this is the future and you are alive

One of my roommates found out that a friend of hers passed away in Haiti last week. She'd been working in an orphanage since June. While losing someone is immensely tragic, there is also something powerful in her passing. It's really a reminder that there are bigger things in life. She loved that work so much that she gave her life doing it. If you haven't thought about donating yet, I would really encourage you to check out these sites and see if you feel led to give.

www.oxfamamerica.org
www.worldvision.org
www.savethechildren.org
www.redcross.org

Anyway, off my high horse :)

I think that the reason I am in D.C. is to learn to be more domestic. On Tuesday, we went to DC Central Kitchen, which prepares more than 4,000 meals to serve to the city's homeless every day. It also offers a 12-week culinary class for homeless adults or those living on public assistance so that can develop marketable skills. My job was to peel and cut cucumbers.

Have I mentioned that I am terrified of knives? I actually cut apples with butter knives. So, they give me this machete and set me loose. The supervisor kept coming over to tell me I was going to cut my fingers off. One of the homeless people even asked me if I had been in a kitchen before. I'm not kidding.

They later figured out they'd given me a dull knife, so that sort of explained it. But at least I could brighten someone's day, right?

I started my internship on Wednesday and I've worked the past three days. Right now I'm just getting in the swing of things, so it's not terribly exciting. I've already cross-referenced enough invitation lists to last me the rest of my life. I have signed up for some interesting listservs though, so I'm getting to read a lot of interesting blogs and articles about philanthropy. We started class this week too, so by the time I get home at 8:30 or 9 I'm about ready to fall over!

We also have a new roommate, who was hopefully taken care of by maintenance this morning -- a mouse. I really don't like creepy things. My mom says she is going to send Snickers up to protect me though, so no worries.

Overall, I am really enjoying the city! I'm about to go for a run in the freezing cold and then P90X it. I'm just having horrible flashbacks to what happened last time I sat at a desk all day...

I need to get some more memory for my camcorder and move all of the wedding footage on to a back up disk so I can start on my independent study project. I've been reading some legal documents at work to start gaining an understanding about the whole public policy side of nonprofits and philanthropies. Georgetown has labs with Final Cut Pro, but I don't think it's really going to be a feasible for me to get up there enough to use it, so I'm sticking with my iMovie.

And, of course, GO COLTS!