International Student House Washington DC

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Same ISH, New Community

October 1, 2018 by Zinna Senbetta

After a very fast but wonderful summer interning in São Paulo, Brazil I am back in DC for my second year of graduate school at Georgetown. It was nice to return to ISH and campus as familiar places that I already knew I enjoy. It has been fun catching up with ISH friends, even those who now live elsewhere. Soon after getting back in August, I reconnected with a Brazilian friend who used to live at ISH and a resident from the UK who lived at ISH last fall for a short time and recently came back. I was happy to introduce them to Ethiopian food for lunch one day as we caught up about our summers.

The majority of faces at ISH now are new to me. My night class heavy schedule has prevented me from meeting people in the dining hall over meals, but there have been several fun events where I’ve gotten to know the new community. For example, the “9th Nonconsecutive Biannual International Student House Pub Quiz” was a great way to make new friends and brush up on random international trivia knowledge. My team had representatives from Pakistan, the UK, the Netherlands, Sri Lanka, India, Germany and the US.  A current and former resident created and co-hosted the challenging and at times very random pub quiz. My personal favorite part was a worksheet task where we had to correctly identify and label pictures of current world leaders when they were teenagers.

The next big event where I got to connect with the wider ISH community was the Alumni Hosted Cultural Cookout. It was a beautiful day to be outside and enjoy great food and good company. Alumni set up tables highlighting their home countries with food, beverages, music and art/cultural displays. I enjoyed tasting French wines while speaking French, watching students put together an African continent map puzzle, tasting some familiar food, and chatting with an alumnus at the Serbia table about my experience visiting Belgrade. Talking with alumni and new residents who are fellow graduate students or young professionals reminded me of how grateful I am to be apart of the ISH network. I am especially excited about the high number of African students at ISH compared to last year, including an Ethiopian student! I look forward to continuing to get to know new and old ISHers in the months ahead and beyond.

Filed Under: Inside Look at ISH!, Life at ISH

Zinna Senbetta

About Zinna Senbetta

Country: USA
School: Georgetown University
Field of Study: Global Politics and Security
Bio: Zinna is an Ethiopian-American student at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service where she is pursuing a Master’s degree in Global Politics and Security. She is originally from Wheaton, Illinois but most recently lived in New Jersey where she completed a Bachelor’s Degree in Sociology with a minor in French Language and Culture at Princeton University. Zinna studied abroad at the Sorbonne University in Paris in the spring of 2016 and interned at an international law NGO in Paris called the Union Internationale des Avocats. The summer of 2016 she was a campaigns intern for the Young African Leaders Initiative Network Program under the Bureau of International Information Programs in Washington, DC. Most recently she was an intern for the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission on Capitol Hill. Zinna is a 2017 Charles B. Rangel International Affairs Fellow and will focus on Public Diplomacy as a U.S. Foreign Service Officer upon completion of graduate school. She hopes to concentrate on issues related to the rights of women and girls, education, and human rights in Sub-Saharan Africa.

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International Student House of Washington, DC | 1825 R Street, NW | Washington, DC 20009

International Student House of Washington, DC (ISH-DC) is a private, non-profit 501(c)3 organization located near Dupont Circle in the heart of Washington, DC. Donations will help support our mission to provide an exceptional residential experience to a highly diverse international community of graduate students, interns and visiting scholars. The House promotes inter-cultural dialogue, encourages life-long connections, and fosters global citizenship.

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