Week Twelve April 28, 2013

I’m pretty sure my week count is off…

At work, I did a few research projects, and contacted media for an event we’re overseeing! Also, I have started my portfolio for the semester, and that isn’t very fun. A lot of the work I have done for my internship is too complicated to print so I quickly need to find a way to do it.

I was accepted into the national communication honor society (Lambda Pi Eta) this week! Yay smartie pants!

A few of my friends and I made two trips to Union Market, where they have restaurants and produce. It’s a really cute place and I am in love with it!

Also, we went to another Nationals game. When tickets are only $17 and you don’t feel like going out to a bar, baseball is probably one of the best choices you can make.

On the train heading to the game, wearing my free Nats hat!

Next week will probably be my last post 😦 It’ll be my last week here and I’ll be home two weeks from now, so I’ll be busy packing and saying my goodbyes to the city! I’m really excited to go home, but I will miss it here. Maybe someday, if the stars allow, I will be back living in DC  🙂

Week Eleven April 21, 2013

This was another busy sightseeing week! For class, we discussed the importance of memorials and how people use them, which was very interesting. We visited Lincoln (yes!), The Korean War memorial, Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, the FDR Memorial, and the WWII Memorial.

On Saturday, I volunteered at a horse rehabilitation farm in The Middle of Nowhere, Maryland. The horses were all really pretty and kindly allowed us to shovel their poop. Surprisingly, shoveling poop was kinda fun!

This is my horse friend, Baja

Then on Sunday, we visited the Botanic Gardens! The plants were all so pretty and we learned quite a bit about plant species.

 

 

Week Ten April 14, 2013

This was a very slow work week and Friday seemed to be the worst day of the week. From the minute I woke up an hour too early, I was grumpy and nothing seemed to be going my way … until about 4 that afternoon. My boss came into the intern office and offered me a ticket to that night’s National’s game. First row behind home plate. All you can eat and all you can drink. Yeah. The spot was pretty sweet.

The Nats ended up losing, but the game went 10 innings, so that was pretty cool for my first professional baseball game.

On Saturday I was awake early to volunteer at the Shirlington dog park with the Animal Welfare group. We spread mulch, dug holes, and most importantly played with puppies.

I got my library card for the Library of Congress this week! I was determined to find Harry Potter and read it at the library, but I don’t know how to find books in a library. It was still really cool to walk around and see all the different books they have. Plus, the library itself is absolutely gorgeous.

We weren’t allowed to take pictures inside, but here’s the water fountain outside!

Also, I finally made it out to Georgetown. Georgetown is so pretty! And the university is amazing. If it weren’t so expensive, I’d most likely transfer. We got Vietnamese food, walked around, shopped, and even saw the stairs from the Exorcist!

Those stairs were really creepy. Some crazy people decided to walk down them, which I don’t think I could ever do.

Weeks Seven, Eight, and Nine April 7, 2013

Well, it’s been a few weeks since I’ve posted. Oops. This’ll be a big post then hopefully I can get back on track of posting weekly.

 

Week Seven

At work a potential client contacted us because they are looking for a PR firm. So the boss came in and asked me to research the company, which I did. Then, he asked for any ideas I may have for if we actually did represent them. We haven’t been in the office on the same days for a while, so I don’t really know what he thinks, but I was just excited to share my ideas!

I made it to the Air and Space Museum this week! This is my second favorite museum (behind American History). Here are a couple pictures:

 

Also, I went to Ben’s Chili Bowl with my class. Everyone needs to get here at least once in their lives. I am absolutely in love with this place. Although I didn’t get a half smoke… Next time 🙂

I held an informational interview this week via email with Dr. Mark Ashwill from Capstone Vietnam. We met while I was in Hanoi last summer and have kept in touch through email. I asked him questions about how he uses his blog and other forms of social media for his company. It was very informative (hence informational) and I got some good advice to make my blog successful.

I found a Dunkin Donuts. They must’ve know that I missed them because rather than giving me one bagel, they gave me four. That basically made my week!

Week Eight

AMERICAN HISTORY MUSEUM!!!

I didn’t get to see the whole museum, but luckily I could never ever get sick of this place so I’ll go back.

I had lunch with a man I met in February at an event we had at work. We had a great conversation with topics ranging from if Lincoln had survived his assassination to why Harry Potter is better than Twilight. If I can talk about Lincoln and Harry Potter with someone, I know they’ll be a good friend.

At our programming we had a speaker who graduated from Westfield! It was very uplifting to meet a comm major who actually has a job. He gave me hope that someday I may do something besides work at McDonald’s.

Then I flew home and saw my puppy … and my family and Timmy. It was a quick visit, but I got a taste of home while also getting far away from the busy city life.

