Day 2

Thanks for your comments, everyone. I feel affirmed. I even made it onto the RUF homepage, on my very first day! What an honor. But what pressure--now I feel like I really have to write something worthwhile...

As Rachel, my sister, mentioned in her comment, I am indeed in Washington DC. I am here for a month, interning with Congressman John Sullivan, of Oklahoma District 1.

"Congressman Sullivan's office, this is Sally..." Yeah. Today was my first day and I'm already sick of the word "constituent." My basic duties are answering phone calls from constituents, entering constituent information into their vast database, and giving tours to constituents. I followed a tour around today (I dislike the very word "tour." How exactly do you even pronounce it? Tours are terrible. Especially big ones. You're just led around like a herd of animals blindly following some person putting on a fake pleasant attitude, giving you tons of random facts and information). Soon I will be expected to give them. I realized on this tour that one of the primary jobs of the lowly interning tour-giver is to take pictures of the eager constituents by Will Rogers, George Washington, Lady Liberty, etc. The lowly intern must walk across the Capitol Rotunda and demonstrate the terrible acoustics that allow you to hear whispered conversations from yards away. The lowly intern must tell you about How These Pillars Are The Only Things Surviving In This Portion Of The Capitol After The British Stormed During The War Of 1812. Look, you can even see the bullet holes in the pillars!

okay, it's really not all that bad. I'm pretty good at remembering random facts, which is what the eager constituents like to hear. So hopefully it will be okay. And really, today was mainly just trying to remember how to do everything, where to go when, what to say on the phone...I spent most of the day trying not to feel stupid. It should be better when I know what I'm doing. I'm at the Capitol! that's pretty crazy.

Washington DC....It's a weird place. I think I like it. It reminds me in a lot of ways of what I consider to be my home--Almaty, Kazakhstan. People walking on the streets, using public transportation, the absence of parking lots, the absence of the enormous wide-open spaces that dominate Oklahoma. The buildings are right up against the street. You just walk into them straight off the street. I feel like it's not like that in Oklahoma. People don't walk anywhere there. In OK they actually follow traffic laws. Why would you do that?? Just cross the street anytime! Ignore traffic lights! Look out for yourself, and don't expect cars to stop for you! At last, a city that runs the way I'm used to. Anarchy is best....right? It works for me.

Drivers use their horns much more freely in DC. That's so liberating. I decided earlier that horn-honking should be a protected first-amendment right, if it isn't already. It's such a good way to communicate.

There are lots of sunglasses and business suits in Washington DC. Also sometimes the streets smell like rotting food. That made me feel at home. So did the outdoor farmers' market.

The places I have felt most at home, since coming back to the States, are Colorado (mountains, but still not as good as the ones I left behind), and to some extent, the big cities: New York, Boston, New Orleans, Seattle, Washington D.C.

But Oklahoma is my home for now, so I'm working on it. I like it too, but you have to learn to look at it and like it in a different way.

I have written way too much. But I have concluded, from my vast, two-day experience, that the best condition in which to write blog posts, is that of "exhausted." In this state I now leave you.