My Summer As a Hilltern, Day 1

Okay, so I’m not really a huge fan of actually writing a blog about myself or anything personal about me, but I figured that since I’m going through such a monumental experience (hello big city!), I should do it. From here on out, all blogs about my internship will be tagged as: my summer as a hilltern.

For those of you who don’t know, or haven’t actively seen my facebook, I have been offered an internship as a Congressional Intern. It’s has been one hell of a long process getting to this point. I spent months, and months, andmonths waiting to hear back from this office and they finally reached me a few weeks ago. It’s been another long process trying to find the right clothes and shoes appropriate for a Congressional Intern, as well as how the hell I was going to pack all of that, plus hangers and makeup, etc into two suitcases. Somehow I managed it, although one of my bags was 15lbs overweight.

So this morning, I woke up at 5:30, showered and got ready for my flight. Nothing too major, except for some reason TSA thought that my bun looked “sketchy” and decided to inspect it. REALLY?! Like my bun is going to have some kind of weapon in it. Anyway, I almost missed my flight because of how poorly the full-body scanners work in speeding up the process and had to sprint to my gate. I boarded my second flight late because I got distracted reading Fifty Shades of Grey in the airport bookstore… Oops! On the flight into DC I talked to a lady who seemed pretty nice, but was a bit scattered. She was coming into the city to have some sort of medical treatment done, she’d apparently (basically) fried her brain from working too hard. I didn’t know it was possible, but apparently it is.

After listening to her advice on how to get a taxi from the airport, I grabbed my luggage (125lbs worth) and made my way to the taxi counter. They’re divided up by taxi services in both Virgina and Maryland, so I’d have to figure out which one could take me to where I’m staying. As I was making my way towards the taxi, shuttle service terminal, one of the men that was waiting for his client (the ones that hold signs with names on them) comes up beside me and asks me if I need a taxi. I told him yes and he said that he’d be willing to give me a taxi rate to wherever I needed to go. Now, I’m a little paranoid as it is and my imagination ran a little wild, so although I said yes to him, I was a little worried. But, when we reached his car the license plates were legitimate, so it was okay.

It turns out that the man he was originally supposed to pick up from the airport was flying in from London and decided not to come in or something. Since he needed to come back into the city anyway, he offered to give me a ride. I was apparently the second intern he’d driven into DC from the airport this week (about a 45 minute ride). This drive was absolutely fantastic! He gave me tons of advice on the city and is apparently a former military officer and foreign diplomat. Now, I was kind of wondering what a foreign diplomat was doing driving cars, but the gist of it is that he was passed over for a promotion and decided to quit and get his law degree and go into private practice. SO, he’s doing his own driving thing when he needs to work and getting his degree when he’s free. This guy took me all the way to my destination and also helped me find an ATM, and kept me 100% occupied during my ride. He even slowed down so that I could take pictures of DC as we approached it.

When I got to my destination, I got my room key, etc and had to lug all of that luggage quite a few blocks to my “home”. It’s definitely not cool out here and by the time I got to my room I was drenched in sweat. A couple of people pointed me in the right direction when I got lost, but otherwise didn’t ask if I needed any help… and I was visibly struggling. There’s an interesting difference between this kind of south and the south from back home. People can be nice, but they otherwise lookout for themselves.

I spent quite a while unpacking my room and organizing it to how I wanted and eventually a roommate of mine came home. We talked for a bit, then she went and started working on some work she brought home from her job/internship. I went to her room and convinced her (not very difficult, thankfully!) to show me around. So we went and ate and walked around the block a bit and she pointed out different things to me. We went on a run later on this evening and ran past the World Bank and we could see the Washington Monument from where we were. We decided that the next time we went out we’d have a destination in mind; like the White House or something.

So, that’s basically what I did today! Tomorrow I’m going to run a bunch of errands and ride the Metro to make sure I can do it on my own, haha.