 

Week Nine

After being home, this week seemed to drag. I did get to the gym every day as I train for my Spartan Race!

On Friday I had a tour of the Washington Post! We got to see archives such as the Nixon Resigns paper and their Watergate / Vietnam files. It was a lot of fun to just nerd out and talk newspapers. I did decide that I will not be going into the journalism profession because they said that they get yelled at a lot and I’m just way too sensitive for that. I’ll stick with PR and maybe someday just open my own firm and be a boss.

On Saturday I went to the cherry blossomless Cherry Blossom Festival. There were military bands performing and fireworks! Then on Sunday we walked around the Mall and I finally made it to see the Jefferson Memorial! There were a total of four cherry blossom trees. It was still a gorgeous day, though!

My favorite thing of my entire time in DC happened on Sunday, however. We were playing volleyball on the lawn behind the Jefferson Memorial with a bunch of people. As if that wasn’t awesome enough, a bunch of Asian tourists came and joined us. They didn’t speak a word of English, but we all played together and it was great! Their friends took pictures of all of us together so we’ll probably end up in their scrapbooks 🙂

Here are a few pictures from exploring the “cherry blossoms”:

 

Until next week! … I hope 😉

Week Six March 16, 2013

This week was extremely busy!  Tim visited for  whole seven days, so we did all the touristy things around the city. The day he drove down, we walked the entire National Mall … which is much bigger than we both thought.

A very rude squirrel who took my seat

On the second day Tim was here, we went to the zoo! This has to be my favorite place in the city … minus the gorillas who eat their own vomit. It was a beautiful day for a walk in the zoo though. I even got my first sunburn of the year!

A peacock who really wanted to fight

my new favorite animal – the red panda

Monday after programming, we ran over to the American History museum, which now closes at five so we only had an hour to look around. We did see most of the third floor though, including the C SPAN First Lady’s exhibit! They have inaugural ball dresses from a lot of the first ladies along with other items the first ladies had. We made it over to see the monuments at night and resisted the urge to yell at the 5 million disrespectful children running around. They were all gone by 9 though, so we got some quiet time.

my fascination with Lincoln continues …

We then found time to make it over to Arlington National Cemetery, where I got my second sunburn of the year. We saw where JFK and the rest of the Kennedy’s are buried, the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and we saw my grandmother’s cousin’s grave!

In case you were wondering, I did work this week. I just had so much fun with Timmy that I’d rather brag about our adventure than work 🙂 Unfortunately by Wednesday night I was feeling a little sick from not sleeping very much, so I missed class and took a half day on Thursday. This week, I will be 100% for both though!

 

Week Five … I think March 9, 2013

I’m posting this before week five is officially over. Tim is coming tomorrow and I don’t want to forget to post! I don’t like counting the weeks because that reminds me how little time I have left in DC. Also, because I’m never sure if we should count the first week as one or not. Basically, I’m guessing at this point and we’ll just go with it’s week five. Don’t argue with the blogger.

At work this week, I got to write my first real-life press release! For me, press releases are the best of both worlds because it combines PR and Journalism. Even though I learned how to write press releases in school (thanks to Professor Wef!) I was still nervous that I would not do it right. So I used an old press release for reference and jumped into it. My supervisor told me that I wrote a good draft, so that was uplifting!

Thursday we had a meeting for civic engagement where people came in and told us about their organizations and how we can volunteer. They were all wonderful organizations and I wish I could volunteer with them all! I will be adding an animal welfare page on here once I get all the information I can find, so hang tight if you want to help animals too! I don’t have any pictures for the week, so I’ll just post one of my best friend, Grace, who is a rescue 🙂

I can’t wait to be home and snuggling with my buddy!

Friday there was an International Festival in my apartment building for all of our international students. Over ten countries were represented with presentations, talent shows, and of course food. I have to give a shout out to Iris and the other South Koreans who had the best food of the entire festival AND wrote my name in Korean. It will have a prime spot over my bed as soon as I get a chance and once I’m back at school.

Week Four March 3, 2013

I got to see Ford’s Theater!! We were supposed to be learning about the conspiracy my Mary Surratt and friends to assassinate Lincoln and his administration, but I was too distracted by the fact that Lincoln had been in the same building I was in. We was life masks of when he was alive and the clothes he was shot in and the bed he died in. Whoa!

Lincoln sat here!

Lincoln Life Mask Selfie!

and this is where he died 😦

look! the Globe!

Sorry … I’m Lincoln obsessed. Lincoln Lincoln Lincoln. Ok. I’m done.

At work, I spent most of my week doing media tracking for all of February for our client and their competitors. It was hard work that took a while, but I did it. I always feel so good after completing a big project. Especially when I do it somewhat right!

