Mollie Vive en España: Parte 3, Thanksgiving

So, I know I've been really terrible at updating this blog, but I've been pretty busy with adventuring (a post on that is on its way) and doing homework.

ISA took us all to a restaurant for Thanksgiving dinner. The Spanish interpretation of Classic American Thanksgiving was very interesting for everyone, even taking into account the fact that our families all have different traditions and dishes.

Let's begin:

 Our table. Three mystery liquids and wine... Some people said it was good wine, some said it was terrible but got better the more they drank. I wouldn't know. Wine without fruit juice in it is just bad Sangria to me. :P (I say that like I drink Sangria all the time... I really don't...)

 The serving table. Everything here looks decent, right?

 My plate. I took a little of everything. Which means, clockwise from 6 o'clock: turkey breast with gravy, "puree de patatas" or potato milkshake, something sort of like applesauce, (in the center) pumpkin liquid (which once I realized it was basically baby food I couldn't eat it, or any of the liquid things), some sort of chestnut loaf that had the texture of mushrooms and possibly a worse flavor, peas/corn/carrots that weren't bad, but by the time I got to them they were really cold, aaaand "stuffing" which I figured out was mincemeat (like Molly Weasley would make pie from) and because it was inside the bird, it was half raw.....

Dessert. A custard pie with apples and a rum or bourbon caramel sauce. Probably the best part of the meal.

Since it’s Thanksgiving, I feel I should note that I am thankful for every opportunity that I’ve had this year and for every single person that I’ve met through my adventures in DC and Spain. I am also thankful for my friends and family who have supported me during the more challenging times I’ve faced during this year.

Mollie Vive en España, Parte 2: Arriving in Spain and the Days Leading Up to Salamanca (Sept. 26-30)

All my worries and anxieties have faded: I’m finally in Spain and settled in Salamanca. The semester sort of got off to a rocky start because an essentially 24 hour time period of traveling is never particularly fun. I left home at 3:15 AM Pacific, flew from Sacramento to Denver at 5:35 AM Pacific, landed in Denver around 9 AM Mountain time, left Denver for Newark around 1:30 PM Mountain time (making for about a 4 hour layover), landed in Newark around 7 PM Eastern, took off for Madrid around 8:30 PM Eastern, and finally arrived in Madrid at 10 AM local time. I didn’t feel great the entire time I was flying, probably due to nerves, and the meal I was served on my flight to Madrid was awful. Probably one of the worst meals I’ve ever had in my life, including past meals on airplanes. And the other option probably wouldn’t have been better because I really had no idea what it was supposed to be. Luckily, the man in my row appeared to have purchased the middle seat in the row and I was able to sleep somewhat horizontally for a few hours so my stomach might settle. I’ve never been so grateful for being little. 

Once I was finally united with my group and the group going to Santander, we got on the bus to the hotel in Madrid. It was a really nice hotel, and it was located near the Atocha station, just a few blocks from the hotel I stayed in when I visited Spain in the summer of 2009 and the Prado Museum. We had free time while we waited for the rest of the students to arrive and so in order to best fight our jetlag we wandered around the city a little bit and got food at El Brillante, a sandwich shop I had wanted to eat at three years ago, but never had the chance to. I highly recommend the bocadillo de chorizo, but they’re most known for their bocadillo de calamares, which is said to be the best in the city.

That night we had meetings with our groups and then went on a panoramic bus tour of the city. After that I decided that I had been awake long enough and that going to bed early would be a better idea than getting tapas and socializing, since it had been a really long, 2-in-1 day.

Sleeping was a good idea because I had pretty much gotten over my jetlag by the next morning. After a delicious breakfast of huevos revueltos con jamón, pimentes, y cebollas y pan at the hotel, we went on our tours of El Museo del Prado and el Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. I liked our tour guide in the museums, I thought she was very engaging and was found a good balance between English and Spanish. In El Prado, she took us on a chronological tour of the museum hitting the highlights of time, style, and artist, focusing on El Greco, Vezlasquez, and Francisco de Goya. I think I liked El Prado better this trip than last time because of this, although it was definitely fun remembering exploring the museum with my sister on a hunt for the bloodiest paintings, in addition to the famous ones. In La Reina Sofia we focused on Picasso, Dali, and Miro, spending the most time studying Picasso’s masterpiece, Guernica. While I definitely enjoyed the art itself better, and I really enjoyed being able to see more of the museum than before, this tour felt a little more compact and less thorough of an overview of the museum.

