Harry Lee on the Hill

As an international student spending only one year in the U.S., all was new for me during the trip to the Capitol. Because I did not have the "basic knowledge" of the U.S. government vital to understandingthe tour, it was not easy for me to absorb all the information that was given. However, the trip to the capitol on the 24th of July turned out to be more informative than I initially thought.The focus on the trip was mostly about journalists and their role within the capitol. Visiting the press gallery in the House of Representatives and the senate, I was once again reminded of therights enforced in America. Bound by the first amendment, the freedom of the press to record the exact information from the capitol for publication was always something I took for granted. This, yet, was a collective effort by many in the past; work put in to achieve the kind of convenience seen today in acquiring information about the runningof the country.In addition, I was struck by the physical structure of the capitol. When depicted on newspapers or broadcasted on television, the floor and the interview room seemed so much bigger than reality. Because this was my first trip to the capitol, the pictures and the statues also stood out as the symbols of the United States that I never encountered before.