Inaugural Parade
So many exciting things happened this semester, both in law school and beyond. The semester began with me going back to my alma mater, Boston College, to join the "Screaming Eagles" Marching Band as they marched in President Obama's Inaugural Parade in Washington D.C. I was honored to be one of very few alumni invited back to play with the current band members. On the morning of the parade, we had to wake up extremely early to drive in from Baltimore to receive security clearance from the Secret Service at the Pentagon. Next we waited in a staging tent that was showing the ceremony on a large projection screen. Finally, we left the tent, marched in front of the Capitol building and through the streets of D.C. to the White House, where we had a personal audience with Obama, Biden, and their families.
Jessup International Moot Court Competition
Perhaps the most exciting for me occurred toward the beginning of the semester over Valentine's Day Weekend. Those of you who know me well know that Valentine's Day is my favorite holiday, and are probably expecting a sappy, romantic story about what Camilo, my boyfriend, and I did that weekend, but this was actually law-school related (which caused us to celebrate the weekend before). Jessup Moot Court is the biggest international moot court competition in the world. Moot Court is similar to Mock Trial, but on an appellate level (so a court has usually already ruled on the case and it is being appealed). In most American moot court settings, a team pretends to argue in front of a state Supreme Court or the Supreme Court of the United States. In Jessup, we argued about international issues in front of pretend International Court of Justice justices. The problem we dealt with, dealing with two fictional countries, one of which submerges, is here: http://www.ilsa.org/jessup/jessup13/2013%20Official%20Compromis.pdf. I had to research foreign sovereign debt issues, and argue about both statehood and foreign sovereign debt from the perspective of the submerged country. We spent the entire first semester and winter break writing the memorials (international briefs), and then spent tens of hours preparing oral arguments before the competition. The weekend itself was even intense as we advanced past preliminary rounds to the quarter and semi-final rounds, ultimately losing to NYU, the team that went on to win the regional tournament in the final round. However, as you can see below, all our hard work paid off: in the first picture, we stand with our semi-finalist trophy, and in the second picture, my teammate Brian holds our award for BEST memorial of the regional competition (out of 20 teams, including NYU, Columbia, Harvard, Boston College, and many other great law schools). A few weeks after we returned to Boston, we also found out that 3 of us placed in the top 40 oralists out of 80-100 oralists at the competition.
BU Law news story: http://www.bu.edu/law/communications/mootcourt2012.shtml
Relay for Life Dance and Spring Break
In March, Camilo and I returned to Connecticut for a weekend to help my cousin's family raise money for the American Cancer Society at their annual fundraising gala. My cousin Kristin's mother-in-law died from cancer about 10 years ago, and numerous others in our family and her in-law family have been touched by the disease, so the Goralski family (her in-laws) has dedicated itself to participating in Relay for Life. They raise thousands of dollars every year through fundraising events, and their gala is the largest event of the year. The best way to describe it is a wedding reception without a wedding party: a banquet hall is donated, there's delicious catered food for dinner, a raffle with some great prizes (this year we won $30 of gift certificates to Chili's!), and a DJ to play music that gets everyone on the dance floor! Over 200 people attended this year, and even more were hoping to get tickets after the event sold out. I'm so proud of my family for supporting a great a meaningful cause, and grateful that they host this event every year that gives us all a chance to get together in a relaxed but fun setting.
The other big event for me in March was a cruise to the Bahamas for Spring Break! Camilo and I decided to go away for a few days: I wanted to be someplace warm and tropical, and he isn't a huge fan of the beach, so we thought a cruise would be the best idea, and I think we were right. When we first boarded, our room wasn't ready yet, so we sat by the pool and enjoyed welcome drinks while watching all the passengers we'd be spending the next 4 days with. After a few hours, the ship departed for Nassau and we stood on the deck to watch Port Canaveral (where we embarked) slowly fade into the distance.There were plenty of things to keep us entertained on board at night, including a comedy club that was better than we expected and all of the ship photographers. We had some fun with the photos, potentially at the photographer's expense, posing by the fake ships railing with the fake sunset in the background doing uncoordinated "Titanic" poses. The next morning we enjoyed breakfast on our private balcony as we watched our ship pull into port in the Bahamas. We had a couple of hours to walk around town, including a visit to the governor's property and the straw market, before meeting up with our tour group for a catamaran ride and snorkeling adventure. The water was freezing when we jumped in, but we saw some gorgeous coral and fish which made it worth it. That night we got dressed up and attended a formal dinner before putting on our party clothes and heading back into town to experience some nightlife. Our ship was the only one that stayed docked in port for the night, but I'm so glad it did because we had such a fun time at the local Senor Frog's and back on board walking around the ship after. I had such a good time that I cannot wait for our next vacation. And yes, we were traveled with Carnival and were on possibly the one ship that did not experience any problems that week!
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| In front of the Governor's mansion |
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| "Bon Voyage" gift basket my dad had sent to our room, waiting for us upon arrival |
International Law Society Success
The last major event for the semester was celebrating the success of the International Law Society ("ILS"). I have been passionate about international relations, and more recently international law, since I was 14 when I joined my high school's Model United Nations club as a freshman. I was incredibly fortunate to be elected President of the BU International Law Society after serving for a year as a 1L representative. With much planning by the 8-member Executive Board and support from all of our members, the ILS hosted numerous events throughout the year to appeal to the various interests of BU Law students. One of our 1L representatives, who will be next year's President, nominated us for the International Law Student Association (a national organization) Best Chapter award, and in April we found out we won!! It was a complete shock, but reflecting on the wonderful year ILS has had and all the hard work everyone did, I think we definitely earned it. The article acknowledging our success can be found here: http://www.bu.edu/law/news/ils_choftheyear2013.shtml. Although I am the only officer quoted, there's no way this would have been possible without the rest of the Eboard, so I'd like to recognize the work of Cesar Lopez (Vice President), Nam-Giao Do (Treasurer), Regina Topolinskaya (Secretary), Bego Charro (LLM Representative), Danielle Hites (1L Representative), Blake Schell (1L Representative, and Emelie Kogut (1L Representative), as well as 2L Genevie Gold who was not on the Eboard but who was the driving force behind the "Doctors of the Darkside" event in the fall.
I am looking forward to a summer that is as fun and successful as this past semester was!
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