Whew....

So, I might've temporarily forgotten how to breathe. I'm not sure if it's permanent or not, but I think I might recover eventually. We'll see. Why this sudden development? Well, let's just say I have had the most intense last couple of days ever.

It all started with Kara and David's wedding, which could not have been more beautiful/fun/wonderful/awesome/amazing/etc. Anyway, it was so much fun! I think I danced for at least three hours solid. It was so good to see everybody and dance and be together. (sappy moment, sorry 'bout that). Anyway, after the wedding I left Longview at 11:30 p.m. and started driving to Austin.

The reason that I left in the middle of the night, is because my plane for D.C. left at 7:00 a.m. from the Austin airport. It was crazy! I drove all through the night and finally got to Austin at 4:45. I walked in the front door, just as my parents' alarm was going off so that they would wake up so that we could go to the airport. I had just enough time to take a shower and then 'sleep' on the couch for 10 minutes before we left to get on the plane.

After two plane rides and my first visit to the great city of Chicago, we reached D.C. I'm not sure what I expected. In fact, I think I may have heard so many varying accounts of D.C. that I couldn't have known what to expect if I had wanted to. As soon as our plane got in, we went to the hotel, and dropped off our bags.

We grabbed a taxi and drove over to my new little house. I walked in the front door, and was a little sad to see that it looked basically like a dorm, complete with modular furniture and couches that could've come out of the basement of the MSC. Anyway, it's in a nice side of town and my roommates are nice. We'll see how it goes. I'm trying to stay positive.

So, after we visited my little house, we walked to Union Station and searched for the Metro station in vain. Being completely unversed in Washingtonian-ness, I was unaware of the fact that Metro stations are outside of the buildings that they stop at. So, we definitely walked all around Union Station looking for the Metro, and instead we found restaurants, shops, cafes, a huge food court, and an actual train station. Real trains. Not Metro trains...

I was thoroughly perplexed and of course, didn't want to look like a dumb tourist, so I shooed Dad and Tammy along until we found someone to ask, and she pointed us outside to the station. And by station, I really mean escalators descending into a giant rectangular hole in the earth. The three of us walked up to the machines that give you farecards, and all three of us had on the same ridiculous expression, I'm sure. The thing might as well have been written in Chinese, considering how undecipherable the "directions" were. So, luckily, Dad figured it out, and we were able to get into the station.

We boarded the metro and traveled to The Mall. For people like me, who up until a few days ago, didn't know what The Mall was, I'll give a little explanation. The Mall is a grassy area about as wide as a city block that runs all the way between the Capital and the Washington Monument. It is bordered on either side by museums, art galleries, and sculpture gardens. It's absolutely beautiful. Although I have to say that the grass on the mall is the most pitiful ugly grass I have ever seen. It makes me appreciate the beautiful greenness of campus grass sooo much more.

Anyway, my museum is on The Mall. The Smithsonian Museum of American History. It's currently being renovated, and so is not open to the public. We walked by and looked at it for a little bit and then went next door to the Museum of Natural History. Which, by the way, is the museum that houses the Hope Diamond. After that we went to dinner at an amazing Italian restaurant in Georgetown called Filomena. It was so freaking good! I highly recommend it.

I was asleep by 9:30 (8:30 Central Time).

The next morning was my orientation, so I was really really nervous. I had to be there by ten, and Dad and Tammy went with me, and dropped me off just like I was a five year old going to my first day of kindergarten. It was good to have them there though. I walked into the staff entrance and got a visitor's badge and sat and waited with another intern for someone to come meet us.

Another intern walked in and introduced herself as Rachel, the intern of the Intern Coordinator. She's from Dallas and is really sweet. She led us down to a meeting room where we went over the Intern Handbook, which was somewhat informative. Then she took us up to a computer station where we went through a good half hour of computer security training. Good times.

She then showed me and the other girl the offices of both of our supervisors. It's pretty cool walking around the top two floors of the museum because all of the offices are covered in all sorts of wierd stuff. You can tell that their occupants are all rather quirky museum-ish folk. They're all really different and fun to peek into. My office is in a room used for storage of maritime and transportation artifacts. Yes, my office. I have my own desk, computer, and phone, with its own voice mail service. Wow.

