Another pretty crap day.

Well, today was not so good, as you can tell by the subject. I've tweaked my hours at work to Tues-Fri 8-5. It's tiring working that extra hour, and I have no idea why. It's not proportionately tiring. It's way more so. Odd.

Anyway, I ran out of work this morning and opened my big mouth to my supervisor about it, who told me to tell her and she would always find me something to do. I started doing the sudoku puzzle in my Express newspaper (free, daily) and she came by.

"Hi! How are you doing?"
":P I'm so bored."
"Come with me."

It scares me that she's always so efficient like that, and always has this grin like "you asked for it." The Japanese. They are an efficiently scary people.

She ended up loaning me to another department, since mine won't need me until next week. The department is Global Services. I'm not sure exactly what they do, but it involves more databases and spreadsheets. And a headache that's been going on for a while.

See, their old system was...well, old. They were moving to a new system with the apps from this year, and had all the scholars fill out the online apps directly into this new system. But now the new system is broken. So the apps have to be moved back to the old system. BY HAND. Like HAND-TYPING. That's where I come in. Because I am an intern and no one in their right mind who was getting paid for this would do it. But me? I do it for free. :D

The apps are about 24 pages long. It took me about 2 and a half hours to do four of them. I thought that was it. Nope! Global Services Manager Anneke comes by my desk that afternoon when I'm finished with the first four.

"Were you okay with the apps?"
"Oh, yeah, I was fine, no problem."
"Okay, I'm gonna give you more to do."

By "more" she meant "a helluva lot more." I got two done and was working on the third before the system hiccupped on me, I lost all the data, and only have fifteen minutes left. So instead of breaking down to cry, I left for the day. Seemed progressive at the time.

On the way home on the metro, I started feeling ill. I read about halfway, then had to put my book away and just breathe and concentrate on not throwing up on the lovely shiny shoes of the businessman standing next to me. I made it out of the station feeling much better, but still craptastic. I got to the apartment and got an email from my dad asking if I'd picked up the laptop case he shipped to me. I tracked it on FedEx and it had indeed been delivered. I stole my roommate's shoes to go downstairs and pick it up. In my pajamas. Because I just don't care after a long day's work.

I got down there and the attendant was someone I didn't know and hadn't seen before. I've made a point to make friends with the attendants. I told her my apartment number and my name and she said the package had already been signed for.

...What?

I said that I had picked something up a couple of days ago. She said, "Oh, maybe it hasn't been logged yet." And disappeared behind the desk. She came back a few minutes later saying that she didn't see it and then showed me the log where it had been signed. All I could see were a bunch of strange loopies that looked nothing like letters, much less my name, and much much less my signature. I told her so and she looked panicked, kind of like she didn't know what to do. "Oh...um...oh my god...Okay, I'll leave a note here for Caroline in the morning." She wrote down a strange, short-hand synopsis on the situation on a post-it. I explained that I would ask my roommates if they'd picked something up for me. She said okay. I knew none of my roommates had done that. They're all Asian. They have gorgeous, neat lettering and don't know cursive or whatever that language was that was supposed to represent my "signature."

So I've had a package stolen. It was a macbook case from Speck, so it wasn't anything really expensive. I'm disappointed because 1) it seems like Fate has decided I should not have this case because it was supposed to be a xmas present and has been backordered these last three months only to now disappear and 2) I love Fenestra and the security and the apartments and location and everything. I don't want to have to fight with them over paying for this if it was, indeed, stolen. It's their fault. They will pay for it. I just don't want it to get ugly.

And now I've stayed up way past the time I planned to go to bed. I'm looking forward to tomorrow being Friday, even though Saturday I have a field trip with my class to the Freer/Sackler galleries and then to Chinatown for some chow. At least I don't have to leave until 11.

Bad day. :(

Well, I didn't update last night because yesterday was a bad day, and my roomies and I stayed up late discussing things and helping me to feel better. I really have awesome roommates.

The day started before the sun was even up. I'm not a morning person. If the sun isn't up, I don't think the world should be up. It's not natural. But we finally rolled out of bed at about 7am, left here about 7:45 bound for the metro, and rode into the city. It was cold and dusk-like and sprinkling some freezing rain. But the metro was warm, at least.

Since my roomies are in a different program than I am, they got off a stop before mine. My directions turned out to be wrong, but I caught it quickly. Instead of turning left out of the station, I needed to turn right. It was a lot of walking and I wore my rain boots because it was supposed to get really bad. It turns out that rain boots are not for walking long distances, and when they say "a couple blocks" in Washington, it means more like 4-5 Birmingham blocks. Blocks are long here. So my feet ended up being sore, but I made it to the National Housing Center.

