And by "here" I mean South Lake Tahoe, California. I am sitting here inside because it has been snowing for four days. In May. Supposedly this is unusual, even for up here. Oh, and it's 9:30 at night, so I wouldn't be outside anyway. I was watching "Scott Pilgrim vs. The World," which is cute (yes, I just called a movie "cute"), but the people I'm staying with are home and have turned on the A's game. Which is fine. Better than watching that pitiful Sharks game. We shall not talk about that.
So WTF is going on? Why am I here and not Bloomington? Funny you should ask. I am here doing an internship with an environmental non-profit (which I will decline to name to protect the innocent). I'm doing an internship on climate change here in the Sierras. I'm helping organize a conference going on in a month, putting out some newsletters, and working on land and water use plans that hopefully will lead to some better development here in the area. More on the details later.
First we should discuss how I got here. It's not a terribly interesting story. I know I haven't written in two months (since I was in Nashville over spring break), so I guess I won't re-hash the last two months of my life. Much. I made it through the semester, which is always good. I got my first grade that was not an A since high school. It was tough getting through, though. All the papers and everything that I was working on just came down on me at once. Not that that's any different from anyone else, but of course I always think I'm special and that my problems are so much worse than anyone else's. Not much of particular interest went on as we were wrapping up the semester, at least not in my personal life. It was workworkwork as usual. I did enjoy the Little 500, even though it was rainy and cold the whole time. Oh, and I have a few things go on in my relationships with the opposite sex that I won't go into. Some bad, some good. Hopefully the good will outweigh the bad when I get back into town in August.
So anyway, the internship. As you may or may not know, I'm spending July and August in Oxford, England, taking classe on climate change management and comparative international environmental policy. My original goal was to get an internship over in Oxford or London, so I could just spend the whole summer over there. So I tried and tried to find open positions that I was interested in and which could fit into my schedule, which was difficult. I also spent a lot of time sending e-mails and making phone calls to companies trying to make my own internship. It didn't work. Mostly I got no response at all, which was pretty frustrating. I didn't realize it was going to be this hard to get someone to exploit me for a couple months. But apparently I was wrong. Of course, this was also on top of school, work, etc., which of course always seemed to get in the way of looking for an internship. Anyway, after wasting a lot of my time on this shit, I finally gave up and tossed in the towel.
So I resigned myself to spending the first half of the summer in Bloomington. I was making some arrangements to do some volunteering and things like that, when I decided to hit Idealist.org to see if there was anything interesting. That's where I found this position. I figured they'd be like all the rest and say they didn't want take someone for less than the full summer, but when I sent an e-mail inquiring about it, they said they'd consider it and asked me to send in my resume, which I did. Then I did a phone interview, and two days later I had accepted the offer. Just like that. I find it ironic that after all of the stress and shit that I put myself through over the past few months trying to find an internship, as soon as I give up, something like this just kinda falls into my lap. And the most ironic part is that I didn't even need to do it. Right after I got this, I found out that I'd gotten a waiver for SPEA's internship requirement. So basically, all that amounts to is that I don't have to put in the paperwork and pay for the one credit hour or whatever I would have had to register for. Whatever.
So here I am. I got in last Monday. It started snowing Saturday night, and has been going off and on since. Fortunately, tonight appears to be it. This is good, because I want to take advantage of the time I'm here to do some fun stuff. I need to get in some hiking, biking, hanging out by the lake, maybe see if anyone's got a boat to go out on...things like that. Without a car, though, it gets a little more difficult. Which is where things get a little more complicated. See, if I want to get to know what there is around here to do, and find ways to get to them, I gotta make some friends. Not exactly my strong suit, right? Well, I guess I need to make it one, for my own sake. If I don't, I'm gonna feel like I wasted a lot of my time here. Ditto with England. If I don't find people to hang out with in either place, I'm just gonna sit on my ass the whole time, and these opportunities are too good to pass up or waste feeling sorry for myself. So I guess this summer I get a chance to see if I can't make some new friends by actually going out of my way to try.
So far, so good, sort of. The people I'm working with now all seem really friendly and have not minded me tagging along to things thus far. I'm hoping I can parlay that into something meaningful. It seems like a very tightknit organization, which creates quite a different atmosphere from my last job. I kinda like it.
I'm planning on sticking around Europe for a few days after the Oxford program ends. Not sure exactly what I'm going to do. I've thought about London, Paris, Scotland, Ireland, the Low Countries...don't know yet. I guess maybe I need to start making up my mind on some of those things and start getting some arrangements made. I'll do that around working, playing, doing the nearly 2,000 pages of reading I have to do for the program. Yes, you read that right. No way all of this is getting done, but I'll do the best I can.
Bleh. I don't feel like writing anymore. Not exactly a masterpiece, is it? I guess I'm just tired. And I need to work in the morning. So...night.
