First Two Days Interning

I have officially started my internship and having just finished my second day all I can say is I am in HEAVEN. Let's just recap what I have done so far:

-met with my public programs supervisor Jane (1 of 3 I will have) aka an equally passionate art history nerd, who loves talking about the field/how to train docents/art history. We spent the first 2 hours just gushing about how fun art history is and what makes a good docent.

-I started my first research project. They just got an Joachin Wtewael painting on loan and know nothing about it; that's where I come in. So I got to spend hours researching the artist, painting on copper and the story depicted in the painting. Well wouldn't you know the story is from a piece of classic literature written by Ovid - luckily I just got finished studying William Blake so reading some complex mythological epic is right up my alley. So fun! (that exclamation point is not sarcastic, I seriously adore this stuff)

-learned that I have unlimited access to the Currier's library. I almost had to be pulled physically from it. Me and the librarian bonded.

-upon unloaded my mountains of information on Jane, she said I could make the handout and even a powerpoint and if I want do a 5-10 minute presentation to teach the docents about this painting. YEAH. I had to take a deep breath so as not to yell my response: "yes, I'd LOVE that!!" at her. It's like everything from this past semester was training me for this internship. Take tutoring aka explaining art history to disinterested freshman add in distilling a 25 page research paper into a 10 minute presentation and BAM you have my next Tuesday afternoon. It's a bit soon but I have no worries. Just pure excitement.

To sum up - my internship is wonderful and I would literally kill for this to be my job. Researching art history and then figuring out how to present to a class full of eager docents to communicate to the public?! DONE.

New Hampshire: a second Wisconsin

I just realized I forgot to include my impressions of New Hampshire and Manchester.

Manchester is basically Stevens Point, if Point were a city. So it's a Stevens Point/Milwaukee hybrid. It is extremely blue collar in the best possible way. The people are all pracitically dressed i.e. no silly fashionable people running about. They are nice, boarding on "midwest-polite" but they say things with a hint of Boston accent on "o's" and "r's" which endears them to me ("oh my gawd"). Pick-up trucks are EVERYWHERE. Almost more than Point. There are 7 Dunkin' Donuts within 20 miles of my home and no Starbucks. There is actually only 1 cute coffee place in town (that I have discovered so far, the search continues).

In essence - I LOVE it. It's all the good things about Point but it's full of hills and beautiful old, like really old (well American-old, but I'll take it) buildings. Even better, it's only an hour from Boston.

My New Home

I am living with a random woman I found on Craigslist. Before I got here I was getting rather concerned that maybe this was a terrible idea and that she would lock me in the basement or something since well, I found her on Craigslist. But no fear, we get along famously and she is delightful. So far we solved the wireless problem together and built a clothes rack. Also she loves coffee and has the most incredible coffee maker I've ever seen. Win, win, win.

As far as the house goes it's good. My room has a futon, dresser, clothes rack and tv and now a whole bunch of cardigans and books. I'm about a 10 minute drive from the museum, which is convenient but I'm going to walk when it's warmer out because well I don't have anything else to do so I might as well not drive. I so hate the driving. This fact makes navigating this city a wee bit challenging as the roads are insane and the freeway exits have their own exits. Not fun. Soon I will buck up and drive places other than to the museum, but for at least this week I'm taking a break from white-knuckle driving.

The Drive

I drove to from Waukesha, WI to Manchester, NH in 2 days and this is my tale.

And by "I", I mean "we" aka me and my friend Sam. We left Thursday for Ohio to stay with my aunt. I literally cannot believe how dull the drive was. Do states even come in uglier landscapes than Illinois and Indiana? It was all flat, grey, fields of nothing and roads full of asshole drivers. Lose lose. Then we hit super dense fog about 20 miles from my aunt's house - thank heaven that Sam was driving. I don't exactly cope well with the night driving and by not coping I mean I drive 40mph in the right lane and convince myself that I can't see which way the road is turning and that I will die. Add to this that we are solely relying on the gps to navigate us. Although it is brilliant and speaks in Darth Vader's voice, it is not exactly the clearest when faced with many exits that come quickly. Then add in the fog and I completely crumpled into the fetal position while Sam drove calmly on.

Once at my aunt's house great sighs of relief were taken and then 4 bottles of wine consumed with my uncle, aunt, cousin and his roommate. None of whom I have seen for at least 10 years. It was completely wonderful, but it caused us to stay up far beyond our desired bed time of 10pm. Finally at 1:30am we went to sleep/realized we were indeed a bit drunk. This made getting on the road by 8am a challenge, but we are nothing if not hearty Wisconsin girls. It just resulted in a coffee/greasy breakfast sandwiches stop an hour later.

I continued to drive for most of the morning through completely shitty weather. Luckily I had new wipers put on my car before we left as I never turned them off all day. The next 8 hours were uneventful driving. This is about the time where the road started winding a lot and going up and down and I realized that we were basically in the mountains. My ears were popping, there were shear drop offs beyond the road and signs for falling rocks. Yeah I was not comfortable with that, but Sam insisted I keep driving to get over it as I was acting like a ninny. She was right - I truly was. But then it started getting dark so she took over.

At this point we entered my own personal version of hell. It was pitch black as there was no civilization around, only sheer rock walls on either side of the road aka the Massachusetts Turnpike. Not fun. The road was winding a ton and going up and down. My ears were popping and I started freaking out. To cope I downloaded Angry Birds and played that quietly while Sam heroically navigated us to safety 3 hours later at my new home.

Lessons learned:

-semi-truck drivers outside of Wisconsin are nuts. They pass and tail-gate real cars, all the while throwing up enough sprain to reduce even the faster wiperblade speed to almost uselessness.

-I should be sedated in cars and always have a driver.

-Babybell cheese wheels are wonderful roadtrip food.

-Louis CK stand up comedy is a bit too raunchy for roadtrips.