Awkwardness is International

One of my favorite movies is Notting Hill. If you've never seen it, you should. It's a wonderful study in awkwardness starring the master and mistress of that particular trait, Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts. Hugh, the regular Joe, lives in Notting Hill in London, and falls in love with the American movie star, Julia.

In the movie, they make a big deal of that fact that Hugh lives in a tiny little townhouse with a Blue Door. Capitalized because that's the key point.

Being in London and finding myself in the Notting Hill neighborhood, my sister and I began looking on every street for a blue door. Naturally, not a single blue door was to be found. After giving up on our search, my mother suggested we try one last street before we headed to the tube. Kara and I started up the street and the first house had...a blue door! I scampered up and plopped myself on the front stairs to get a picture, only to hear the door swing creakily open, and turned to see a very confused British girl about my age looking at the creep on her stairs.


What does one do in that situation? This one smiled, said "hello!," jumped up, and skipped down the stairs to where Kara was spinning around, taking pictures of just about everything in sight to appear less creepy and in effect, just looking more creepy than before.


But I got my picture of the house with the Blue Door in Notting Hill.

This Week with ... JB?

It's time for an amusing little anecdote about my time here in DC. As I'm sure I've mentioned before, my friend Julie is interning here in WashDC for ABCNews. She's a media intern at the bureau, and works with some pretty high-ups in the news business. About a week ago, Julie texts me asking if I'm free this past Friday to help with blocking for the new This Week with Christiane Amanpour (now that the host has changed, the set needs redone, the blocking, the lights, etc.). I had been given the day off, so I figured why not help out ABCNews, get to see the studio, and get paid a little bit extra?

Friday morning, I traipsed off to the Newseum on what I expected to be a grand adventure sitting in a chair and chatting with other stand-ins like myself for a few hours, nothing more to it.

Boy, was I wrong.

After spending about 20 minutes waiting for the security guard to decide to give me a real ABCNews Crew badge (!!!), fellow stand-in Marissa and I wound our way to Studio B aka the PA Ave Studio. There we met our colleagues John and Melanie, and did actually partake in the sitting in a chair and chatting for a few hours before being dismissed for our lunch break. Unfortunately, we weren't permitted to take pictures of the set, because it wasn't being revealed until Sunday's show, but the new layout and lighting are great! Now that you've all seen it, I can say that the red looks awesome, and Christiane really knows what she likes.

Following our lunch break, colleague John and I were snatched by one of the production managers and taken to the control room. It was a scene of chaos. People yelling about Bed,Bath&Beyond and colors and online shopping; I was sure I was hearing wrong. Au contraire. Amy, the operations producer, called us over and gave us a mission: make it to the nearest BB&B, find seven (7) black coffee mugs that fit their specifications, and make it back before they needed us to block again. I am proud to say, mission accomplished! Upon handing over the treasure, Amy informed us we could then each have a mug with the old This Week logo on it!!

I have to stop at this point and tell you that this mug is more precious than gold. I cradled it the whole way home on the metro, and when I later showed Julie, her gasp could have shattered a window. Not only do they not give these away often, it is now a collector's item, never again to be produced with that logo. The mug is quite possibly my favorite souvenir from this entire summer.

Upon returning to blocking after this momentous occasion, I was able to meet Christiane Amanpour herself, and offer her her hostess's seat for the show. She was pre-taping an interview with Defense Secretary Gates that afternoon, and I was lucky enough to still be in the room when he was escorted in by his Secret Service men. I had to leave for the actual interview, but Amy invited me to the control room to watch the taping. Christiane really knows her stuff, as I'm sure anyone who has seen her reporting knows.

I'm not sure I would like to be in the news industry for an actual career, but what a chance to get an inside look at one of the top (and my personal favorite) news networks in the country. Typical WashDC.

Nah, Fool.

Clearly I haven't been the best about posting on here, but if you think about it from the standpoint of being busy doing things, going places, and seeing things, it's almost acceptable, right? At least, that's the rationale I'm using for my bank account.

