Ms Herlocker Goes To Washington: Week 1, January 14-22

After a long and arduous journey of two planes and a taxi ride, I had arrived in the River Place Apartment Complex in Arlington, Virginia. But the journey wasn’t over. After getting our keys from the LCWS Office, Evan and I had to walk all the way back across the complex to our building with our large, awkward suitcases.

In my apartment, I got my clothes settled and excitedly began getting to know my new roommates, Melissa, Becca, and Megan, ending the night with a wonderful viewing of Saturday Night Live, hosted by the fantastic Daniel Radcliffe.

The following day was further spent settling and getting groceries. It’s pretty convenient that Safeway is a few blocks up the street for when I want to get mainstream deliciousness like Milanos and Eggos. I think my favorite discovery though was that CVS (which is right behind the apartments) sells Honey Graham Oh’s in smallish boxes for only $1. Potentially the best value ever. We also had more Roommate Bonding watchingTangled and swooning over Flynn Rider/Eugene Fitzherbert/Zachary Levi.

Monday morning we made our way to the LCWS Office for Orientation. I’m not sure I will ever be oriented into another program in such a wonderful way. Except maybe Disneyland. Or the Dharma Initiative. What made this orientation superior to every orientation ever was that everyone was so sarcastic, which led to fun and hilarity. After orientation, my roommates and I went on an adventure to find where our internships are located. Because I don’t start at the Holocaust Museum until February 13^th, I am interning at the General Federation of Women’s Clubs for the time being. Due to my double internship and Megan having class, our group split at the DuPont Circle Metro Station and continued exploring.

Tuesday was the first day of our internships and so I got to jump right into commuter train traffic, scary tall escalators, and rushing to get to both of my internships, all while wearing a dress and rainboots. I was supposed to get my security clearance badging for the Holocaust Museum done that day but the person in charge of that wasn’t at the museum, so I have to reschedule. But the trip to the Museum was not a waste because my supervisor introduced me to the staff of the Museum. I am so beyond excited to start working there. Everyone is very friendly and I feel like I’m going to fit in just fine.

After leaving the Museum, I made my way across town to the GFWC Headquarters on N Street a few blocks from DuPont Circle. The neighborhood is really cute and the women in the office are very nice. I spent the rest of Tuesday, as well as Thursday and Friday, at Headquarters doing various sorts of archiving jobs, such as making a list of videos, watching and summarizing the videos (such as one of the previous presidents dressing up as women important to the club and a film for the centennial celebration with a killer soundtrack), and scanning old documents.

On Wednesdays we, as a program, go on field trips. To open the semester, we visited the Capitol Building and the Supreme Court. I had been to the Capitol before, so I mostly focused on the various statues of important Americans, such as one of my heroes, Jeanette Rankin. As a tour, it was really short and I wish we could have been able to see more of the Capitol Building, even going up into the scary Rotunda would have been cool. I guess since we went through so much security anyway, it would have made sense to me for us to be able to go to more places in the building. 

After the Capitol building the seven of us who are taking the American Heritage Seminar (more on that to come) needed to go to the Library of Congress so we could get our reader cards, which would allow us to use the Library for our research on that project. Sounds totally cool and worth it, right? Well, maybe on a different day I would have enjoyed it better, but I was already getting a little impatient, plus it was lunchtime, and everyone else in the program got to go explore the National Mall and get lunch while we took another tour and filled out paperwork. Using the library will be super awesome though, and I am actually quite looking forward to it. 

We rejoined the group at the Supreme Court and took a picture on the steps before going in. I, of course, got moved to the front for being short. Yay! Once we got inside the building we made our way through an exhibit about the history of the building before we got to go into the actual courtroom. Even though I was still hungry, I could’t help but be blown away by the thought that I was sitting in the same room where all the important court cases since 1935 had been settled.

Wednesday night meant the first day of classes and I’m really excited about my Wednesday class, which is a CINEMA CLASS. And the first film we’re studying is MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON!! YAY! Obviously, I think this class is going to be really great; my teacher seems to be pretty cool, my classmates seem to be pretty cool, or at least reasonable. Also, another cool thing about the class is that all four of us in my condo are in the class, so on Wednesday nights we make dinner for everyone. As the main cook in the apartment, I started off our semester with a wholesome meal of Kraft Dinner with hot dogs and peas, followed by brownies from Trader Joe's! Yum! :D

My second class is on Thursday nights, which is the American Heritage Seminar. That class is going to be interesting; we’re doing genealogical research into our families, so, even though there is quite a bit done for the Herlockers and Damms, having that already will be helpful for the paper at the end of the semester.

The week concluded with a small get-together in one of the other condos on Friday, a light snowfall, and dinner in Georgetown at the Tombs on Saturday night.

All in all, it’s been a pretty good first week in our nation’s capitol. :)

I'll embed pictures into this post once I figure out how to do that... for now, they'll be on Facebook! See ya next week!!