...or a day off the WPI program.
I left all the fun in Chicago and returned back to work - for less than 24 hours, admittedly, and not back to Lithuania but to Washington. But I did what I usually do: covered Lithuanian foreign policy.
It was not the first time Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus met US President George Bush at the White House, and it was not the first time for me to cover the meeting in the Oval Office (well, second...) but it was by far the most important when it came to results. In addition to the now-usual discussion on what to do with Russia, President Bush announced that he "hoped" that from mid-October Lithuanians would be included in a program that allows foreigners to travel to the US for tourism and business without visas. This is what Lithuanian - and EU - diplomacy strived to achieve for many years.
I interviewed President Adamkus after the meeting at the White House lawn for the flagship news at Lithuanian Television (starts at 01:00) - and did that jerky camerawork in the Oval Office.
Barely had we left the White House, it was all back to politics as usual there - Congress throwing out the financial bailout plan, Dow Jones plummeting like never before and a lame-duck president being shunned by his own party...
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