As of today, only eight and a half more days of working at AFF/living in WashDC. Hard to believe that only 9 weeks ago (a whole high school term), I showed up at AmericanU having no idea where my office was, how to use the Metro, who I'd be friends with, how I'd feed myself for 11 weeks, etc. Not that I've figured ALL of that out - the food solution still escapes me from time to time - but I've figured out a lot. I've turned into a Washingtonian; I walk down escalators, I wear almost entirely business casual 24/7, I wear flops and carry my dress shoes, I attend Jazz in the Garden every Friday, I take cabs at 4am to the airport for business trips, I try to avoid the Mall on weekends, I'm even going to my first Washington Nationals a week from Sunday. And I like it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm excited to go back to Zelienople and Pitt, where there's trees and grass and good friends and dogs and drive-ins and everything, but DC is so ALIVE. I just think I might have a bit of culture shock when I go back to school, and everyone's not in suits and dresses all the time and rushing everywhere as if the world will end if they don't get to Corner Bakery by 8:36am. There's also the chance I'll get a hard time for all the Texas habits I've picked up from Bailey, being thoroughly TX Southern Belle herself.

Hard to recap all of my events of the last month, since I'm so terrible at posting, but the 4th of July was a blast. My friend Heather from Pitt stopped for the night on her way back to Oakland, and we did some sightseeing before meeting up with the rest of 3rdFloorFederal for a picnic and fireworks, followed by Monuments at Night (the best time.)
I attended a concert of She and Him at the 9:30 Club, a smaller venue that reminded me of Mr. Smalls in Pittsburgh. She and Him is the band of Zooey Deschanel, the main girl from Elf. It was a lot of fun, and great, catchy music; thank you Bailey for being OBSESSED with She and Him and making me go.
The weekend of the 9th I took an unexpected roadtrip home, thanks to my wonderful father and my fabulous friend Marissa. What a blessing; I was able to recharge, sit on a porch with a burger (the thing I've been missing most), see a small handful of my best friends from home which really helped my sanity, and just sit around with my family and my animals.
The 13-14th I traveled to Vermont overnight for work, and helped host a reception at our Tree Farmers' Convention which my boss was unable to attend due to flight cancellations. It went swimmingly, but then I had to deal with my own hellish version of Laura's day when it took me over 12 hours and no luggage to make it back to DC the next day. (Side note: it only takes ten hours to DRIVE from Vermont.)
Friday, some friends and I found an 18+ dance club in downtown DC and amid giant thundershowers, raced from the Metro to a night of bad salsa music, good beats, ridiculous creepers, and good friends.
Saturday, I was able to unwind a bit by dog-sitting for Laura at her house for the evening. It was such a relief to be in a house (with no friends knocking on the dorm room door), with a dog and a cat and a (small) yard and a neighborhood. Following that was a nice relaxed evening at Shannon's apartment with friends and Super Mario Smash Bros (NOT Brothers). Rounded out the weekend with Inception, which as it turns out, is better than I expected.
The rest has been a flurry of frisbee games, randomly ending up at Shannon's apartment, movie nights somewhere on 3rdFloorFederal, water and power outages, museum trips, Sporcle games, and Safeway/ZBurger trips.

As for going out with a bang in DC, my bucket list of things to do keeps getting longer, not shorter, but then that's to be expected. My roommate Kristen from Pitt is en route to DC as I type for the weekend, which will be the biggest relief of my summer. Julie's younger sister is visiting this weekend, as well as roughly 20 of my older/graduated Theta Phis for Alexis' 21st celebration. I've already invited all my new friends to Pitt around the vicinity of Feb 4th, and I'm planning at least one trip during the year down to the capital area for a reunion. In every other aspect, I'll just be looking to make the upcoming two weeks/one last weekend the best I've had yet. But then, I'll only be leaving here to head straight to Europe, so who can be too disappointed with that?

Did George Washington Swim in the Potomac?

Five weeks down in the capital city already. It’s weird to think I’ve been here for that long, and I only have six weeks left to go! In some ways I feel like I’ve completely got the hang of this city, and the places around here and how to do my job, and in other ways I’m still completely new to everything. Fortunately, no one I’ve met yet has minded me asking questions, about everything from every aspect of my job to why the Coldstone Creamery isn’t where the GPS told us it would be.

Weekends are still definitely the most exciting part of being here in WashDC. The week is pretty much the same, consisting of working, Frisbee, and the occasional trip to Friendship Heights to hit up the TJ Maxx or Dupont to hang out with Julie. Last week did have the added excitement of the USA World Cup game, which I kept track of via highlight reels on FIFA.com. It would’ve been better to see Donovan’s goal in person, but it worked out well. I recently found a live-streaming website (in Spanish) so I’m able to keep the game up beside my spreadsheets. Hillary and I also found out that the chocolate store beside our building is running “Dollar Deals” all summer, with different treats for one dollar every day. Monday is chocolate-covered pretzels, so you can guess what my new Monday treat is!

