The Day of the Bagel

I was nervous about today, it being my first Monday and all at the new job, but it turned out to be an actually really fantastic day! I got up early and exercised in our little “lobby” room. By the way, I think that I will probably be trying to go to the gym AFTER work. It’s just too dark and I’m too pressured for time in the morning (sadly, our gym doesn’t open until the too-late hour of 6:30 am—but it doesn’t close until 11:30 pm! Since I have to leave at around 8 am to get to work, even going at 6:30 would mean I would have hardly any time to exercise, take a shower, eat breakfast, and pack lunch before leaving). Plus, I really like to move around after being in the museum for a solid 8 hours! There’s just one problem with my nearly perfect plan: I have to do my shopping and other events after work, such as Institute, Family Home Evening, homework, and special events, like concerts or the ballet... I am seeing “Don Quixote” tomorrow at the Kennedy Center, and I cannot even begin to tell you how utterly STOKED/PUMPED/ENERGIZED I am! I absolutely love the music for this ballet, along with the story, the characters, the setting, and the choreography (which, naturally, varies from performance to performance, but tends to have a lot of the same stylistic Spanish movements—very flashy and sharp!). And I only had to pay $47 for the ticket, which is even lower than the discount price they offered students :)

So, after exercising, showering, and eating breakfast, I packed my bags and put my last bagel in my lunch bag to eat for lunch. The weather outside was really nice—it was a little cold, but not too much, and no rain or snow. Yay! I made it to work on time, and encountered my first and really only problem of the day right at the beginning: My computer wouldn’t work. Rafael, an assistant in another department, tried to help me figure it out, but neither of us could make it do anything, so I eventually gave up and just went to wait for my supervisors. Then I remembered that Addie, the Intern program director, was going to be giving me and the other interns our official “Orientation” today! (Apparently I had arrived a little earlier than the actual schedule) Unfortunately, I didn’t have a working computer to find out when and where to go for orientation! But I was lucky—Addie came by and found me herself, introduced herself, and showed me where we would be meeting. The “Orientation” turned out to be rather informal, since only one of the other five interns could (or needed to—two of them had previously interned there, and knew the drill) come. Her name was Kiera and she was interning with either Member Services or Development—I can’t remember. She seemed really nice and friendly, and quite knowledgeable about the artists in the museum. However, she’s leaving D.C. and finishing her internship the day after Inauguration Day, so I guess we won’t have too long to get to know each other! I get the feeling that I’ll be here for the longest amount of time as an intern, but I’m still excited. When I first came, I was concerned that the small size and imperfect conditions of the museum would make it look less favorable on my resume than would, say, working for the Smithsonian in any of its large, popular art museums. However, I’m finding out that there can be many advantages to working with a small number of people in a small place: You get to know a lot more people, you learn a lot more about each aspect of the museum, and—my favorite—there’s actually a lot of real, interesting (i.e. something other than the stereotypical “stuffing envelopes, delivering mail”) work for me to do!

Orientation took up almost the entire day, from 9:30 until about 3:15. The first person to speak to us was Kelvin, the head of the museum’s security. He’s a really big, and kind of intimidating, but a really friendly guy, and he was pretty straightforward about the rules: We have to sign in and out of the museum every time we come in or leave. If we stay later than 6:30, we need to call security and let them know so they won’t...uh....shoot us by accident on our way out? That’s what I’m guessing, anyway!! I’m definitely not planning on staying later than 6:30, though, so I’m hoping not to have to worry about it in any case :) After Kelvin, people from each department in the program came and gave Kiera and me a ten-minute spiel on their jobs and how they fit into the structure of the museum. It was really interesting and I learned a ton about the way a museum works—it is definitely more involved and complicated than I would have thought! Addie also gave us a very nice packet filled with information and assignments that we would be required to complete as interns. We both got our pictures taken to get ID cards (I get mine tomorrow), which Addie told us we could take with us everywhere to see if we could get discounts at the museums that charge. She is going to put together a calendar of special events and lectures and stuff that we can attend, as well. AND she set up a reading group for us! I’m really thrilled at the prospect of always having something to do or look forward to on the job. Something I really want to do while here is to sit in on some of the meetings. And as the special (read: paid) Coca Cola intern, I also have a few extra fun writing projects that I get to do—yay again!

We had a brief lunch break, but I didn’t really need any lunch because Addie had provided us with orange juice, watermelon, canteloupe and mini-bagels for the meeting—yum! So I went back to my computer (which—wouldn’t you know it!—Vivian and Michelle had managed to fix without any problems whatsoever! I don’t know if I was more relieved or peeved...) until lunch hour was over. A few more people spoke to us, and then we got a free tour of some of the exhibits on display from a nice volunteer docent named Betty. She was a very friendly and sweet elderly lady, but she did have a tic with her eye, and I found it a bit hard after a while to not stare! We got to see all the paintings on the first floor, most of the second floor, and most of the rooms on the third floor. I will definitely want to spend some more time looking at all the exhibits, for sure. We didn’t even make it to the special exhibits, two of which, incidentally, were featured in The Examiner just recently! Check it out: http://www.examiner.com/x-1873-DC-Arts-Examiner~y2008m12d26-Role-Models-photography-at-the-National-Museum-of-Women-in-the-Arts and http://www.examiner.com/p-264742~Mary_Cassatt__Friends_and_Family_at_the_National_Museum_of_Women_in_the_Arts.html .