We were sent into the auditorium, where the first five rows were dedicated to Criminal Justice and Law students and the last rows were International Affairs (which I consistently refer to as "International Studies" and they have to correct me). Two of our advisors introduce themselves (including my own, Tomoko Shimizu) and we're split into groups of four and sent off to the Freer Gallery to do a scavenger hunt all morning. I was disappointed. I was prepared to listen to lectures and soak up information, but instead we're doing a scavenger hunt in a Smithsonian art gallery? Wow.

Well, one of the girls in my group was from Birmingham and her brother goes to UAB (I was wearing my hoodie) so I thought we would click right away. On the way to the metro, I figured out that that wasn't going to happen. These people liked to complain. A lot. They were not very happy about being sent on a scavenger hunt anyway, apparently because we're too old to be doing that (I've done at least two of these in art history courses) and because who cares about art history, we're political science majors. (I've discovered that I have a distaste for poli-sci majors, by the way.) Anyway, none of them had been here before, and I've been several times, so I offered to lead. But in order to lead, people have to willingly follow you, which these three did not. I consistently had to shout, "HEY!" to get them to come with me in the right direction. I was getting very annoyed.

We got to the Freer Gallery and they didn't even open for another half hour. So the caffeine addicts sought out directions to the nearest Starbucks and we went inside for a few minutes. They insisted on trying to look up the answers with our phones, which didn't really work because the kind of information you find in an art gallery doesn't work like that. I knew some of the answers already because quite a few of them dealt with Asian art and a couple just from knowing about Ancient Egypt. I was proclaimed weird for knowing these facts. Sigh.

We trekked back over to the art gallery and started on our scavenger hunt, these guys putting way more effort into trying to find someone who knew the answers than actually looking for them. After an hour, I just didn't care anymore. I felt like crying, because that's what I do when I feel intense emotions, whether it's frustration, anger, sadness, or happiness. I was definitely frustrated here because I thought all the students here would be serious about their studies and wanting to make this an awesome experience. These guys just wanted coffee and shopping and sleep. So basically we half-heartedly filled out the questionnaire (I have to admit that when asked how to handle a certain artifact and my group decided to write "very carefully" that that was pretty funny) and they set off for an early lunch. But I wanted to meet my advisor face-to-face and also wanted to eat with my parents because I couldn't take the group anymore.

I introduced myself to Tomoko and we chatted a bit. She said that she would send me an email of a bunch of Japan-oriented events and organizations around DC. Oh yeah. We've bonded.

I went to meet my parents at Dupont Circle and we decided on lunch at a place called Cosí. It's a sandwich place that makes its own bread. The bread itself was really good, but I ordered a pizza that was not so good. Of course, I was already upset and nearing a panic attack or breakdown, so my stomach was upset and I didn't feel like eating. But the regular bread was good. I dreaded leaving my parents again to go back to this stuff, but I figured the afternoon would be the lecture material that I had been prepared for in the morning and maybe we wouldn't have to split into groups again.

I made it back to the NAHB and sat by myself. They started shortly after that, going over some of the information, but then stopped and divided us back into our groups. We have a portfolio project to do this semester that is about 60 pages long, consisting of various things we have due over the next few months. They gave us a portfolio from the past semester that we could look through. I was not in possession of the portfolio, so I just had to twist around and look over the back of my chair as they hurriedly flipped through it and complained about all the work and how people kept asking stupid questions and how we were gonna be there all day and that they're leaving at 4pm, no matter what. I turned around quickly and just read through our syllabus by myself. Thankfully, that was the end of the group work for the day. We did a couple more activities, but I was really glad to be out of there at 4.

My parents were waiting in the lobby, so we just went to their hotel and I took about an hour and a half nap before we had dinner in the hotel restaurant. It was kind of funny, because we were the only ones there. The waiter/bartender was excellent, though. I got a steak, because I figured it would be the last time in a while that I would get to. It was really good.

I ended up getting back to the apartment after 9:30. My parents graciously drove me so that I didn't have to ride on the metro and walk the freezing three blocks back here because I was already sore from walking all over everywhere today. When it was time to say goodbye, I started crying. This is the first time that I will be separated from my parents for such a long time. I was separated from them in Japan, but that was only two weeks. I lived by myself for over a year in Birmingham, but they were half an hour away, and I had two cousins living across the parking lot. Family is just really important to me, and all the stress of the last couple days hit me, so...the tears came.

I came up to the apartment and Annie and Michelle immediately asked what had happened. I told them about my bad day and Annie gave me a hug and we just sat and chatted for a while until I calmed down. I felt better after like two minutes. Like I said earlier, I have great roommates. And Annie hates polisci majors just like I do now. :D

We talked a lot last night. We didn't end up going to bed until 1am. I feel a little sore this morning, but it's nothing I can't handle. Now I'm just waiting for the pancake breakfast we were promised to open. The rest of the day will be resting.