I'm BACK!

I have no excuse for not blogging, other than I've been in bed by 8 PM every night these past few days, and this blog always seems to fall by the wayside. So we have a lot of catching up to do!

Since my last post, I've done all kinds of cool things, and this week is only going to get better because my parents are coming to DC and brining Tracey and Caro! So I'm pretty dang excited about that. And I'm going home with them, which means, first and foremost, a home cooked meal!!!! It also means church, seeing my puppies, making a trip to Mamaw's (which also includes seeing Sawyer), and many more exciting things. So let me start from the beginning and detail everything.

I am still in school, which means I'm still researching and writing papers. I have a class on Jews in the Middle Ages, and I'm writing a paper on the reasons for medieval anti-Semitism (I KNOW this excites you!!), so I had to find a library full of books for me to use. That library happened to be about 12 metro stops away, which was no fun, but I got all my research done, and I'm ready to write. My entire campus could fit in the first floor of this library. It was HUGE! And scary. And a fire alarm went off the entire time I was there, but everyone just ignored it. Hello, what if it wasn't a drill?! So anyways, I was there for hours typing out entire paragraphs from books; paragraphs I may or may not even need. That's the not-so fun part about researching, especially when you only have a day to do it. I had to basically find everything I would possibly need. By the end of it, I was just writing words to sum up passages. I'm really quite good at winging it, though, so I will manage.

I also toured the Capitol building since my last post. The museum tries to provide a lot of enrichment activities for interns to make up for the fact that the internships are unpaid. They usually do two a semester, but we are in busy season, so they could only fit in one for this group. However, touring the Capitol building worked for me! Before the tour actually starts, they take you in this huge auditorium for a video that is super patriotic. If you go in hating America, you will come out ready to die for her. Seriously, the video was so amazing. As someone who, you know, kind of holds a grudge against everything America stands for, I was swelling with pride when I left that auditorium. But that's another story.

We got a special tour guide because Jordan, who is in charge of enrichment activities, seriously knows everyone. He can pull strings like no one's business. We saw all kinds of different chambers where meetings were going on. We also got to sit in the balcony of the Senate. John McCain was there talking on aid to Syria. Interestingly, not one other Senator was there to listen. It kind of peeved me off. And people, like assistants or interns or whatever, were walking up and down the aisles handing out papers and stuff. It was kind of disrespectful, but I guess I don't understand the world of politics. The cards to sit in the balconies of the Senate and House are good until the next election, so I am planning to take Dad, Mom, Tracey, and Caro there when they come in a few days.

Work has been nothing but crazy. We are officially in busy season, and most days I leave work feeling like a hundred kids have just punched me all over my body. I can't really describe it. Being an adult is so exhausting. I will say, however, that a TN accent gets visitors to shut up real quick and listen. I've had to bring out my attitude a couple times, though. For example, the other day, this tour guide came up with his group all ready to go. He knew I was new because he comes to the museum all the time. I told him to get his kids in a single file line and he said he knows, he's been here a million times, they're already lined up, blah blah blah. BUT they were clearly not lined up. So I went down the line and told them again. And then again. And finally I just started yelling "I AM NOT GOING TO SAY IT AGAIN. IF THIS LINE IS NOT SINGLE FILE WHEN I COME BACK HERE THE NEXT TIME, WE WILL STAND OUTSIDE IN THIS COLD WEATHER UNTIL YOU GUYS WANT TO COOPERATE WITH ME." And then I proceeded to tell him we weren't going inside until he lined his kids up. And then things were dandy. You would be surprised how hard it is to get any age group in a single file line. Even if they are 30 year old grad students. They just don't understand the concept. BUT I love my job. These bad moments are very rare. Mostly, people are so friendly and so helpful. But a bad egg can ruin the entire day.

Usually, us interns do tourist things on Tuesday since we all have off. This Tuesday, some of us visited the Postal Museum. It was a really, really cool museum. I'm not even really that interested in the history of the post office, and I still enjoyed it. I collected free postcards throughout the exhibits, and I'm going to send them to Adam. However, I apparently missed the highlights of the exhibits. I tend to whiz through museums unless they're super interesting, and I whizzed through this one. They have a stuffed dog, the mascot of the postal system, just hanging out in one of the exhibits, and I missed him! It's the real life dog that was used to years to amp up support for the post office. How crazy! Now he's just chilling in the Postal Museum in DC.

My other two days off are usually spent reading. I think I've read 6 books these past few weeks, and I'm on number 7 at the moment. I know six books doesn't sound like a lot, but I haven't read a book for fun in my entire four years of college, so now to have read six in a few weeks- I'm psyched. I'm trying so hard not to buy books at the museum gift shop, but it's so dang hard. It's like I've died and gone to Heaven every time I walk in that place.

The biggest thing I'm learning while in DC is being a grown up is HARD! I don't understand how my mom works 12 hours, and then when she gets off, she goes grocery shopping, picks us up food or cooks for us when she gets home, sometimes goes to church, runs errands. Like, seriously, how does she do it?! It is all I can do to make the commute back home. Once I'm here, forget about cooking. I usually either collapse and go right to sleep without eating dinner, or I eat something super fast. I've become quite fond of jelly sandwiches.

I guess that's all for now. I'm so, so, so excited to be home in a few days, even if it's only for a week. Then I'll be back in DC until May 1, and then it's time to graduate!! FROM COLLEGE. Where did the time go?!