This weekend started much the same as last, with meeting Bailey at Jazz in the Gardens, but this week we added Ben and Shannon to our blanket! It’s such a nice stress reliever after a week of work, to just go sit in a garden with a bunch of pleasant people and listen to nice jazz music with great weather – at least the last two weeks have been great weather. My fingers are already crossed for next week. Later that night, we all headed to Shannon’s apartment to hang around for a few hours and enjoy the weather.

Saturday morning, Bailey and I were out of our dorm by 8am and on our way to meet friends of hers from ACU (her school in Texas) that are living or interning in the city this summer. We met up with Sylvia, Katie, and Colin for a day trip to Mount Vernon… or should I say, Phyllis Street. Our first few attempts at navigating via the iPhone GPS were slightly unsuccessful, unless the nation’s first president originally lived in a suburban Cape Cod circa 1974 with worn out soccer nets. We eventually made it to the REAL Mount Vernon, and headed in on our mission to act like the perfect tourists! Katie had packed her video camera, as well as Sylvia and I both toting our digital cameras, so there were plenty of touristy opportunities.

The last time I was at Mount Vernon, I was somewhere around the age of eleven, and a lot has changed since then. You wouldn’t think so, with it being a historical landmark and all, but there is now a beautiful new visitor’s center, education center, and museum of artifacts originally from the household that have been steadily recovered over the last few years. In addition, the house itself and the grounds are consistently being restored and updated, so the whole place is like walking back into 1760 or so. The guides were very knowledgeable, with one exception. We asked every docent we found (except the cranky one who resembled Terry Schuster from Glee) if George Washington was a swimmer. Most told us there was no way, but one or two of them said absolutely, George would’ve been a hunter, swimmer, fisherman, and an overall outdoorsman. The one part they all DID agree on, was that women would absolutely not have gone swimming, in the Potomac or otherwise, due to period ideas of modesty. We took a tour of the house itself, including a guide lady who fist-bumped Bailey for guessing “harpsichord,” even though I think Katie and I were fine with “pianoforte.” Way too many Jane Austen movies and books. We ate lunch at the Mount Vernon Inn, famous for its peanut and chestnut soup, which Colin confirmed tasted like a mug of melted peanut butter. The other diners were by far the best part of the meal; our contemporaries included a precious baby of debatable gender (due to the shoes), and a teenage girl very intent on her fried chicken. After lunch, we rounded out the trip by walking down to the Washingtons’ tomb, the 16-sided barn, and the wharf, where Colin almost succeeded in trampling a teenage girl, we accidentally discovered one of the world’s worst group photographers, and spotted a lady who must be a princess of some sort in disguise – or her mind – sauntering about the plantation. All in all, it was a very successful and enjoyable trip. Katie combined her film footage into a highlight video, which I will attempt to post here for your viewing pleasure.

Mount Vernon from Kathryn Barnard on Vimeo.

I was able to finally make it to mass this Sunday at the National Basilica at Catholic University. If you’ve never been there, I highly suggest going, even if you’re not a stitch religious. The building is absolutely incredible, and the beauty of all of the small chapels is overwhelming. The priest didn’t make a huge impression, but sitting in the Basilica with its artwork and architecture more than made up for the lack of relevance in the sermon. The crypt church on the lower level is by far my favorite, because of its simplicity and the historical aspect.

Only one more week until the 4th of July! It will be very strange not being in Zelienople for the 4th, because I’ve only missed two other years there, and the last time was 2006. I am excited to experience such a big holiday in the nation’s capital, though. The crowds I’m sure will be incredible, but I’m not here often for it, so why not? I think the things I’ve missed most about being away from home in the summer and in a dorm are cookouts and trips to our cottage by the lake. It sounds weird, I’m sure, but there’s nothing like sitting on a back porch on a summer evening with a freshly grilled hamburger in hand. I’m hoping for the 4th I’ll be able to find some way to pull off a mini-cookout, but we’ll see.

Sisters, sisters

(I wrote this a few days ago, so apologies for the slight delay in posting!)

Waiting for my laundry to be done, so I'll take a few minutes to write a bit down. Yes, I should've done my laundry before now, but going to the gym and watching Pretty Little Liars and making dinner takes some serious concentration.

This weekend, Kara came to visit! Wooo! Friday afternoon Bailey and I went to Jazz in the Gardens, a weekly occurrence in the summertime when the National Sculpture Gardens have a jazz band playing from 5-8:30pm, and there's refreshments and a lot of people bring picnic food, and it's just a really nice atmosphere. It's absolutely PACKED, but it's a lot of fun. This week, I ran into Chelsea Collier in the Gardens, a girl from Seneca who I just found out is down in the area working as well. Small world indeed, especially because she's working a few blocks from my office. The weather was gorgeous, the band was great, and it was a nice way to end the week.

