Capitol Hill

I've only lived here for a week, and already I'm beginning to feel like a Washingtonian! Here's my past week at-a-glance:

Monday, September 1st (Labor Day): We took a voyage in some paddle boats for an hour in Tidal Basin, which is right in front of the Jefferson Memorial. Definitely a memorable experience, and worth the $5. We switched off sitting on the back or paddling (this was me, relaxing and getting a tan on the back of the paddleboat).

We also explored the Natural History Museum.
Tuesday: Washington Seminar Orientation and journey on the Metro in groups of four to find the location of our internships. I found the Dirksen Building on Capitol Hill; I decided against going in, and we opted for gelato and paninis at Union Station. Later that night, we went to the Arlington National Cemetery and walked around its somewhat quiet, uncrowded grounds. A very memorable experience at sunset.

Killing time as we wait...what we seem to do best.

Wednesday: Almost all the other interns went to work for the first time, but I wouldn't start till this week. So I slept in, went for a run down to the Lincoln Memorial in the heat of the midday (which, by the way, was AWESOME!), and rearranged my little dorm room with my roommate, Sara. It's all about the feng shui. You'd be proud, Mom, at how we utilized our small space. I feel like we should have been featured on HGTV. That night, a few of us girls were invited to go to a National's baseball game against the Phillies with some interns from the U who had some extra tickets with great seats. It's a great, new stadium and it was fun to be out and about, but I confess--I don't even know if the Nats won. We left just after they surpassed the Phillies, 6-5, in the bottom of the 8th inning. I was with girls, and they wanted to beat the game traffic on the Metro. Can't say that I cared a lot who won...I'm more of a Padres fan.


Thursday: Another free day when most other interns were slaving away at work. I slept in again, and watched Senator Palin's speech from the night before with my roommate. I think it would have been about half as long had she not been interrupted so frequently by the cheering audience! It was really neat to watch her and to feel that she has added yet another twist to this election. My roommate--who also didn't have to work yet--and I went to the National Gallery of Art and pondered on the works of Degas, Gauguin, Mary Cassatt, Van Gogh, and others. There is this really neat special exhibit right now of treasures of ancient Afghanistan--workers at their National Museum had to hide artifacts from the Soviets way back when, and they were hidden in the king's bank or something. Anyway, it wasn't until 2004 that they unpacked all of these treasures and historical artifacts (all the other ancient artifacts that remained on display in the museum had been destroyed). It was really neat--there were pieces of art, jewelry, pottery, and other such objects from all different eras and periods of occupation in Afghanistan. Really neat.

Friday: We had four hours of class. We had an excellent speaker, Lou Hampton, who is a very successful speaker and businessman (and also a member of the Church) here in the area. He was a great lecturer and gave us lots of practical advice about how to communicate well. One thing I really liked that he said was that physiologically speaking, there is no difference between excitement and nervousness. He said that he never gets nervous before speaking (Dad, I'm guessing you don't, either). He said he gets excited, but not nervous. He argued that being nervous, then, is a learned behavior--we have the physiological signs of being excited, but our minds interpret it as being nervous.

Just remember that next time you think you're nervous--are you really getting butterflies from excitement? If you don't know, just tell yourself that you're excited. It's all mental.


Anyway, we spent several hours at the Holocaust Museum that afternoon, till it closed at 5:30. It was really interesting to go to the Holocaust Museum here, versus the one in Israel just weeks ago--Yad Vashem. While they had very distinct differences, I was also surprised at how very similar they were. They even used some of the same pictures, video footage, and imagery in their exhibits. The one here in DC is a bit more heavy feeling, but it's all in the manner it's presented; I feel like the information imparted was very similar, if not the same. At any rate, both were touching and make me want to learn more about this very sad time in history.

Snapshots of the inside of the Holocaust Museum. Designed to feel very much like the inside of some kind of prison.

Saturday: It POURED. I woke up early and went to the gym with my friend, Paige. It was raining heavily on our way there, but we shared one umbrella and made it there somewhat dry. After sweating profusely through a cycling class that I was conned into attending, we peered out the window to see the rain coming down in sheets. The downpour was absolutely torrential. We ventured back into the rain under her umbrella. Inside my shoes were small lakes of water, squish-squishing my way home. My hair was somehow whipped around enough to look like a wet rat's nest, and by the time we got home, the only part of my clothing that was not completely drenched was my shoulder that was touching Paige under the umbrella. We just laughed and tried to make sure we didn't run into any passersby on the sidewalk as we put the umbrella straight in front of us like a shield and charged through the rain.

Whatever big plans I'd had to be a tourist kind of fell through on Saturday. A group went to the National Aquarium, which, they told me, was a bore. After a hot shower and drying off, I got bold again later in the afternoon and went to Barnes and Noble, the best of places to be on such a rainy day.

I LOVE this picture. This was right as my umbrella began to blow inside out for the 20th time. We were laughing so hard...the rain and wind were ridiculous.

That night, a few girls and I wanted to rent a movie and tried to find a Redbox on the other side of George Washington University. It was a fun adventure, but after an hour and a half and a couple of phone calls to customer service, we still couldn't find it. Come to find out, the Redbox is inside the World Bank (a building that takes up two city blocks), and you have to have a government ID to get in. Kinda defeats the purpose of Redbox, no?

Never fear--we were on 1700 Pennsylvania Avenue at that point. And I knew that there happens to be a certain home on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue of certain significance. So we walked down the street and found ourselves in front of the White House. All lit up at night, it was quite a sight to see. It's crazy to think that one can just stumble upon such a place. I live in Washington, D.C.!!!

Well church was just excellent yesterday. I got a new calling, but I probably shouldn't divulge the details till I'm official next week. But I'm really excited about it. And while it is a long, crazy tale, I'll spare you the details of how we finally got to our stake center last night. The point is, we watched Elder Holland's CES fireside talk, and it was amazing. It was exactly what I needed to hear!! If you didn't get to watch it, I strongly recommend reading it as soon as it's put online at ces.lds.org. He just has a way with words and speaks so powerfully!

And the part that you care about most...my internship! Today was my first day. While I wish I could tell you all the amazing things that I saw/did/learned today, it would take way too long, and I'm already really long-winded. Plus I'm not really sure what kinds of things I'm supposed to say or not supposed to say. I'll leave it at this, though: I'm in an office with three other interns: one from Indiana that goes to Notre Dame, one from San Fran that goes to Indiana University, and one from Virginia that just graduated from UVA. I think I'm really going to like my fellow interns, my supervisor, the chief of staff, the permanent staff members who are so willing to share their knowledge with us lowly interns, and the other office we work closely with, Senator Lugar's office.

On my way out of the office today. That's my leftover lunch on the ground...compliments of the Senate cafeteria.

About five different people told me today what a kind, down-to-earth person Senator Lugar is (the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Distinguished Minority Member). And it sounds like he really enjoys getting to know the interns, and makes a point of taking them out to lunch at least a few times each semester! I can't wait for all I'm going to learn here. I know it's going to be a ton of paper pushing, but hey, that's what I signed up for, isn't it?

Today was a monumental day for me, though: today I joined the ranks of the thousands who've worked on Capitol Hill (including my parents). Today I got a security clearance card to work in the Congressional buildings. Today I became an official Senate employee.

Intern or not, it feels kinda cool.