Far from the madding crowd

Haven't had a proper relaxing summer for years now. The last one was probably my graduation trip to Phuket, where it was basically 5 days of sunbathing, drinking happy hour cocktails, and eating potato salad every day. And treating sunburns the size of the Sahara with copious amounts of blessed aloe vera.

This summer has probably the closest I've come to it, with about a month's worth of chilling in Hong Kong, punctuated with the bouts of community service and followed by xuexi hanyu. And now it's gone. And what looms ahead is a semester of what may be many sleepless nights. Noses against the grindstone now!

Duality and anarchy

While this internship was definitely, chaotic, it sure as hell wasn't boring. Administration is probably wishing for boredom right now though.

I happened to choose the summer when they were moving the entire Ships History department from one building to another, so the place is pretty much chaos because the movers have to be supervised for security reasons and there's a lot of paperwork involved. Add personnel issues and a weekend flooding and the place gets a little stressed, to put it mildly.

This last week, however, you could definitely smell it in the air. It began with the whispered conversations, then a sudden axing that apparently should have happened a lot earlier and was met with a fair amount of happy dancing.
I really don't know how much I should say about this, but now the issue seems to be the muddling of military and admin hierarchies; slightly reminiscent of band at times?

I love the people, I really do. I'm going to miss them loads. But when you can feel annoyance radiating like a furnace off the person sitting across from you at the staff meeting and the rest emitting varying degrees of tiredness/frustration/exasperation, it's like some weird tension soup is being diffused into the atmosphere.

I just really hope, most likely with a great deal of naivety, that band season doesn't end up like this.

Capitol, capitol

I just realised I've spent 3 weeks here. That actually flew by pretty quickly.

Things were a LOT more lively once the (only) other intern arrived at the Operational Archives. Now I have someone else to chat to; not that the regular staff aren't talkative and friendly, but it's really nice to have someone else of similar age. (I'd love to have a beer with anyone from the archives, to be honest. Yes, even the commander who's a fucla alum.) We have met up with a lot of the other Navy Yard interns though, thanks to the field trips, and they're all a really cool lot. Some of them are living as far out as Baltimore, which makes me feel a lot better about my 1 hour commute from start to finish. I think the others have been pushing for more trips since we don't see each other during work, being closeted in our various buildings (most work in the museum, I work in a small part of another building that's often freezing to keep the documents intact).

Went to Mount Vernon today, courtesy of Tourmobile. The estate was very pretty and had some interesting stuff, but it was a bit of a downer because we only had 4 hours to see the estate, and 1 hour was spent waiting to get inside the mansion itself. I also nearly didn't make it back to DC because I did not see where the Tourmobile stop was. Oops.

So all in all, I really enjoy working here. I also really like living here so far. The one downside is that there aren't any good supermarkets or shops near where I live. They do have some interesting boutiques, but I'm cheap and need to find something like an Old Navy nearby. The nearest one is in Pentagon City across the river.

Plan for next weekend is Gettysburg. Assuming the weather isn't too bad, it should be a great trip.

To what extent?

When does it stop being tradition and start becoming masochism? Or are the two inevitably entwined?

I refer, of course, to 18 hours of work/projects/band parties followed by 2 hours of sleep followed by another 15 hours of band related stuff.

Add a morning rugby game the next day and a band banquet and voila, instant zombie.

(Not kidding too much about the zombie part, my neck and shoulders feel like they've gone into rigor mortis from the scrums.)

Still searching

I have the schedule time for a job next semester, but no job yet. Sadness.

Found this song by Mary Fahl, "Going Home", which is the opening song for Gods and Generals. It was a nice touch, but I think that if The Last Full Measure was made, it might have been more appropriate to use it then.

The point is that the song kind of got me thinking about what home really is for me. Not too clear cut for your average third-culture kid, unfortunately.
I guess by logic it would be either a) your birthplace, or b) the place where you spent most of your years.
a) is right out for me, since I haven't been back to my birthplace for 14 years (closest I got was probably Durham).
b)? Hong Kong? Possibly, considering my family is based here. But I don't know sometimes....I've been wanting to leave Hong Kong ever since we started applying to colleges, and now that I'm back here, I feel like I want to go back to the US soon. Hm.

My mum was asking me if I could come back to Hong Kong next summer. I told her I was going to try and find an internship in the US instead, and then she asked when she was going to see me again. I honestly don't know. That's the kicker. I will miss my family, and I feel a bit guilty that I might not see them for a while after Christmas, but I don't want to keep going back to Hong Kong every summer. I want to get away. Travel a little bit, work and live by myself in some place I haven't visited yet. Maybe I'll go back home after graduation. Wherever home is.

Money, money, money

I've been sending off applications to various places on campus in the hope that one of them will be magnanimous enough to hire me next semester for minimum wage and without work-study. That way I can have some cash to spend and something to pad the resume with. For the possible summer job in Hong Kong, I have to write a CV within the next couple of days. Yikes.

Speaking of next semester, I'm really excited to be living in an apartment next year, with someone I know and will actually interact with on a daily basis. (Plus, she's supplying the TV.) I'm also looking forward to having a kitchen and cooking my own food instead of avoiding EVK as much as possible and eating there only when there's no alternative. Mmm...I want to make eggs in a basket for breakfast.

Aaaand...yeah. With a few weeks left until the end of this semester, I'm ready for summer.