Kara showed up around 9:30pm, so we only had time to walk around Tenley for a bit, and visit my frisbee friends before we collapsed for the evening. Saturday morning, we were up and out bright and early in order to avoid most of the crowds, and get good spots in the air conditioning (it was around 95˚ and high high humidity all weekend). We went to Dupont Circle for breakfast, where we ran across an all-female percussion group performing in the circle. They were great, and very enthusiastic! You could tell they completely loved performing, and the sound was amazing. We wandered past my office, and then headed to the mall to be your oh-so-typical tourist. The day started at the Museum of American History, definitely the best one if you're a Branby. We were able to see the original Star-Spangled Banner, a huge collection of the inauguration ball dresses of the First Ladies, and a large exhibit dedicated to the effect of war on American history, among many others. My favorite part was getting to see the inauguration dresses of Jackie O. and Michelle, and the Civil War portion of the war exhibit. The staff has made the war exhibit surprisingly interactive, and it even included a real stuffed horse from the Civil War!

Following the museum, we wandered through the Sculpture Garden to the National Archives, but there was a wait of more than 45 minutes to get INTO the building, and neither of us felt like getting sunburned for the sake of the Declaration. We headed instead to the Capitol building and wandered through the exhibits in the new visitor's center. It's really an amazing collection of documents, architecture, and objects, and brings to life the workings of the government. Hopefully I'll be able to get closer to all of the proceedings through Bailey's internship, but it was nice to be able to show Kara around a bit. The rest of Saturday consisted of wandering to Union Station, a local Target (to replace my sunscreen; the mean Capitol guards wouldn't let me take it inside!), and back to Tenley to have movie night with Bailey.

Sunday morning started much the same, with Kara and I heading to Dupont for breakfast. This time, though, we went to a restaurant Laura and Hillary took me to a few weeks ago, called Le Pain Quotidien (which translates to something about a communal table and bread). It's an all-organic place, with the cutest interior and really delicious food. We both ordered a Paris Ham and aged Gruyere omelette, and split a delicious fresh-fruit salad – delicious! We found an adorable little farmer’s market, too, that I’ll definitely be going back to to find some fruit and vegetables and yogurt. From Dupont we headed to the Jefferson Memorial, and spent the rest of the morning playing around the Tidal Basin before Kara had to head home.

Work’s been kind of slow this week, mostly just your typical intern busy work. My boss is out of town most days, traveling for meetings and other business events, and about 2/3 of the office is currently at a conference in Raleigh, NC that we’re hosting about carbon markets and other conservation issues. Soon, though, we’ll be gearing up for VT and Chicago!

Here Come that [Girl] From the Capital City

Due to the number of requests for stories from DC and my unwillingness to tell the same stories multiple times, I've decided to start up the blog again! Hurray! It is slightly delayed, since I've been a resident of the nation's capital for a little over three weeks, but there's still eight more to go, so I think I can make up for lost time. At the moment, I'm waiting for an email with directions for stuffing envelopes, so I have a small piece of time.

In an effort to compress the past three weeks into a manageable amount of time, I'll start with saying that Washington, DC is the most amazing city on the East Coast. I consider Pittsburgh the beginning of the Midwest, so there's no competition, just the amazingness of both. I'm living at the Tenley campus of American University, which is in the Northwest portion of DC.

Tenleytown is about 3/4 of a mile from the main AU campus, which is a perfect distance when going to the gym on main...a good warm-up distance the way there, and a great cool-down on the way back!

Tenley campus consists of five or six buildings that are almost entirely dorms. I learned that during the regular school year, they are used for interning students (like myself in the summer) because of the proximity to the metro. It takes less time for me to walk to the metro in the mornings than it did to walk to the Cathedral of Learning from my dorm! Aside from the metro, Tenley also has a nice array of stores and restaurants; there's a Starbucks, Chipotle, Z burger (delicious milkshakes), Payless Shoes, Best Buy, a Safeway, Whole Foods, etc. It's the perfect little college town - not much to do, but plenty of food. The kids on my floor are also pretty great. The ones who moved in around the same time I did are definitely the most sociable (even if they are the most awkward); I have a feeling it's in large part because I'm so determined to make everyone be friends. There's actually a lot of kids from around the Pittsburgh area, and I've met people from Penn State, Dayton, Duke, Syracuse, Dennison, and Harvard, to name a few.