After the museums, we had free time for lunch and shopping, which we took advantage of. All the Salamanca Fall 1 girls bonded very quickly and we went to lunch together at VIPS, a restaurant that I was wholly unimpressed by, but Melissa, one of the girls in the group, noted that we ate lunch at a traditional Spanish time for a traditionally long time, thus meaning that we had culturally acclimated in a day and had “beat study abroad.”

My roommate, another girl, and I then separated from the rest of the group and continued to explore the city instead of napping and visited Plaza Mayor and el Mercado de San Miguel, which was a really nice indoor, traditional market full of interesting sights and smells, where we got coffee and pastries. I was really excited to see a traditional Portuguese pastry, pasteis de nata, at the coffee stand, which tasted far better than when I had attempted to make it in high school.

That night we had a late dinner, where I had my first Sangria, which I think I’ll like better over time, since I’m currently not a huge fan of wine in the first place, and then everyone in the combined Salamanca and Santander groups went out to find bars and clubs. Overall, it was a really fun night, we went to a pub and then managed to split up into a bunch of smaller groups somehow and went to different dance clubs. My group then managed to get really, really lost on our way home. We were able to make it home safely, but it took us an hour and a half and we didn’t get good directions from any of the locals. Ironically, the person who was finally able to help us the most was drunk, from Santander, and unable to find what he needed to find in order to get where he needed to go.

On Saturday, we drove to Toledo where we began with a panoramic tour of the majestic city from the bus and then split up according to destination cities once more for a walking tour of the city. Our guide, Mario, was totally awesome. He was absolutely engaging, incredibly knowledgeable about the dense history of his hometown, and seemed to really enjoy teaching us about Toledo. I really loved Toledo. It’s the kind of town that you would think of when you think of Generic Spain. Because of its location, Toledo is one of the cities where it was very common for Christians, Jews, and Muslims to live together in relative harmony. This is seen through the architecture of the city, where there are multiple Catholic churches and cathedrals, a synagogue, and a mosque, all of which have a blend of architectural styles working the the different cultures together. For example, the ceiling of the synagogue was constructed by Muslim carpenters and has a Moorish style to it. That night, after we went back to the hotel to nap, we returned to the city and had dinner and I had the "signature dish" of the city, Carcamuscas. It was super delicious, even though I wasn't sure what it was beyond pork. ;) After dinner, the girls went back to the hotel and, because I wasn't tired, I hunted down the boys in the group and we wandered around the Old Town for about an hour and I got some good night photos.

On Sunday, we returned to Madrid to drop of the Santander group and then we headed to el Escorial, which is a huge cathedral, monastery, and palace built by King Philip II. It's really beautiful. Our guide there was really fun, he talked to me a lot and we saw a lot of really cool things, like a huge fresco that was painted by an ambidextrous man and only took him seven months to complete, the monastery library, which has original manuscripts and books dating back to the sixth century, and the royal mosuleum containing kings back to Philip II and all the way to the parents of the current king of Spain. We also played around with the acoustics of a whisper room. The most unique thing we got to see was a relic from the 16th Century called La Sagrada Forma. Some Dutch Protestant mercenaries entered a Spanish Catholic church, plundered it, and, as a final insult, one of the mercenaries stomped on the consecrated Host, which broke into 3 pieces and began to drip live blood from the piercings. It was pretty cool seeing the relic because I think it is only available for viewing once a year on the last Sunday of September. 

After El Escorial, we headed to Salamanca where we met our host families. We took our placement tests and got a tour of Salamanca on Monday and then the semester officially began on Tuesday with the start of classes.

Mollie Vive en España (Parte 1, 24 Sept 2012)

I wrote this for ISA two days before I left California (and they never posted it), which is why it may seem a touch impersonal to those who know me very well.

So, apparently I’m going to be in Spain really soon. When did that happen? I have been so busy this year that the time has just flown by. I spent the majority of the year living in Washington, DC and interning at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in the Museum Services Division. I’ve really only been home and in a position to get ready for Spain for a few weeks, and I’ve been really busy in the interim. Since I’ve been home I’ve been busy volunteering and making sure I get visits in with my family before I leave, including taking my younger sister to college. I’ve also had some hiccups in the process: the suitcase I had initially ordered turned out to be too small and then, just a few days ago, my car got rear-ended. But even with all off that going on, I’ve gotten all my paperwork done and I’ve converted my notes from high school Spanish into PDFs so that I can have them with me in Spain. I’ve also bought a practically new fall wardrobe because my mom and I discovered that I either had no fall clothes or didn’t fit the ones I had because I haven’t needed them going to school in Southern California!

