Saturday, June 6, 2009

who'll stop the rain? I guess the fire alarm...

Well here I am. Work week 1 down. the rest of it went great. Minus the fact that it literally rained for what felt like 4 days straight. It can be nice when it cools things off, but not when it gets so damn humid. A light drizzle is pretty decent, too. It did finally stop raining sometime saturday, presumably when I was rudely awoken by a fire alarm. Being from Oklahoma (and still asleep at the time) I almost just thought it was the friday tornado siren test. I think that was the only time in my life I wished it actually had been. 

But not the torrential downpour I experienced wednesday night when I was hanging out with a friend of a friend from camp. It was nice to have that connection and it was all kinds of fun. We went to this awesome restaurant called Cafe Asia. (of course I liked it b/c I could live off chinese). Unfortunately, I picked the worst night to forget my umbrella.

As far as work goes, I finally got a desk and got access to the server I need to do a lot of the work. Me and the other 2 interns finished the first drafts of the write-ups for the newsletter/blog we're hoping to get going next week. They helped out SO much! I'm glad I'm working with competent people. Jake and another one of our supervisors are going to look at them over the weekend so we can make corrections, edit, revise, etc. 

I also worked on a list of citations of each time we've been mentioned in the press since February. It's probably not comprehensive and I struggled with it a bit, but all and all I think it went okay. My other big project for the week was a social networking brief on the 7-10 most popular sites in the world (facebook's, essentially, from around the globe.) I was pretty proud of that, but we'll see how the powers that be respond. 

One of the highlights of the week was when a brazilian rapper named MV Bill came and spoke at Meridian. It was incredible. I didn't really know what to expect when I went in to cover it, and didn't really take it seriously beforehand. But, once he got started I was blown away. He's from the town that the movie City of God is based off of. Its a shantytown in rural brazil thats plagued with violence, corruption, and drug trafficking. This isn't unusual in many of the neglected areas where the population is dominantly black. Most people don't realize that so much of the population isn't light-skinned. He's such an accomplished philanthropist and you can tell he actually cares very much about what he's doing. He showed us a DVD he made in which he traveled around and got footage of the tragic conditions in a lot of the places. It was mind-boggling. Much of the background music was him and his lyrics were actually very impressive. The DVD wasn't completely focused on the sad aspects of the situation. There were sections he showed us in which local children were in classrooms starting to get the education they so desperately need. Both parts were very moving and MV Bill actually had to pause after the first bit to gather himself. It was pretty touching. I had to choke back tears a couple of times. We shot footage of it, so hopefully that will be up ASAP.

My new desk is outside the president of our company's office. Its a pretty high traffic area so things can get a bit overwhelming, but its a great way to meet people and he's an awesome guy. regardless, its a bit terrifying to have to answer phones when really important people call him. I actually dropped a really important phone call on Friday, but the person called back and everyone was understanding. I kind of just had to jump into the deep end, but I'm sure it won't be too difficult. His executive assistant will be back from vacation on Monday. Its insane because she actually graduated from lake highlands and her little brother graduated with me. INSANELY small world. Apparently she's incredible at her job and I can't wait to learn a lot from her. 

I'm also kind of relieve that she will be back b/c she has a drivers license, ha. Which is apparently a commodity around here. Another absolutely terrifying part of my week occurred when the big man came out of his office, looked at me, and asked "do you have a drivers license?" when I told him I did he just said "Okay, lets go." And off we were, my first driving experience with DC and it was the most important person in our company. Luckily he drove to the place where is lunch meeting was and I only at to make a straight shot back down a one way street to our building. If I would have had to navigate around I might have ended up in Baltimore, or worse.

I finished my online class and got a A. YAY! I start the seminar workshops and stuff for the gaylord fellowship next week and I'm excited to see what that will bring. It will drive me crazy to take time away from work, but at least I KNOW it will be for an incredible experience.

Friday night was also awesome. I went to hang out with Jake and some of his friends again. They're all so incredible there really aren't enough words to explain. SO intelligent, SO educated, that I don't even feel like its real. We had cocktails and then a few of us went out for a bit. It was such a good time. I don't know what I would do if I didn't have them all to show me around.

