One Week Down, Ten to Go

I made it through the first week of my internship! It's been absolutely exhausting. The office is very hectic and it's been hard to learn everything - acronyms, current events, even how to get around! But things have slowly been getting better. I've gotten to attend a lot of really interesting meetings and I'm finally being given more responsibility. I can tell it's going to be a busy quarter, since I've been working 9-hour days all week with no real lunch break. Preview of what's to come if I work in a law firm, maybe?

I've had to venture way outside of my comfort zone this week. First of all, COOKING. After two years of eating food from the dining commons, I'm not enjoying cooking all my meals. I've had a couple of dinners consisting of oatmeal or a large salad, just because it's easy and I'm too tired after getting home from work. Another new thing for me was taking the Metrobus everywhere. I'm finally learning how unreliable DC public transportation can be... I ended up walking to and from work a couple of times, just because the buses took too long to come! Lastly, I've gotten to take a taxi for the first time (while going to an embassy on an internship errand). I don't spend enough time in big cities to have taken one before, so that's something I can cross off my bucket list. Not that I have a bucket list... but if I did have one, taking a taxi might have been on there. Maybe.

Other than work and all these new additions to my life (some welcome, some not), I've been busy with Global Law Brigades and the Psych lab I'm managing. I also started classes last night (with my Washington Ethics elective), so soon I'll have to get back to school-mode again. It'll be hard finding the energy to devote to everything, but I'm confident I can do it as long as I can catch up on sleep over the weekends! I can't exactly sleep until noon this weekend with all the site-seeing I have planned, but I should be able to recharge a bit regardless.

Hello from DC

Just a quick update to say that I'm finally in Washington, DC! I'll be here the next 11 weeks and I couldn't be more excited. (Of course, I'm also nervous, terrified, ecstatic, and in denial about which coast I'm on.)

Here's me at the airport at 4:30am California time...

My internship starts tomorrow morning, which isn't quite so fantastic considering I'm still jet-lagged after landing this afternoon. At least I'm almost finished unpacking and settling in!

If you want more updates on my DC experience, don't forget to check out my official DC blog for the quarter. I'm going to do my best to blog a couple of times a week, or even every day if I can manage it!

Goodbye, Summer

Happy Labor Day (and welcome, September)! Even though summer isn't over until the 22nd, to me the beginning of September means that summer is over. Considering autumn is my favorite season and I'm spending it in my favorite city in America, I'm not extremely upset about that... but I still can't believe that summer's almost gone!

What I've done this summer:

1. Worked! A lot. 40 hours per week, often more when you factor in Mondavi Center shows and the occasional tour. And lab managing takes up anywhere from 2 to 15 hours per week, depending on my duties... so overall, definitely kept me busy.

2. Read. Also a lot - my current count is 30 books read over the summer. And I'm not done yet! I'm hoping to finish at least five more before I head off to DC, leaving me with about 20 books to go for the year in order to meet my Goodreads goal of 75 books for 2012.

3. Hung out with my boyfriend. (The "a lot" is practically redundant at this point.) But hey, who else will watch Netflix with me for hours to make up for all the shows that I don't have time to watch during the academic year?

4. Studied for the LSAT. Not exactly a lot. I've completed three practice tests so far, leaving me two behind my current goal. I know I'll catch up, but the only question is when... Moving has definitely thrown off my study schedule!

5. Studied Arabic. Rather infrequently, to be honest. I've learned a few more chapters of vocab and covered a lot of grammar, but to be fair I haven't been studying it regularly and I wouldn't have put in any work if it wasn't for my friend Saliem encouraging me to meet with him weekly for tutoring.

6. Shopped! During high school summers, I always used to visit the mall frequently and spend maybe $50-$100 at a time (depending on how many hours I was working at the bookstore and on what clothes I currently needed). It was social outing for me - but not anymore. Now I'm stuck with online shopping and occasional trips to the outlets if I'm really stuck. Online shopping is definitely a new experience for me, since I'm paranoid about buying clothing if I don't know it will fit me perfectly. For some strange reason, I've had the most success with shoes (which is odd because I have a hard time finding shoes that fit right when I go to actual stores) - I'm currently wearing an amazing pair of black flats I ordered from Payless, and I have some adorable beige booties in my closet waiting for the streets of DC. My adventures with Charlotte Russe's Friday the 13th online sale for non-shoe items were not so fruitful, however, considering the sleeve of one shirt I bought came off in the wash. Oops. And as far as the outlets, I definitely took advantage of the Labor Day sales yesterday when buying a couple of suits for my internship. I bought a dark gray blazer/skirt combo from Ann Taylor and a dark navy pinstriped suit (with both pants and a skirt) from Banana Republic. Spent over $450 yesterday, but at least I have the comfort of knowing that I have amazing suits and will look oh-so-professional  throughout the last two years at Davis and my law school days.

7. Lastly, hung out with friends. My year as an RA was terrible for that. I saw my RA staff members all the time and my fraternity brothers/sisters a lot, considering how much time I spent on fraternity stuff last year. However, I rarely saw my friends from freshman year and wasn't able to keep in touch much with any of my high school friends. Even back in spring quarter freshman year (when I was rushing my pre-law fraternity), my friends in the dorms jokingly referred to me as a ghost because of how little I was around. So this summer I've been doing my best to hang out with friends - game nights, trips to the farmers market - and have been encouraging my high school friends to come visit me in Davis, considering I'm not home in the Bay Area to spend time with them. I have incredible friends and I don't want to lose touch with any of them, so I'm trying to repair the damage of my busy schedule before it's too late.

If I blogged more frequently, I could almost add that as number 8 to this list! But I think I'll cut it off there - you know all about the other things I've been up to (essentially just alternating between obsessing over applying to law school and preparing for DC!!!). And speaking of blogging more frequently... I will do my absolute best to blog every week when I head off to DC later this month. At the very least I'll be updating my DC blog, so I can link over those posts if necessary.

Hope you're enjoying the last of your summer!