Because I’ve been so busy, I’ve had a hard time getting excited about this semester. I’ve barely had time to think about the things that are going to be awesome, because I’ve been preparing for worst case scenarios. As far as specific challenges that I’m expecting go, I know that culturally I’m going to be challenged by the different eating schedule than I’m used to and just the fact that everything is going to be in Spanish. I’m also somewhat scared about the prospect of having to make new friends again this year, as that is something that has never been easy for me, and I’m scared about staying connected with my friends at home in the US because all the preparatory materials have implied that it’s going to be really difficult. Finally, I’m nervous about classes because I haven’t been in a class since mid-April and I feel like I may have forgotten how to be in a class in English, let alone Spanish.

But even with all my anxieties about this semester, I do have some goals that I’m looking forward to hopefully achieving. My primary goal is to be fluent in Spanish by the end of the semester. I also am hoping to learn how to cook at least one dish so that I can share with my family some of the things I enjoyed while in Spain. And I am especially hoping that I will be able to have fun!

Ms Herlocker Goes to Washington: Week 5 aka Best Week EVAR, February 12-18

Why have I titled this as the “Best Week EVAR” you ask? It could’t possibly have anything to do with the fact that I finally started my internship at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM). Nope. Not at all.

Okay. I lied. :)

I STARTED MY INTERNSHIP AT THE MUSEUM ON MONDAY!!!!!!!!!!! YAAAAAAAY!!!!

Even though I have to wake up a little earlier to ensure that I get there on time, it’s totally worth it because my mornings feel a little smoother, and it was made even better because my parents sent me some of the most delicious coffee I’ve ever had.

Training has been great so far (I still have one more day before I become an official member of the Museum Services/Visitor Services Crew). On Monday, Day One, we were giving an orientation, a tour of the Permanent Exhibition (PE), training on how to get visitors into the elevators that take them to the PE, and how to use Coat Check (at which I was “outstanding”). On Tuesday, Day Two, we were trained on how to set up and work the Information/Pass Desk, every element of radio, safety, security, and evacuation training, and how to shut down the PE (also known as being Closing Rover 4). On Day 3, we learned how to get registered school groups into the Museum. We also got a tour of From Memory to Action, which is one of the exhibits where we take the knowledge of the atrocities of the Holocaust and apply them to preventative measures about future genocides, as well as education about Rwanda, Bosnia, and Darfur, got a tour of State of Deception, which is a really cool exhibit about Nazi Propaganda that is leaving after this summer, so I recommend coming to the museum to see it. Next, we were trained on how to close the museum as a whole, then we did a walk through of closing the PE, followed by actually closing down the second floor and the Wexner Center.

Training Story: On Thursday, when we were learning how to close the second floor, a call went over all of our radios informing us that a “15 year old male, about 5’4”, with dark hair, accompanied by two females, and wearing a green cape, yes, you heard that correctly, a green cape” was missing from his group somewhere in the museum. Needless to say, we all laughed about the cape and kept an eye out for this young man. We were standing in an area that looks into the Hall of Witness, and I happened to be looking out into the Hall, when I noticed walking down the stairs a person who could have been male walking with two girls and holding a green object over his arm. Not knowing how to report this, I told Jordan, who had to explain to us all how a search even worked, and we gave a play-by-play of where the students were until the person working the information desk was able to get to them and their chaperones. I was pretty proud of myself for finding the missing persons on my first ever search.

I am so beyond excited to be working at the Museum. The staff is fantastic and fun. Highlights include: Art “Handsome Man” Anderson, who has been on the staff since the museum opened in April 1993, knows everything about the museum, and is the leader of very exclusive “Handsome Man Club,” Matt Fisher, who is subtly hilarious with deadpan humor and tried to bribe all of the interns with $5 to do his outside duty before the museum opened on Monday, Jordan Allen, who is indescribably nice and cool, and Luke Leyh, who is the representative who hired me and is just… great. Luke is really nice, enthusiastic, and hilarious. We bonded over our robot jewelry on Thursday (my necklace, his cufflinks) and because the groups that were supposed to come in were late or cancelled, we all spent a lot of time talking about food and getting to know each other better.

I really enjoyed doing security training (thanks, Dad), even though it was A LOT of information to process. However, now I know where all the fire stairs are, how to get people out of the museum, and our ten important 10-calls. I also was super nerdy on Tuesday during training because I made a Lord of the Rings joke that nobody got (Who doesn’t know about Hobbit meals?! I mean, really.) and laughed at all the Star Wars and Monty Python (and potentially something else…) jokes that were in the security powerpoint.