The three of us went to lunch in the staff section of the Museum of Natural History and then walked a mile or two to the Smithsonian Human Resources department which is sadly not located on The Mall. There I was photographed and such for my very professional looking name badge which I wear on an official looking lanyard around my neck all the time. (Except for today, because I forgot it...Oops).

I walked back to the museum and met with my supervisor, who is really nice. He gave me a mini-tour of the maritime collections and stuff. At one point we opened up a giant filing cabinet looking thing that was full, completely full!, of scrimshaw. (carved whale bone or ivory). It is an absolutely amazing collection. Hundreds of pieces of the most exquisite carving! Gorgeous! On one of the top shelves there were two old puffy life preservers. Off-handly my supervisor points to them and says "Oh, those are from the Titanic." No, I did not wet myself. I was able to practice self-control. Barely.

I was set to work almost immediately to scan slides of artifacts from a shipwreck into the computer to burn them onto a cd. It was ridiculously time consuming and mind numbing. But the slides were cool, and I took a book off the shelf all about the different kinds of sailing vessels of the 19th century and read it while the thing was scanning.

The next day I continued scanning, and didn't finish scanning until this morning. Lots of scanning...

So anyway, today: I rode the metro to work and listened to a good teaching on the way about the power of the tongue for building people up and for tearing them down. It's amazing the power that words have on people. I got to work and as I was walking in realized that I had forgotten my nametag, and I didn't have nearly enough time to go back and get it, so I had a minor panic attack. Luckily Officer Scott, the security gaurd at the front desk, gave me a visitor's badge and let me in with no problems. My name badge is now securely in my purse, and will not come out again. Ever.

Like I said, I finished my scanning, and then went to lunch in the Sculpture Garden of the National Gallery of Art. It is absolutely beautiful!!!! I love it! After lunch we had a meeting for all the staff of the Division of Work and Industry. It was a little bit like a scene out of the Office. Only just a little less painful. I kid you not, the Department head could be Michael Scott...

After that came the cool part. I went through two books which contain a catalog of all of the ship's logs that we have in the Smithsonian collection. There are over a hundred. My job was to go through them and find the ones that were whaling ships so that we could do more research with them. After writing up my list of the logs of whaling ships I was sent on the hunt to find them. Most of them are in the Archives which are located in another building across The Mall, but some are in my office in the giant filing cabinets.

So with my hands covered in cotton gloves to protect the manuscripts from the oils in my fingers, I scrounged around in the filing cabinets until I found the logs from 5 different ships. I then set them all out on a desk and with a look of pure glee opened my first one.

It was beautiful! The handwriting of the logger was absolutely beautiful. The entries are fascinating, if not hard to read. They talk about all kinds of stuff like, injuries amongst the sailors, ships they came across on the sea, punishments, etc. Really cool stuff. Anyway, what I was looking for were these things called "Whale Stamps." Basically they are small stamps carved out of ivory in the shape of a whale. Every time the whaler would catch and kill a whale, the logger would stamp the log book and in the stamp write the number of barrels of oil they got from the whale. Some entries would have two or three whale stamps and then the log might go for weeks or months without a single whale. One page had 11 stamps!

One of the logs was gorgeous! It was in pristine condition and had beautiful drawings in it. Every time they would come into contact with another ship, the logger would sketch a drawing of it into the log. The were so beautiful and detailed! I loved it!

Anyway, I worked on that till it was time to leave, then headed back home on the Metro.

I've had a couple of down moments since I've been here. Yesterday as I was walking home and kind of almost dreading my new living situation (it's really not that bad at all), I heard the kindest words I have heard from anyone in the city since I've been here. They came from a bum on the side of the road. He was sitting next to his shopping cart piled with junk at a gas station a couple blocks from my house. He said "Happy Tuesday ma'am! Only three more days left until the weekend. You can make it!" I thanked him, and nearly cried I was so touched.

I love and miss you all. Thanks for reading this.