So, I have been MIA from the internet for the past couple days because I have been travelling from La Crosse to Minneapolis then from Minneapolis to DC. Once I got here, my roommates and I realized that only one of us can be connected to the internet at once. I have not even attempted to connect because it is too much of a hassle. But, all is right with the world because my roommates went out and bought a wireless router and now I am back in action. Even though I have not had a chance to fully connect to the internet, I have been keeping track of everything I have been up to and I will now post it into this blog entry.
5.24.08
As the number of days until my departure to DC become smaller and smaller, I am trying to fit in as many “La Crosse” things to do as possible. A few nights ago, I went downtown to a few of my favorite bars—ones I know I am going to miss for the however many weeks I will be gone, and two nights ago, a few friends and I went to the Riv to see a $3 movie. Our choices were between “21” and “Smart People,” and having the decision split between the girls and the gays (us wanting to see “Smart People” and them wanting to see “21”) we decided to test our luck and see whichever movie was playing in the bigger of the two theaters. Well, ‘chance’ turned out to be the theme of the night as the movie we ended up seeing was “21.”
On the drive home, we began a very brief conversation about the movie’s portrayal of the classroom scenes, which led to the bigger discussion of movie classroom scenes in general. Small things such as sliding chalkboards, seemingly unsolvable equations on those chalkboards, and witty banter between the student and professor are staples in movies, but are not at my college. Granted, the setting of this movie was MIT and not a small, Catholic, liberal arts college in Wisconsin, but sometimes I wish my college experience mirrored that in the movies. Okay, so I don’t really care about the chalkboards and definitely not about the equations (a completely different side of the brain for me), but where is this playful, witty banter that is supposedly a major part of a student’s education? I understand that a majority of my English classes are general education which means that a bunch of people take them to earn three credits, not because they care about what they are going to learn in them, which then hinders the class discussion, but I really wish the professors would enforce class discussion more. A majority of my classes this past semester repeated the same information over and over again because the students just wanted an easy “A.” But I know this just doesn’t happen in my major. I bet science majors get just as frustrated if an English major took a science class just to fulfill the graduation requirements (I know I only took a science class because I had to). Hmm..I never thought about that.
5.27.08
There are a few times when a person gets to see the true workings of human beings. Myself, I have only seen it in airports when people leave their loved ones in the hopes of returning safe sometime in the distant future. There are hugs and kisses, farewells and goodbyes, but there is still an air of happiness. This is a good look at human nature. But there are times when you see people for who they really are. I had this experience two days ago when I did laundry in a Laundromat for the first time in my life. It was a real eye opener to see such behavior come during a chore that everyone has to perform at some point in his or her life, especially on Memorial Day. Ok, so I didn’t see any detergent fights or strangling using various articles of clothing, but an accidental glance at another’s laundry basket gave me death glares as I have never seen before. And don’t even get me started on the protectiveness people place on the wheely laundry carts. People jump on those things so quickly, metaphorically peeing on them, that it’s easy to forget we are supposed to be the ‘lazy’ country.
5.28.08
So, today was the big day. The day I left the familiar and entered into the metropolitan city that is DC. As of right now, I have fully moved into my apartment in Alexandria, VA (apparently a 45 minute Metro ride from DC but I’m not sure if that is completely true yet) and am extremely surprised with how beautiful this place is. I was told by a man on the shuttle from the airport to Alexandria that my housing is very close to Old Alexandria, a statement I must believe is true because of all the old red brick buildings that litter the view from my apartment. I have not actually been in DC yet, but got to see an amazing view of the Capitol and the Washington Monument from both the meeting room in my building and the rooftop pool and gym (yeah, I wrote rooftop pool and gym!) The first big touristy thing I did was go to the Pentagon, yes, the Pentagon. My apartment is literally ten minutes from it (dangerously close as one of my roommates put it). My three roommates and I did not plan on going to the Pentagon, but instead the Pentagon Mall, but in order to buy certain passes for the Metro system, we had to bypass the Mall and go to the Pentagon. We did not actually see very much of it, just enough to buy the passes and go back to the Metro, but it was still cool to watch the many military men walking around (they were very nice by the way) and also just say ‘wow, that’s the pentagon.’ Anyway, we spent most of the night at the Pentagon Mall which is actually a really neat place. It is literally three stops and an escalator ride away from my apartment and has three-stories of well-known stores.
My roommates are really nice too. We are getting along really well. I was joking about moving into my apartment and finding out that all my roommates were theatre majors, something I thought I was going to get away from for the summer (no offense, see ‘joking’), but it turns out that I am the only major in the arts. Two of them are political science majors and the other is sociology. It is going to be interesting to be around people of a different major for a change. I was also joking that I was going to end up in an apartment with people who are underage, and although this is the case for two of them, I think it is going to be fine.
Until I got back to the apartment, I was having so much fun and was getting really excited to spend the summer here. But then I began to think about what I would be doing if I were back in La Crosse and for some reason I got really homesick, almost to the point of tears (getting up at 3:30 and being very tired probably played a major role in this). This is not me at all. Not once in my life have I ever felt homesick and it happens on the very first night I spend in a new city. It has not even been one night, and I already miss everyone and everything I left back home. Another factor that is playing into my homesickness is the fact that I do not really have internet here yet so I cannot check Facebook. As weird as it sounds, having the ability to check up on friends any time I wanted would make me feel whole lot better (hopefully we will get a wireless router tomorrow, but I guess it depends on how tired we all are). I know it will get better as the summer progresses, but I just want it to be like that now. As I am writing this, my roommates and I are talking about the program being only ten weeks long and when I look at it like that, being away almost seems comforting. Again, I know I will be fine once I jump into my internship and get comfortable with the area, but I really do miss home.
5.29.08
I started my Washington Center orientation today. We had a meeting with our program advisor and the other people in the program first and then were broken down into smaller groups and told to run around the city and ‘scavenge’ over 100 things ranging from taking a picture of us chasing a pigeon to hiking up the hill at Arlington to take a picture of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier (yeah, like that’s going to happen). Anyway, my group started off strong with promises of organizing the route to the various locations, but it turned into a walking tour of nothing. Listening to other people’s journeys made me kind of jealous of all they got to see (which was the entire point of the scavenger hunt), but I know that I will get to see a lot more once I get comfortable with the city and I’m not busy with orientation. I guess the highlight of the day was lounging outside the White House and watching a protester say he would be a better president than our current one (for some reason, more people were taking a picture of him then they were the actual White House…hmmm?)
One sad thing did happen today that gave me proof of my theory about people in the publications field. My theory is that most, but not all, (obviously not me of course) journalists are pompous and egotistical. Yep, almost every person I have met in the communications field back home is the same, and today was no different. We broke into groups and the entire time, three of the members went off and did their own thing and really didn’t care much for what we were doing. It wasn’t that big of a deal, but if we weren’t going to look for things on the scavenger hunt, we should have at least dispersed to go off on our ‘scavenger hunt.’ I know that they were the major reason our group gave up so quickly thus ruining the day for the rest of us. I guess I am being very hard on my people, so I should probably just shutup.
Anyway, my homesickness is starting to vacate now that I am back online. I’m pretty sure that was the major reason I wasn’t having as good of a time as I could have. I guess just having the knowledge that I can go online and stalk my favorite people is giving me enough comfort to enjoy myself now.
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