Week 1

The Supreme Court building from Wednesday:

 

The last two days of work were pretty good. I enjoy my work, which at the moment is basically filing photos but I get to look at some really cool stuff. Yesterday I worked on a box of admirals and today I worked on art work, mostly photos of drawings of the USS Boxer and other random events from the Korean War and such. I have to learn were all the photos are kept but I have to re-file some cards so learning isn’t that bad.

The biggest adjustment I’ve had to make is my sleeping hours. The past few nights I’ve gone to bed at 9:30 and fallen asleep before 10 and woke up at 5:45 (for those of you in the CST that’s 8:30, 9, and 4:45). It’s dark when I leave my apartment and only moderately light when I emerge from the metro. The metro ride back in the afternoon is definitely better—fewer people and no rush. The happy part is that I have an extra hour of free time.

On my ride back today, I became one of those people who runs to catch a train, except I wasn’t running only walking quickly. It was strange to be like “Hey! Train…GO!” but in reality, it makes sense when the next train isn’t for 10 minutes.

This week went fast and its still kind of hard to believe I’m not in South Dakota freezing my butt off! The weather has been mostly nice; it rained Tuesday and this weekend is supposed to be icky but not too cold. Most people here would disagree. They are all wearing winter coats, hats, earmuffs, and gloves. I wear my raincoat and walk fast so the wind doesn’t kill my hair. The security guard at the entrance to the Navy Yard I go in saw my driver’s license and said, “this weather doesn’t mean nothing to you does it?” and I was like “nope!” It’s basically amazing.

This weekend is basically exploring and hanging out, with a little bit of homework.