After Orientation, I went to Vivien and Michelle to see if they had anything special for me to do, and, as it turned out, Michelle was having some frustrations getting an image from the National Geographic Society. So she asked me to walk over there and get it myself, and then take it along with some other stuff to ABC Imaging, so they could turn it into a big fancy poster that we could hang outside the museum in time for the Inauguration. Luckily, both places turned out to be only a few (like ten...which looks longer than it feels, haha) blocks out of my way home. And Michelle told me that I could just go home afterwards, so I was really excited to get out early and just walk. About an hour later, I wasn't quite as excited, but it was too late to stop. I made it to the National Geographic Society without any problems, and the guy who gave me the image was really nice. But then it turned out that Michelle had given me the wrong address for ABC Imaging—yikes! By some heavenly intervention or something, I had decided to check the address on my own just before leaving, and had scribbled it down. I had to wander a little bit to find it, but not too much, and, thankfully, it was there! Then there was more trouble when I went inside—everyone was busily rushing around, there was no one at the front desk (if there was even a front desk; it actually looked like a building full of cubicles when I walked in), and the one person who finally bothered to help me had no clue what I was talking about or what I wanted. So I had to call Michelle and figure out who she had talked to, and then, whew! He turned out to be there, everything turned out to be fine, and I got to walk home the rest of the way with a free conscience and a free pair of hands. I discovered just a few days ago that the black bag I had been carrying with one arm and knocking against my knees/shins could actually fit quite nicely on my shoulder, so I just put all my stuff in it now and carry it everywhere. Thanks again, Sarah—who would have guessed that this would turn out to be one of my most-useful Christmas presents!? Ditto with the “Redwall” DVD, by the way. I watched another episode today during my workout, and was really amused with the cute quaintness of it all. It’s not quite—okay, nothing like—how I imagine the characters or plot (or even how Jacques describes it, really; they take quite a few liberties, heh heh), but I still like watching it, and I’m beginning quite irrationally to wish that there were more for me to watch while here...

Well, after my long walking trip, I got to the Barlow Center and remembered that I needed to do my shopping for the rest of the week (or at least until Friday, when I can shop again, hopefully before the mad rush of visitors to D.C. for the Inauguration). I learned today that I want to do as little of my grocery shopping on Monday as possible—everyone shops then and all the good produce is pretty much gone. I had to go to three stores (and one more than once) before I got everything on my simple list! I’m hoping that Friday or Saturday will be a much more un-popular day to shop—could someone maybe second that assumption? Anyway, with all this gadding about, I was too tired and it was too late for me to make the free concert at the Kennedy Center. Bummer. Perhaps tomorrow I can catch it before the ballet at 7:30 :)

For dinner I just crumbled up some leftover pancakes from Sunday’s munch’n’mingle in a bowl, and added yogurt and grapes. I wasn’t really hungry. Until, of course, we had Family Home Evening at 8 pm and they had to serve DONUTS. The chocolate, cream-filled and raspberry-filled and otherwise unhealthy type... But I guess they fit in nicely with my bagel theme of the day!

Family Home Evening was fun. We met at 8 pm in the Barlow Center, and some people from the Washington D.C. 2nd ward showed up. It was fun to introduce and remember a few of them from Sunday. A particularly nice girl named Taylor, who had introduced herself to me at the munch’n’mingle, went so far in her niceness as to make a list of things for us to do while in D.C.! I think we’re putting them up in our respective bulletin boards, and while I don’t expect to be “bored” too much in my free time here, it will definitely be a handy reference guide.

After our prayer, we had a short lesson by Dan about how we can and ought to be inspired (and, more importantly, what things we should focus on being inspired about), and he featured a favorite YouTube clip of mine which I had stumbled across just in the past month or so: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6wRkzCW5qI See 28 seconds, 46, and 1:08-9 for my favorite moments :)

After the lesson, we played a game which Elise had come up with. She is a really sweet, nice girl, and she was called last week to be one of our FHE coordinators along with Jared. The game went like this: Everyone wrote down someone famous, then all the names were collected and read out loud. Then we all had to try to remember the names while asking people if they were “So-and-so.” If the asker got it right, then the askee was out of the game, and became an asker. If the asker got it wrong, then the askee became the asker, but was still in the game. Theoretically, the last person to have his or her identity revealed was the winner. However, since our group was kind of large and we still didn’t know each other very well, we took too long to get through all of our names, and so there were about 10-12 winners when we called it quits. I was among them, with my secret name “The White Witch,” hahaha. Other names that “won” were “Babe Ruth” (there were TWO of these, but we guessed one. And yes, someone asked me if I was “Babe Ruth.” Sooooooo stereotypical, people), “Alfred Hitchcock,” “Harry Potter,” (incidentally, and I totally kid you NOT, someone asked ME if I were Harry Potter!!!! The very idea!!!!!!!@*&!^*&!!!!!) “Donald Duck,” “The Cookie Monster,” “George Washington,” “Abraham Lincoln,” and (possibly my favorite; it was Jared’s) “Robert Goss” (director of the Washington Seminar program). Valerie was in a second group that was much further along, and she was in the final 3 or so! (Her name, by the way, was “Scarlett O’Hara.”) I got the feeling that the game would have worked better in a group that already knew each other pretty well, since we really didn’t get to know much about each other from knowing that someone had written down a famous person’s name, but it was still kind of fun and kept us all talking and interacting, so I can’t complain too much.

Well, once again I apologize for the deplorable lack of pictures here. As far as I know, the camera is being a good boy, and I hope to use it later in the week when I go a-rambling to more museums, so I’ll try to post more pictures at least before I have opportunity to take more! Perhaps tomorrow...... But with work, the concert, and the ballet, perhaps not. And have I mentioned already how ABSOLUTELY excited I am about this thing!?!??!? Like, to the point of THIS many exclamation points and question marks!?!??!?!?!?!??!??!?!??!!?!?!?!?!??!??!?!?!??!?!!!!!!!!!!!????????!?!?!??