The past week

Since my last post was so devoid of photos I'll start this one off right. Here's one of me in my cubicle, which is only that clean because it was Open House night and had to be that clean. Don't worry it's already nerve-wrackingly messy again.



Ah my fellow Instituational Advancement Interns. Ashley on left Mary-Ellen on right. They're a crazy bunch. What can I say?


We had our annual Open House on Wednesday night. It was quite the shindig. TONS of people! Here's my boss (on the right) looking thrilled to be there. Here's our founder and CEO, Zainab Salbi (on the left) and the head of our board of directors at our Open House. I HIGHLY recommend Zainab's first book Between Two Worlds. It's excellent! And since I work there now I recommend the new one too, The Other Side of War. It's more of a photo album, but it has some great stories too.
Thursday night my roommate Ellie a

nd I went to Ford's Theater to see State of the Union which was very very good. It's about a presidential candidate hopeful in like 1946 but a LOT of the ideas and political backstabbing and everything ring true today. It was written about 50 years ago, so it was strange how relevant it all was. I guess nothing ever really changes. Here's a shot of the theater.

Saturday I got to go to the Library of Congress to get some research done. I got a reading room card so now I have access to all the rooms and I was able to do my research in the Main Reading Room, which is the big circular room that they show on all the postcards and everything. It was really really cool, but I'm also a huge dork, so it evens out.

I'm a ladybug for Halloween! I threw the costume together really last minute for the Dog Costume Ball Saturday night, but it'll even work for clubbing next weekend for all the Halloween parties! I think I look pretty darn cute, but I might be a bit biased.Speaking of cute... here's some of the doggies from the Ball. Dogs in costume are hilarious.

That's about it for the week. Today was all about studying, but tomorrow morning I'll probably sleep in, check out a museum and head to our lecture for the Washington Center. So excited. Hope everyone had a good weekend, especially those that went to the Women for Women event in Cleveland! Until next time...

Big Update

Ok... so I can't honestly remember what I've done since a lot of the last post. Most weekdays consist of a lot of work and then I come home and try to catch up on paperwork for ONU and my class, and the Washington Center and then I sleep heavily and wake up the next morning to do it all again.
Two weekends ago I had some good times, saw a lot of the museums around DC. The Postal Museum and the Building Museum and the Freer and Sackler Galleries and the Museum of African Art and the National Archives and I went to see The Last King of Scotland. It's good but very upsetting, which I think is the point. Sunday I went to an organ recital at the National Cathedral which was nothing short of amazing.
Work has slowly been getting better. I'm becoming more friends with people in the office and I'm getting more responsibility. My Midwestern work ethic is becoming a problem though. In fact, it may be my worst enemy. I tend to get identical tasks done faster than the other interns and therefore get more jobs throughout the day. On the plus side it makes me look really good to my supervisors, and I've even gotten the attention of some other departments. In fact, one of the top executives in the organization told me to call her when I graduate because she knows she could find a place for me. That felt WONDERFUL. Beyond wonderful... I can't even put it into words. We had our open house tonight and our country directors were there and Zainab spoke and everything. It was really cool. I even told some people how the organization worked and stuff, it was neat to know enough to feel really worthwhile. I even got my own legitimate nametag!!!
The only other big news is that I'm officially applying to work in France next year. I have the application about 90% filled out, which I'm very excited about. A few more things to get done and I'll take it off to the French Embassy here in DC (that's the goal deadline anyway).
I can't believe I have so little time left in DC. I'm kinda sick of the 9-5 plus class and portfolio thing, sometimes it's too much to handle and I get really overwhelmed, but I'm really going to miss living in the big city. The lights the metro the free stuff. It's all going to be VERY missed. Getting back to ONU will be nice though... see my friends and my boyfriend (he gets home in 31 days!!! :) ) and start on the final stretch of the road to GRADUATION!!! When did I get so old? I can't believe I'm about to be done with college. It's really hard to wrap my head around that idea, but I'm working on it.
A few general observations about DC. If there was a soap opera about DC it would be called The Running and the Desperate. Everyone here runs. It makes me feel so lazy, but whatever. Seriously though, if you walk down the National Mall without seeing a runner just assume that nuclear holocaust has hit and you missed it. Most of the runners are pretty polite but there are a few that make it known that they are sooooo much better than you because they're runners. Kiss it. The people are also sadly desperate. I was looking up things to do one weekend and found a Young Professionals mixer. Sounds fun, right? Network, meet some cool people, relax? That is until I read farther and found out it's a "Lock and Key Party". All the females get a padlock and all the males get a key (can we say sexual connotation?) and the idea is to mingle and find the key that opens your lock. ACK. I kept reading on that site because I found it humorous and sadly, or hilariously, that was the most sane idea. There was wine tasting for women... with a sit-down to talk about how to deal with men. There was a cigar tasting for men only with a psychologist to teach them how to talk to women... yeah. What can I say? And then when people here do find someone they IMMEDEATLY get pregnant, as if to mock the singles. I'd like to see their mocking in 12 months when they haven't slept a full night in as long as they can remember, they block out crying, and puke is considered a fashionable accessory. Yeah, talk to me then when I still have enough money and sanity to travel. Hee hee. Joke's on you.
Anywho... the season finale of Project Runway is about to come on, I need to proofread my paper due tomorrow and start writing some papers for the Washington Center. Free night of theater tomorrow, so I'll be at Ford's Theater (think Prez. Lincoln...) to see State of the Union with my roommate Ellie. Should be good times, though it's free so even if it sucks, I'm just out a few hours. Is that terrible of me? Oh well, don't care. :)
Hope this post was enough to tide you over for a few more days. More info to come. If you don't see a post on here by Monday night call and yell at me. Laters!

