back in business

Yay, I finally have internet again! Comcast was supposed to come on Wednesday but didn’t come until Friday. Then our internet still didn’t work because something was wrong with the wireless router. The boyfriend of one of my new roomies came today to fix it.

So let me backtrack a bit because this has been a whirlwind of a major life change kinda week. In that light, I am sorry if this is disjointed and unorganized.

So holy, freaking grad school Batman!

I moved into my house at 5pm on Monday with my two new roomies whom I had only met once before. Classes started early the next morning so this did not give me much time to unpack, get things like my internet set up, go grocery shopping, or even to figure out which way the ocean was (it’s only four blocks away). I was completely discombobulated. I like moving to new places and exploring new areas, but until I have a bit of a map in my head, I feel a little like I only exist in time and not space.

By 11pm Monday night mostly everything was unpacked, Skippy had left, and I came to the conclusion that I really needed to go grocery shopping because I had no food in the house and Tuesday was going to be a very long day. Luckily my roomies are seniors at the University and know their way around town a bit. So they gave me directions to the closest 24 hour grocery store. It is only about 6 blocks away…but I ended up horribly lost. Which, when you have no frame of reference in the area and it’s dark, you are really just wandering aimlessly in circles. 45 minutes later I managed to pull into the parking lot. Food here is a lot more expensive than central PA!  I only got the most basic of supplies and it cost me over a hundred dollars. Just for food for me.

So Tuesday morning rolls around after very little sleep and a very upset stomach that revealed that I was a lot more nervous than I thought I was. I had three classes, three hours each, with only 15 minutes in between. I was really glad I brought food with me. My undergrad program was extremely rigorous, but after the second class I was so overwhelmed with all the logistical moving stuff that still needed to be done and the amount of work that I have this semester that I just wanted to curl up under my covers and never come out. Which is exactly what I did after my third class.

Fortunately I had all day Wednesday to take a deep breath and run errands etc.

Thursday was my first day of my internship. After talking with several commuters I decided that buying a monthly train pass would be less expensive and stressful than driving the hour + traffic delays back and forth to my internship three times a week. It turns out you have to apply for the pass before the 20th of the previous month, so my first pass doesn’t arrive until October. I will just have to make the drive until then. I only got a little turned around on the drive there. Luckily, one of the girls who is in all my classes is interning with me. She had started the previous day and warned me about the state of our office. I am working with refugees from the Elizabeth detention center, and one of the major projects of the year is a campaign called Stamp Out Despair. Refugees arriving here often have nothing with them, so they can’t afford to buy stamps, envelopes, and stationary from the commissary to write to their families. Our organization collects thousands of said items a year and sends them to the refugees each November. During the summer, while there isn’t an intern, they stored boxes upon boxes of donations in our office. So before we could start work on anything substantial, we had to organize thousands of jumbled up envelopes, stationary, cards, pens, pencils, paper, etc. I got to take a break to do a Detention Watch Network and Rights Working Group conference call regarding issues to be addressed in Comprehensive Immigration Reform legislation being developed for the 111th Congress. Which was interesting, but old news since it was a re-run of legislation from the 110th and that is practically all I did last fall in DC. I also didn’t feel comfortable speaking on behalf of the organization since it was my first day and I wasn’t clear on their particular stance on all the issues.

The organization is run out of a convent. Which is funny considering I am completely not religious and when I was breaking up with my ex I joked with my mom and friends that  boys were too much trouble and I was going to join a convent. So now I work in one. In the process of organizing our office, the other intern (Sallie) and I decided that a statue of the Virgin Mary on a pedestal needed to be moved to the other side of the room. However, with all the boxes being lugged around we didn’t want her to get broken so we took her off the pedestal and laid her on a random chair. One of the nuns poked her head in to see how we were doing and nearly had a fit. After explaining the situation and promising to put Mary back on her pedestal when we were done the nun left, though rather indignantly.  I suppose it didn’t help that most of the profanity that sometimes slips out of my mouth involves "holy s$!&!" "Jesus Christ!" "God d(&& it!" etc. I am pretty sure I said "Oh my God" a couple times before I realized where I was and how inappropriate that was. These poor nuns are going to be so scandalized by the time I am done there.

This is dragging on, I know, but it was a long week.

Friday I had my last two classes. These two seem to involve a little less work, which is such a relief. I don’t know what I would have done if these two required as much as the first three. So after such a long week I decided that I really just wanted to go have a beer and relax. However, I didn’t have internet and my roomies had gone home for the weekend. So I hopped in my car and started driving. The first place I found was this hip, modern little place playing crazy techno music. Not my scene at all but I sat down with a beer and started talking to the bartenders and they gave me the names of a few good live music bars in the area. So Saturday night I was sure as hell not going to sit at home and mope about not having any friends. So I picked this one cafe in Asbury Park, called my friend Brandon for directions and set out. It was pouring  due to Hurricane Hannah and dark, but I found it after a little driving around – only to discover that they had closed because of the hurricane. Seriously, it wasn’t that bad, just a little wind and rain. I was determined to sit and listen to a good band alone as opposed to sit at home alone, so I called Brandon back and asked for directions to a different place. This one had a pretty awesome reggae band playing. I talked to some nice people who saved me from a creepy old man who is a regular and wouldn’t stop talking to me. They gave me their numbers so we could hang out sometime and they could show me around.

Oh, and one last thing. I turned the dishwasher on before I left for class on Friday and when I got home our kitchen floor was covered in water and suds. Apparently it’s broken.