And guess where our field trip was this week… if you guessed USHMM, you would be CORRECT. :D When we got to the museum, we got to listen to a survivor speak, which was really amazing. Mayna Friedman is a volunteer at the museum, so I’m potentially going to get to work with her some more this semester. I really enjoyed being at the museum after having sort of met the staff because I felt like I was sneaking around to surprise someone and because it was just fun saying Hi to the staff. I also felt really warmly welcomed and apart of the museum because when Mayna found out I was an intern she gave me a hug and told me that they always miss the interns after we leave, especially because we leave right as they’re getting to really know us. I then went on a self-guided walkthrough of the State of Deception, saw some of the pieces of the PE that I hadn’t really focused on last time I went through, such as the eugenics display, which I have always been fascinated by and Voices of Auschwitz, where you can read and hear quotes from some survivors about their time, to the Wexner Center to learn about modern genocide, and through Daniel’s Story, which is the exhibit recommended for children, especially if parents are nervous about having their younger children go through the more graphic PE. I had somehow never been into Daniel’s story before, even though it’s been in the museum since 1993, and I think it affected me more than the PE does. My theory on this is that, because it focuses on a one boy and his experiences, it makes it more personal, plus the stories of the children are part of what makes the whole Holocaust so upsetting and atrocious.

On Friday, I didn’t have training. Which felt exceedingly bad and weird. So, in an attempt to be productive and get out of the apartment, I walked to Baked and Wired, which is in Georgetown. The best way to describe this oasis is as a hipster coffeehouse/cupcakery. They have fantastic cupcakes. I got a mocha cupcake because I wanted something more exciting than chocolate chocolate or chocolate on vanilla. It was this weird combination of super delicious and awesome and not so greatness. I think what I have decided is that I don’t like buttercream frosting very much, and homemade chocolate buttercream (that is supposed to taste like coffee/mocha and didn’t) is usually less that amazing to me. However, the girl who sat down next to me had a Chocolate Cupcake of Doom (the wonderful name they give to the chocolate-chocolate) and it looked like the frosting was a lot smoother, chocolatier, and all around better. So I’ll get that next time because the chocolate cake part of the Mocha cupcake was truly delicious.

Oh, and I almost forgot… I went to the White House Wednesday morning. No big deal. A student from last semester was a White House intern, who has since been hired to be on the real staff, and he was able to get the first five people who responded into the departure ceremony for the Marine One helicopter, which is the helicopter that takes the president on short journeys and to Andrew’s Air Force Base to transfer to Air Force One. It was a fantastic experience. I felt like a kid going to Disneyland for the first time just by being behind the fence and in areas that the public generally doesn’t get to go to.

And on Saturday I really didn’t do anything except for work on applications and clean.

Ms Herlocker Goes to Washington: Week 4, February 5-11

As I mentioned last week, I made Maple-Bacon Cupcakes for the Super Bowl Party that was hosted by some other LCWS students. They were really well-received. And gigantic. One of the people I know who tried one was impressed that it was my first ever attempt at making a cake product from scratch, because apparently they tasted like I had made them before. It also amused me that everyone was astounded by the idea of bacon in a cupcake, since it doesn't seem that strange to me, I guess because of Icing on the Cupcake.

On Monday I made roast chicken breast, potatoes, carrots, onions, and andouille. It was fantastic. I was really impressed with myself since I was just making it up as I went along and I only looked at recipes for ideas of time and temperature. 

At work I did more filing and accession numbers for books in the GFWC Library. It was a little bittersweet leaving on Friday though, because while I didn’t really like a lot of what I was doing work-wise and the building was never warm, my coworkers in the Women’s History and Resource Center were really nice and they got me a cute card to say thank you. Plus I got to wear jeans to work on Fridays.

On Wednesday we went on a tour of the Pentagon, which was really cool to be able to do and our two guides, one Army, one Navy, were both pretty funny. One of the highlights of the tour was being let in on the Legend of the Purple Water Fountain, which is in a display case on a level we were not allowed to go to. We also got to see the 9/11 memorial and chapel, which are located in the areas where the plane hit the building. The weirdest part of the whole thing though was seeing the quilts that elementary school students had made after the attack, especially the ones by 9 year olds, and realizing that those kids were my age.