Hurried Post

Ok I just typed out a whole big entry and then it randomly deleted it. Therefore I will type another nice long one later when I'm not feeling defeated by the evil computer monster. Blast you internet....
I SWEAR this week you'll all get a nice lil' novel to read. Harass me about it if it's not up by Friday.

Sing Along

Hi, my name is Dana
And I work as an intern in DC
I've got a job, one class, and a long commute
One day, my boss came up to me and said
"Yo, are you busy?" I said "No."
She said "Stuff this envelope with your right hand."

Hi, my name is Dana
And I work as an intern in DC
I've got a job, one class, and a long commute
One day, my boss came up to me and said
"Yo, are you busy?" I said "No."
She said "Enter this data with your left hand."

Hi, my name is Dana
And I work as an intern in DC
I've got a job, one class, and a long commute
One day, my boss came up to me and said
"Yo, are you busy?" I said "No."
She said "Send these packets with your right foot."

Hi, my name is Dana
And I work as an intern in DC
I've got a job, one class, and a long commute
One day, my boss came up to me and said
"Yo, are you busy?" I said "No."
She said "Copy these CDs with your left foot."

Hi, my name is Dana
And I work as an intern in DC
I've got a job, one class, and a long commute
One day, my boss came up to me and said
"Yo, are you busy?" I said "No."
She said "Stamp, seal, and send these letters with your tongue."

Hi, my name is Dana
And I work as an intern in DC
I've got a job, one class, and a long commute
One day, my boss came up to me and said
"Yo, are you busy?" I said "Yes actually! On top of this job I have a class that I have to write papers in every week, a portfolio to create before I leave Washington, classes to schedule and a graduation application to complete, and an application to fill you so I can teach in France next year. So I am busy thank you very much!!"

And then I woke up and realized that the last verse was just a dream I had.

Sorry for abandoning the blog lately. This weekend is all about doing nothing and catching up on my personal life, which has been badly neglected as of late. I promise a more complete update of my activities here in Washington this weekend!!

What a Weekend

I love weekends. Always so much to do. Some of those things are great and others are... well... not so good. But let's focus on the plethora of great things that happened this weekend and that would mainly be Saturday!! (Today I found some French magazines at a Border's in Georgetown... but that's only exciting to me because I'm a French dork.)
Saturday morning I went and fed the homeless at a soup kitchen which was kinda fun. In a shady part of town, but we went as a group with our RA, and it was during the day and not really all that shady, so it was all good. Then I headed for the National Mall to check out the National Book Festival. Authors and poets reading from their works and signing and everything!! I got some pictures for my mom. (She's an elementary school librarian.)
Ever heard of a little book called Holes? Disney made a movie of it too, with Shia Labouef. Well here's the man who wrote it: Louis Sachr.
Mom, to save any of these to your desktop right click on the picture and hit "Save Picture As". Here's Louis signing a book for his half mile long line of adoring fans. I'm really not kidding, the line was ridiculous!!!
I used to LOVE Arthur!! (Ok, I admit it, there's still a part of me that does.) But he was there too. So was the Magic School Bus and a whole crew of strange new generation PBS characters... when did I get so old!?
After the Book Festival I went to the National Gallery of Art and saw "Au Bonheur des Dames". It's a silent, black and white French film from the late '20s. And they had a group in from France to play the soudtrack along with it LIVE. It was so cool!!! The little black dialogue boxes that came up were in French and everything. It's even based on an Emile Zola book. It was just really cool. I felt uber-cultured sitting there watching it. Since I was in town around the time of the Millenium Stage events I went over to the Kennedy Center and I am SO glad that I did. They were having Asia Dance perform as part of the Dance DC Festival. All of the groups were amazing and fascinating, but the Indian ladies that performed second were very good, partly because of their facial expressions, which I don't think you can see on the video, and the group from the group from the Phillipines completely stole the show. Go to http://www.kennedy-center.org/programs/millennium/archive.html# and watch the video from September 30th. The Philippines Group starts around minute 50 or so, if you want to fast froward. Oh, and did I mention that I got there early enough to get third row seats!!! It was SO cool to see up close! So that was my Saturday!

Moving back to add some pictures from the past week. I walked home along the Potomac on Friday evening and got some GREAT pictures of the monuments across the river. Not sure why there's only a shadow on the Washington Monument, but it's cool anyway.

I stopped at Theodore Roosevelt Island on my walk too. FABULOUS!! Great trails through woods and almost no people. Definitely going back when the leaves change. Great place for running. Took a dorky self portrait since I realized I haven't put many pictures of me IN Washington up.
Thursday I went to the Kennedy Center and saw Czechomor, the Czech rock group. Very good!
Wednesday was the book party at National Geographic. From left to right is Sylvia Plachy (photographer for the book and Adrien Brody's mom), Zainab Salbi (my boss and founder/CEO of Women fo Women), Lekha Singh (photographer), and the women in charge of National Geographic's Book Division.
That's my fellow intern, Mary Ellen. She's crazy like that, but that's why I like her. And I SWEAR that's water in her glass.
Oh, and I stumbled upon the Cathedral of Saint Matthew, the church JFK went to in DC.

That's it for this week. Laters y'all!