Most of my time at Tenley is spent doing one of three things; sleeping, going to the gym, or playing ultimate frisbee. The first week I was here, there was a knock on my door that turned out to be two AU students who asked if I was interested in pick-up frisbee...absolutely! I wasn't sure whether to go or not the first day, but as it turns out, I've made some really good friends through frisbee. It's a mixture of AU students and interns like myself, and we play Mondays and Thursdays from 7-9 at a field right at the Tenley campus. Frisbee has become my motivation to work out (so I can keep sprinting for two hours at a time), a stress relief from work, and guaranteed time with my friends.

I recently got a roommate, as well. After three weeks of AU refusing to tell me even what DAY she would be moving in, I came back from meeting a friend for lunch on Sunday to find a roommate! From only two days of living with Bailey, I think we'll get along just wonderfully. She goes to a tiny Christian college in Texas, and is involved with a local sorority at school. One of the first things she said to me was "I'm a true Texas girl, which means I'm all about big hair, hot rollers, and J.Crew clothing." While I can't relate to styling the long hair any more, I completely understand the J.Crew clothing part! So far we have very similar taste in music, tv shows, clothing styles, working out, and needing background noise at all times, so I think it'll work out well. At least I won't get made of for saying "y'all" occasionally from Bailey. She's interning on Capitol Hill for a Texas congressman, so we get to share fun stories from our internships since they're worlds different.

I do actually go to that internship down here in

DC, even though it may not sound like it so far. I'm interning for the Development department at the American Forest Foundation, a sustainable management non-profit that works with something in the area of 65,000 tree farmers in the United States. Development is basically fund-raising; without my department, there would be no money to run AFF. We host events, supervise grant-writing and application, and work closely with the PR department to get our name out in the world in a positive light. One of the best things about my office is that of the 25 or so full-time staff, at least7 or 8 went to Allegheny College, and at least 3 (including my boss) worked for Creek Connections in college, so I immediately had a connection to at least a few people here. Every time someone in the office finds out I'm from near Pittsburgh, I have to add "...but I DON'T go to Allegheny College."

I am, at the moment, the interim Development Coordinator, due to a current vacancy in the position. Basically, it means I do a lot more work than your every day development intern, but I get to do things like attend an event in Vermont in July, as well as sit in on senior staff meetings (the latter is also largely because my boss is senior staff and wants to expose me to as

much as possible.) Right now, we're in the midst of planning three large events and one smaller one, two of which are this week and two in July. This week, we're attending a happy hour fundraiser held by the Women's Group of AFF, and hosting an open house at the office to provide a better understanding of what we do to our funders. July brings a Branching Out even (again, with our Women's Group) in Burlington, VT, which will be similar to the event Mom, Wendy, and I attended in Pittsburgh in March. Later that month will be our largest fundraiser of the year, It's Ours to Save. It's an evening of stories and performances by Chuck Leavell, the keyboardist for the Rolling Stones and a legendary tree-farmer and conservationist. If anyone you know will be in Chicago around July 17th, tell them to check out www.forestfoundation.org/concert2010.html it should be a lot of fun!!

In addition to working, there are WEEKENDS! My favorite part of being in this city are the weekends, because then I can explore! I'm working my way through all of the touristy things; museums, monuments, Chinatown, Dupont Circle, etc. It helps that one of my sorority sisters, Julie, has been interning here for ABCNews since January - she can help me find new places to see! One of Julie's friends is interning in between here and Baltimore, so Scotty comes into the city some weekends to sightsee and explore with

us! So far, we've seen the Vietnam, the Lincoln, WWII, the Washington, bits of Chinatown and GWU, Dupont Circle, U Street (we went to an amazing Ethiopian restaurant) and other random stuff. I've also been to the museums of Natural and American History, the National Gallery of Art, Union Station, the Capital Pride parade, the National Cathedral, Pentagon City Mall, and a few other random places. My friend Marissa and I have plans to go to a national park in the area with swimming and rock climbing, and sometime soon I plan to go to the Eastern Market, a big flea market/farmer's market held on weekends. One of my neighbors from Pitt this year lives right around one of the metro stops on the Orange line, so two weekends ago I was able to take a break from the city and go to his house for a few hours. It was a nice break, when I could be in a small town again and see trees everywhere, and a real house with a yard and a family and a dog. That will absolutely be happening again in the near future!

In a (rather large) nutshell, that about sums up my DC experience so far! :)