On Saturday I went to the Natural History Museum with a few girls from the program. It was really fun getting to know new people and going to that museum, because I remember it pretty well from the last time I was here. We only really got through the first floor though, so I guess I’ll have to go back sometime. Darn. ;)

I think that about wraps up Week 4. Not a whole lot happened, making for a fairly quiet week.

Ms Herlocker Goes to Washington: Week 3, January 29-February 4

On Sunday afternoon, my roommates and I embarked on a journey around the Tidal Basin to see the Thomas Jefferson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Martin Luther King Jr. memorials. It was a very nice day and a fairly long walk. We observed that the walk would have been even nicer had the cherry blossom trees been in bloom. I noted that the are 44 steps up to the top of the Jefferson memorial, plus three more once you are inside the building itself. I still have no idea what the significance of the step-counting is.  The memorials were as awe-inspiring as always, and the MLK one even more so, as this was the first time any of us had seen it. Because it was cold and dinner time we grabbed Chipotle on the way back. And to round off the day, I introduced Melissa and Becca to the glorious joy that is Psych!

On Monday I returned to the Holocaust museum to get my security badging done. For some reason when we were doing my fingerprinting the machine really didn't like my fingers. The basic way that used to be done with ink went by smoothly but for some reason when we did the new finger rolling for extra security approximately seven out of ten of my fingers would register. But apparently that didn't matter too much because I've been cleared and I just have to wait for everything to process. I then headed over to the GFWC with a huge grin on my face and a plan to try and figure out how I was going together to work on Thursday. Needless to say, I got a little lost and confused. Thank you Google Maps for iPhone. In honor of Chinese New Year, we had a catered lunch of pretty decent Chinese food (as far as Orange and General Tso's Chicken can be considered Chinese...) and I got to know some of the other people who work in my department that I'd never really talked to very much. I spent the remainder of the week finishing the magazines project, filing donations records, cataloging donated books from the GFWC library (which included my textbook from Women's History with Dr. Reaves and a book version of a video she had shown us), and organizing slides. I think the slides are one of my favorite projects here because they bring back memories of looking at slides at Granny and Grampa's house years ago.

As part of the requirements for LCWS, we have to attend a Congressional Subcommittee Hearing, so Becca, Melissa, and I took advantage of our late Wednesday Field Trip and headed to Capitol Hill. The Hearing we chose to attend was an investigation into the EPA's investigation of hydraulic fracturing in Pavilion, Wyoming. The most exciting part of the hearing was at the beginning when, Josh Fox, the HBO documentarian best known for Gasland, was arrested for refusing to cooperate with procedure and stay in the press gallery. This lead to a motion, after his removal, to let him return that was, after a forty minute recess due to an inability to reach a quorum, shot down twice in a 7-6 vote. The hearing itself was fairly boring and roundabout. Nothing was concluded and most of the Congressmen left fairly quickly into the proceedings. After the hearing we had to rush back to the apartments for our roommate agreement meeting, which went quite smoothly.

Wednesday afternoon's "field trip" was to the LCWS Offices where we listened to presentations from the Peace Corps, Lutheran Volunteer Corps, Americorps, and a similar Jesuit Volunteer group. It was interesting, and I'm lucky I'm as young as I am if I were to consider doing any of them since the Peace Corps'  application process takes a year!

Class was uneventful, but I did a lot of cooking this week! On Friday I through together some Gnocchi from Trader Joes with some garlicky spinach. On Saturday, I used up some tomato and made a pasta sauce completely from scratch. And on Sunday I made Maple-Bacon Cupcakes for the Super Bowl. It was a very successful weekend for cooking.

All in all, not a very exciting week since the Metro was closed at Rosslyn station for track work on Super Bowl weekend, so we couldn't really go anywhere. I did finally try a Georgetown Cupcakes (a cupcakery with its own show on TLC) and I have to say that while it was good, I wasn't all that impressed.

Ms Herlocker Goes to Washington: Week 2, January 22-28

My week began Sunday morning with an adventure around McPherson Square to find the church I would be attending, Luther Place Memorial. Luther Place is a really cool church. The building is completely different architecturally from the rest of the city; while everything here is either Greco-Roman style or modern high-rise style, Luther Place looks like many of the pictures I’ve seen of churches in Germany. There is a statue of Martin Luther out front, which in and of itself seems almost out of place in Washington DC, and the church is red brick with murals of human rights leaders on the outside alcoves. Inside there are many really cool stained glass windows, which I will eventually photograph, that have portraits of Protestant reformers (John Calvin, Ulrich Zwingli, Jan Huss, etc.) and church things (the Eucharist, the Ten Commandment Tablets, etc.) around the side and behind the altar there are stained glass portraits of Martin Luther, Martin Luther King Jr., Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Harriet Tubman. As a congregation, the church is very invested in human rights causes. They are completely welcoming to everybody, they have ASL translation during worship, and they have very strong Rwanda connections, specifically they have a sister parish… in Kirhe… and they know Pastor John Rutsinditwarne… and Bishop Mugabe… :) So, basically I tried to find Bethel.