Today I did a bit of my first sight-seeing. Me and a couple of friends went to the National Gallery of Art. Once again, I was completely blown away. There's so much to see that its almost impossible NOT to miss out on something. As far as the older works went, the sculptures and landscapes were awesome. I was particularly captivated by a couple of paintings that had fallen trees on them. The colors and details were incredible. The modern art was probably what I favored, though. I saw some Jackson Pollock and  Henri Matisse that were inexplicable awesome. My favorite part was this piece by Thomas Demand and, not surprisingly featured the oval office. It looked like photographs, but instead the artist used magazines and other images to paint a circular view of the room. Then, he took pictures of the paintings and it looked SOOO realistic. Who knows what I will do tonight. Maybe take it easy? Maybe go out again? We shall see. Either way, I'm off.  

Monday, June 1, 2009

note to self: buy better walking shoes

well the weekend is over and it was absolutely incredible. (for the most part) my boss, jake, introduced me to even more of his awesome friends and I can't wait to get to know them. his god sister actually lives in the same building as me and we didn't even know. what are the odds? she's also very very cool. they grew up in south carolina, so i got to hear a lot of awesome stories about plantations and the luxurious old south. on saturday we had brunch at this wonderful place in georgetown and then went on a walk to dupont circle. the weather was gorgeous and has been since i got here. (i think i brought it with me) after the walk we all drank wine for hours. unfortunately i ended up losing my debit card, so i've been living off of credit. SO PRACTICAL.

i had quite the headache sunday, but it gave me a good excuse to work on my dumb online intersession class. thank god it ends next week. very easy 3 hours. then i finally finished angels and demons and watched the movie online. it was absurdly different, but i guess it works as a summer blockbuster. i fell asleep pretty early trying to watch another movie, so i had trouble passing back out. if the dumb air conditioner in my room weren't on the ceiling i would have kicked it off by now. i makes this dumb clicking noise that didn't help my partial insomnia. i eventually woke up at about 6 ish and read some more of that Fareed Zakaria book. GET INVOLVED. 

i made sure to shower early. a bunch of people have moved in and i'm not up for competing or waiting in line to clean myself. for some reason i've developed an obsession for a fruit salad/honey butter croissant combo. best breakfast ever. since the weather has been so nice, the walk to work this morning was incredible. its not exactly down the street, but with an ipod its actually kind of nice. i was pretty nervous about getting there because i didn't know exactly what i was going to be doing. i actually beat my boss to work (go me) and i got to read the times. 

it didnt take long to dive right into work. Meridian is switching their newsletter to an online version, so i'm going to be drafting articles for that for the next couple of weeks. i started with an article about a visit from a group of Tajik Imam's who came to study religious freedom and such in the U.S. its actually very cool. they got to hold a friday prayer session in the actual Capitol building. i bet that was really moving. stay tuned for a link sometime in the future. in the meantime, you should def check out the web site. meridian.org b/c its very cool and getting even better.

I also helped work on expanding our presence on social networking sites like facebook. there's a really awesome girl name Beth who has been working on it for months anon. she's a grad student at GW. sadly, she's headed back to europe this week, so i won't get to work with her very much. but, she's teaching me a lot before she takes off. i helped compile data about social networking sites i'd never even heard of: bebo, hi-5, and linked-in. we're focusing, for now at least, mainly on facebook. so, if you're on it then you should def become a fan of meridian international center. not the group, but the fan page. if you have questions about that, ask me.

In addition, i got to sit in on a briefing with two small delegations from south korea and palestine. it was an interesting experience b/c they had translators and stuff so it was like miniature-UN-esque. in reality, though, it was a snooze. a lecture from a george mason teacher about the basics of american gov't. all info i learned in 8th grade history an intro to american fed gov't freshman year. because of my lack of sleep i had trouble not nodding off. i wasn't, however, as bad as the rando Arab guy from the UK who literally fell asleep or the old white man next to him with a manilla folder full of crosswords. 

lesson of the day: buy walking shoes if you plan to trekk to and fro work. my blisters from the other day are not very happy with me. 

well until next time,

LOVE.