Day One

Monday, April 14:

Yesterday, Monday, April 14, was the first day of Overseas Americans Week. Since we had already run through our schedule at dinner the night before and since most of us were still suffering from the lingering effects of jetlag, we decided to forego our standard 7:30 am breakfast meeting. So our day began at a handful of meetings spread out across Capitol Hill at 9 am.

The biggest difference between prior OAWs and OAW 2008 is the number of offices that we are attempting to visit. As I mentioned yesterday, we usually meet with around thirty or forty offices. Last year we were very pleased to increase that to about seventy. But for OAW 2008, we have requested meetings with about 250 different offices. So our ambitious new schedule kicked off on Monday with meetings with over forty of those offices, mostly on the House side of Capitol Hill.

In addition to those meetings, we hosted one special event on Monday – a briefing/reception for the staffers of the members of the Americans Abroad Caucus and of any other members of Congress who may be interested in the Caucus. After a few brief remarks by Lucy Laederich of FAWCO and a quick run-through of part of our PowerPoint presentation, we spent an hour or so mingling with interested staffers, discussing our various issues and explaining the Americans Abroad Caucus.

All in all, it was a successful day on Capitol Hill.

Tomorrow OAW goes into even higher gear. We have meetings scheduled with 55 different Congressional offices. It will be a long day.