Trade Policy – by Charles Pearson – what´s the actual status of daho trade negotiations, where are today´s shortcomings of usa´s economic situation – overhelming defict spending, massive trade deficit and low savings rate and what is the forcast for the next rounds of trading negotiations – less mfn´s but more uniliteral trade pacts
• Economics of North American Immigration – by Tamara Woroby – which included some very interesting thoughts about underlying principles of emigration into usa and the difference to the canadian system
• Powercycle Theory – by Charles Doran – a theoretic concept of power distribution between nations and how to plot changes of nations relevance over time in this modell
• Japan and Japan-U.S. Relations – by Kent Calder, what is the political and econamical situation of today´s japan and what´s the status of the relationship between usa and japan
• Iraq and Lessons Learned from Nation-building – by Francis Fukuyama, discussion of the shortcomings of nation / state building processes which have been introduced in iraq

after this I did some shopping at pentagon city – great place and there is also an apple store.

As I didn´t want to get to lazy I took a morning run around white house and the mall for about 60 minutes, great start into a great day.

Afterwards I had @ SAIS some interesting lections around the following abstracts:

• International Law and Conflicts – by Ruth Wedgwood, how does have in depth knowledge about existing UN Burokratism and Organisational Behavior
• Terrorism and Counter-terrorism – by Camille Pecastaing – some very interesting thoughts about “new” dimensions of terrorism, including some fresh ideas about background and strategies of the latest wave of terror activism. And it seems that france is indeed the mother of all terorist activity in the world
• The Security of International Oil Supply – by Charles Doran, which included a very interesting discussion about future Oil Demand and Supply mismatch, the well predictable future oil price crunch and gaps of research in these areas

after lunch I had some free time, so we organized together a nice bike trip through washington, afterwards we nipped a beer at Washington hotel terrace, from where you have a direct view onto the white house and the sunset behind of it.

Hi,

after checking in into the Braxton Hotel I went out together with some of my colleagues for some nice spanish food @ lauriol, 1835 18th street, NW. After lunch I felt into my small bed and slept for some short hours.

Getting up again at 06:00, I went to white house, the sun went up and it was a wonderfull clear morning.

At 09:00 our workshop started at SAIS, which is just around the corner of hotel braxton, I had a punch of interesting stories about german-american relationship and the today´s development in mexico and asia, targeting china, korea and malaysia.

Here are some fotos from today:

After working we did have some fun at sala thai, 2016 P Street near to dupont circle, a nice thai restaurant with typical american service quality.

hello,

my 2nd MBA Journey starts today, first station will be Washington, DC. We´ll do some studies at the SAIS (School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, Washington) and will discuss there interesting and hot political topics like north korea, china, terrorism, iran and the latest developments in Latin America, naturally all under the perception of today´s USA.

stay tuned,

lorenz