{"id":188,"date":"2022-12-07T05:44:00","date_gmt":"2022-12-07T05:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ilyasseisov.com\/blog\/?p=188"},"modified":"2025-07-04T05:13:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-04T05:13:09","slug":"first-stop-washington-d-c-my-journey-with-next30","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ilyasseisov.com\/blog\/first-stop-washington-d-c-my-journey-with-next30\/","title":{"rendered":"First Stop: Washington D.C. \u2014 My Journey with NEXT30"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>At the end of October, I had the incredible opportunity to travel to the U.S. as part of the NEXT30 program \u2014 a cultural exchange for young leaders from Central Asia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Our first stop was Washington D.C., and honestly, I loved it. Cozy streets, tons of trees, and peaceful little green courtyards \u2014 it totally stole my heart \ud83d\ude0d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One of the highlights was visiting the U.S. Department of State \ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf8 (yes, <em>that<\/em> State Department). We got to meet the folks working on Central Asia and Turkmenistan \u2014 super insightful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But the lecture that really stuck with me was from Mr. Akram Elias on U.S. nationhood. This guy is NEXT LEVEL \ud83e\udd18\ud83c\udffb<br>In just 45 minutes, he broke down how the U.S. government system works \u2014 and now I totally get why America thrives the way it does.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On our final day, we had a three-hour tour around all the iconic landmarks \u2014 Lincoln, MLK, JFK memorials\u2026 just wow \ud83e\udd29\ud83e\udd29\ud83e\udd29 If you ever get the chance, GO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Oh, and we even got to catch an NBA game! Kevin Durant broke some ankles \u2014 legendary \ud83c\udfc0\ud83d\udd25<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Special thanks to:<br>@statedept @meridianintl @goviral.ca @usembassyashgabat \ud83d\ude4c<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Our event was successfully held on December 7, 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-gallery has-nested-images columns-default is-cropped wp-block-gallery-1 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1080\" height=\"1080\" data-id=\"192\" src=\"https:\/\/ilyasseisov.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/07-12-2022-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-192\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1080\" height=\"1080\" data-id=\"191\" src=\"https:\/\/ilyasseisov.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/07-12-2022-2.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-191\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1080\" height=\"1080\" data-id=\"190\" src=\"https:\/\/ilyasseisov.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/07-12-2022-3.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-190\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1080\" height=\"1079\" data-id=\"189\" src=\"https:\/\/ilyasseisov.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/07-12-2022-4.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-189\"\/><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At the end of October, I had the incredible opportunity to travel to the U.S. as part of the NEXT30 program \u2014 a cultural exchange for young leaders from Central Asia. Our first stop was Washington D.C., and honestly, I loved it. Cozy streets, tons of trees, and peaceful little green courtyards \u2014 it totally [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":193,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-events"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ilyasseisov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ilyasseisov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ilyasseisov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ilyasseisov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ilyasseisov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ilyasseisov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":389,"href":"https:\/\/ilyasseisov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188\/revisions\/389"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ilyasseisov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ilyasseisov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ilyasseisov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ilyasseisov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}