 

Week Three

I met my Congressman this week! It was a rushed meeting because members of Congress are quite busy, but it was so interesting to meet with Congressman Keating. He told us a little bit about himself then took a couple of questions before we left. Since the meeting was so short, we took a tour of the Capitol building and sat in on a session. Nothing major was happening, but still cool.

I am the second one on the left, joined by other interns from my district. I didn’t know there were so many of us!

My internship was busy this week – the interns are helping to track media coverage for one of our clients. It was a lot to take in, but we handled it well! I was so proud of the four of us when we finished it – I know I was confused 99% of the time!

On Friday I met with Iris, Elisa, Michaela, Mariah (another Westfielder), and a few other friends for happy hour. I was expecting happy hour to be a bunch of professionals getting drunk for cheap, but it was just a bunch of people relaxing over cocktails! At least, that’s what we were doing. Also, I won’t complain over a $5 Jack and Coke.

Not much else happened this week. Since things were getting busy, I’ve been getting lazy. Rather than going out to do stuff, I value my pajamas and Pinterest. Eventually I’ll do more sightseeing…

Week Two February 19, 2013

I met the president of the company. SO COOL! He even gave me work to do for him which made me feel super special.

This week I realized how hard it is to cook for yourself. The first two weeks we were going out to eat every night, but that’s too expensive. And cooking? It’s not easy to juggle between class and work. Thank goodness for crockpots 🙂

On Sunday, we went on a walking tour for my class. We saw the Octagon House, built by John Tayloe – a man who allegedly killed his two daughters because they had eloped and didn’t get his permission. But the house was the first one built in what is now Washington DC! We also say the Blair House where friends of the president stay, the Decatur house (they were friends of many important people, but Mr. Decatur died in a gun dual), and the Old Post Office Pavilion. Worst elevator ride EVER. But worth it for the view.

We also hosted an event at the Rayburn House for a client this week! For those reading who aren’t familiar with the DC area, the Rayburn House is a part of Capitol Hill where politicians have their offices. It was so exciting to be there – I could feel the political buzz! Also, here is where I had my first lesson in networking. Basically, all you need to do is talk to people. How weird is that?

My boyfriend, Tim, cam to visit for the weekend! We hung out with his brother mostly, but we got to see the Natural History museum! It was just great to see him again. I guess I kinda missed him…

Timmy as a caveman

Hippos – my favorite!

The Hope Diamond

Week One Plus Getting Here February 9, 2013

Holy crap. I’m in DC. A ten hour drive from home. WHAT WAS I THINKING?!

At least my apartment is beautiful. Not to mention, I’M IN WASHINGTON DC!! Ever since my first visit here I have wanted to move down. Well, my dream is becoming a reality. I may not be working for the CIA like I had hoped, but PR is my new passion and I hope it’s a permanent one.

My roommates are amazing. Iris is from South Korea, Elisa is from Canada and originally from Cuba, and Claudia is from Mexico. I hope to learn a lot about their countries while also teaching them about America.

Shortly after arriving, I got a call from my dad telling me that my grandfather had passed away. I wanted so badly to pack my bags back up and go home. However, my family convinced me and supported me in staying so I would not delay my internship anymore. We won’t linger on this subject, though. Even if I miss Grandpa Carl … a lot…

I came down to DC with my best friend, Michaela, so of course I met her roommates – Kara, Bri, and Meghan. I could see us becoming fast friends.

The Media and Communications department took us to the Newseum for a scavenger hunt where I completely nerded out and wanted to read EVERYTHING. But, since we were doing a scavenger hunt we kind of had to go quickly. My group won, by the way 🙂

An amazing view of the Capitol

A piece from the North Tower of the World Trade Center

DC isn’t all fun and games – I’m interning with Crosby-Volmer International Communications. Work started slowly. I started on Wednesday, January 30, and basically researched our biggest client. That Thursday and Friday I had more work, but it was still slow. Week two brought more work – we were researching a potential client so that was very interesting to me. I’m a nerd, so I like research. There was a conference call I even got to listen in on which was such a cool experience. Week two was when I began to love my internship!

For our first weekend we wanted to do something fun. What’s more fun than the zoo?! It was too cold out for most of the animals, of course it was snowing, but we saw pandas! And other fun animals…

sleepy panda

my friends – the meerkats!

Going out on the first weekend was strange. Michaela and I went out for a couple beers at an Irish pub a couple blocks away from the Capitol. When we were waiting for the TWC shuttle that night, I looked to my right and was astonished that I was literally living within walking distance of one of the most important buildings in the country.

Last, but not least, The Superbowl. Watching the Superbowl in DC as a Patriots fan was tough. Especially since the Ravens won. It was an experience, end of discussion.