Please Stow all Personal Belongings, Return Tray Tables to an Upright Position, and Compose your Tearstained Face: You're in DC Now

I made it. I'm here in DC and it is one of the most surreal things to happen to me. It just hasn't hit that I'm here to STAY for the next four months. Miranda and I toured around the Jefferson Building of the LOC this afternoon and I just can't believe I am going to live within spitting distance of such fancy, historical buildings. Where are Morris' rickety little brick buildings or Rochester's sterile Mayo Clinic?

What am I doing here? That's what I've been killing myself with over and over. Was this a good decision? To spend every penny I have to work this unpaid internship at the Library of Congress? Will I learn enough to make it worth it? Will I meet people and make contacts who will help my future career? Will it help me figure out how to live in big cities? I'll let you know what I find out.

The trip itself was everything I expected: long, boring time spent in airports and on airplanes. I hadn't flown alone before, but it wasn't difficult, and I felt very grownup and a little bit extra paranoid finding my own gates. I arrived at about 7 p.m., and after waiting at the wrong carousel for my suitcase (hey, I'm not stupid--the board and the intercom both said it was coming out at that carousel), I made my way to the metro. I haven't been in DC since I was about 10 years old, back when I didn't pay attention to things like metros except to wonder how people ever got on the right trains. Well, thanks to Google Maps and my stellar ability to read signage and sit at attention on the train with one ear cocked for the names of the stops like a newbie, I made it to the hostel where I stayed for the night, ready to check in to the apartment today.

My first plane out here almost taxied onto a runway where another plane was touching down. I can't decide if the fact that it made that wrong turn or that someone in the cockpit slammed on the brakes in time is more symbolic of my trip to DC. We'll find out!

It is a good reminder to look both ways before entering an intersection. Yes it is.

I've always wanted to live in one of these adorable little brick row houses.
Now I do, or, I will when my brain finally realizes that I actually live here.

I absolutely can't wait to start work on Monday. The routine will make me feel less like a tourist.

I've already fallen into the superiority complex that comes from considering myself a "local," so now I can safely look down my nose at those silly tourists, even though I join their ranks every single possible moment I have off.

The Magna Carta lives four blocks away from me. Yes, that Magna Carta. That's better than a celebrity, (aaaaaand that mindset is why I'm interning at a library, folks).

I cried as I lifted off from Minnesota and as I landed in DC. Even the jaw dropping sight of the Capitol building and Washington monument couldn't really distract me from the panic. What did distract me was, in fact, being proud of myself for riding the metro.

It has begun.

Here's me on the metro being a big girl

Here's the great hall of the LOC Jefferson Building