After church I decided that I wanted to wander around the Mall, take pictures, go to the National Museum of American History, and have some alone time. I ended up spending four hours in Mom’s Museum slowly walking through every single exhibit, reading almost every word, and enjoying being surrounded by history. In the exhibit about the Presidency, there was a podium where a person could step into the president’s shoes and give one of three speeches: FDR’s “Only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” JFK’s “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country,” and Reagan’s “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” I waited until the room had sort of cleared and took to the podium, eloquently and quietly encouraging my fellow Americans to think about how they can contribute to the well-being of their nation. If elected, I would need to be trained in how to talk slower though. I was a bit faster than the TelePrompTer. :)

It was very cool to see all the exhibits and how they had been updated in the past 7 years. The First Ladies' exhibit was expanded and there were a couple different sections of the pop culture icons. The pop culture displays included the classics, like the original Muppets and Dorothy's slippers, and new additions, such as Apolo Anton Ono's speed skates from the 2002 Olympics and Farrah Fawcett's bathing suit from the poster.

After the museum, I made my way over to the Lincoln Memorial, stopping at the Washington Monument and WWII Memorial on the way there. At the Lincoln Memorial, I said "Hi" to Lincoln for Granny and counted that there are 59 steps from the ground to the top. And I have no idea what the significance of that could be or why I counted.

After Lincoln, which was, of course, way more crowded on Sunday than it had been in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, I wandered around the area trying to figure out which Metro Station I needed to go to in order to get home. While doing this, it was getting steadily colder, but I visited the Korean War Memorial anyway since I was there and I hand’t realized how close they all were to each other. I think the Korean War Memorial is still my favorite of all the memorials I’ve seen (I’ve yet to go to MLK), and it’s especially eerie with a light crust of snow on the terrified soldiers just as the tendrils of dusk were starting to creep around the sky.

Eventually, I made my way to the Foggy Bottom Metro, where my phone had sent me. This was possibly the longest and coldest mile I had walked in a long time. But I made it home safely, stopping at Chipotle for dinner. You never really appreciate how good food tastes until you haven’t eaten much during the day and you just walked around in very cold weather for a couple of hours.

This past week at work was somewhat interesting. On Monday and Tuesday, I spent the day watching videos from the archives of the GFWC that were filmed mostly between the late 1980s to about 2003ish. One of the videos I watched was a discussion about the plans of the GFWC moving forward into the future, in which Betty Friedan was a guest. On Thursday, I spent the day on the floor organizing boxes of old issues of the GFWC’s magazine and making a spreadsheet with them so that on Friday I could spend the day checking which of the magazines need to be scanned and put into PastPerfect, which is a museum archival program. After I figured out which magazines still needed scanning, I moved on to setting up how they would be sold on the GFWC website.

In LCWS fun, on Tuesday night they hosted a viewing party for the State of the Union with free pizza, which was a really great event where I got to continue getting to know other people from the program outside of my roommates. On Wednesday, our field trip was to learn about a volunteer opportunity available to us at the homeless shelter behind Luther Place. It was very interesting, and I’m considering doing some of my hours there.

I’ve been bonding with my roommates this week through adventures to Trader Joe’s, movie watching, class, homework, and, of course, the universal bonding agent, food. This week Melissa was in charge of Wednesday dinner, but I ended up helping anyway by lending advice, which was fun. On Thursday, I decided to test out a super vegetarian meal idea I had had, and it was surprisingly successful. I had a quinoa, zucchini, and sweet potato frozen dish from Trader Joe’s, Quorn Chik’n patties (some sort of fake meat version of chicken breast), and a little tomato paste, I put them all together, and everyone seemed to enjoy it. Then on Friday, on my way home from work, I picked up a half dozen hot glazed Krispy Kreme donuts for my roommates and me (as well as a paper hat each). For the final food fun of the week, on Saturday, I made oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. :)

This week has been really long and I can’t believe I’ve only been living here for two weeks. I feel really adjusted to living in the city, commuting, having an apartment, and living with a new set of people.