It's about time!

Well, I guess this is my first official post since being back in the States- that seems absolutely egregious to write, but I didn't feel like I had anything new to say. I tried to update once before about my work situation, but wherever I was at the time (I have no clue where that was now!) it wouldn't publish or save my several paragraphs long update. I took that as a sign!

I guess I should summarize thus far- mostly about jobs because that's where most of my drama occurred. I applied last year to work at an architecture firm in Old Ellicott City, but they weren't hiring then and wanted me to know CAD. Over the last summer I took a class in CAD so I would know it by the time this summer came around, and lo and behold I got a call from this company during my spring break! I was in France, so I actually had to stand around in a payphone and return a call to the person in this firm back in the States. A good omen? I thought so! They told me to call them back when I was out of school and back in the States, which I did. Somehow, though, when they put me through to the director of hiring (and I'm condensing here, because that was really prefaced by about a week straight of "unavailable" phone calls)he said that my name had never crossed his desk. After about another week of trying squeeze an answer out of him, he finally told me they weren't hiring. So that was about 2 weeks of unemployment for my summer, and two weeks that I could have used to get in touch with other firms. As it was, I contacted a few other places, but not hearing anything back decided to talk to a friend of the family named Sarah Ward, who runs her own distance learning/learning evaluation business-Alter, Inc. - consulting for other firms. So hopefully I'm getting an introduction into running a small business this way! It's a good job so far. She runs the business out of her house in Falls Church, VA, and I live with her on the weekdays; so I've seen a lot of the inside of the house! She's definitely a strange combination of a go-getter and a procrastinator, which I realize sounds completely contradictory, but means that she gets a lot of stuff done, just not always at the deadline! Hopefully I'll be able to post a picture and give you an idea of my new surroundings in Virginia!

Frustrated

Since I've been home, my goal has been to get a job. There's a saga behind this; I applied to work at this one firm in Old Ellicott City last year because it seems to match up rather well with what ND teaches in its architecture program, and it's close! I was estatic when they called me this year during my spring break- it was funny because I had to call them back from a payphone in Angers, France! Anyway, they said that I should call them when I came back to the States after school got out- which I did. I called for about a week and never got an answer. Finally one day I did get through to the person in charge of hiring yesterday, who said that my name had never crossed his desk! He said however that he would talk to the boss about hiring me and call back that afternoon. He didn't, of course, or I wouldn't be writing this! I called him, and he said that the boss was too busy, he'd talk with him tomorrow and let me know. I agreed, waited all day, and called to pester them into hiring me. Well, the boss had an emergency and left the office very upset, cancelling all his meetings. So I may hear if I have an interview on Monday. This is all so frustrating, especially since THEY CALLED ME during the school year! I wanna job...!


Until then, I'm eating chocolates and watching TLC's What Not to Wear, a highly addictive show, unless you happen to watch it as much as TLC airs it, in which case you have anti- ADD.

Il giorno ultimo

The last day...
After the last day of school on Friday, we had essentially only Saturday because almost everyone had flights scheduled for Sunday morning. I packed and went to see the Borghese gallery, which was amazing. It was about the same price as the Vatican museums, but I would recommend it over them. On the first floor there were amazing Bernini statues in almost every room- all of his famous works, and then were were a lot of paintings by Caravaggio as well. It was all amazing, and after the first floor the second floor was almost not worth looking at. After the museum, we had a class dinner with Ingrid, Ricardo, and Marie Andree (our professors) at the 'green tablecloth' restaurant (we tend to not know the names of most of the restaurants we eat at and describe them by location or tablecloth color!). We said goodbyes after dinner and headed up the street for Giolitti's gelato, where Tom got 'il giganto' cone for 9 euros. It was probably a foot high! We went to Mickey's bar with our gelato in hand and sat there for a couple of hours, sipping our last of the free wine from
Mickey (Tom was still trying to conquer his gelato) while Mickey put on the sappiest music ever.

We broke off into smaller groups after that- I ended up with Nina, Tom, Dan Bertao, and Cailin. We went around to the Pantheon, Trevi, and Spanish steps pouring out 'libations' of wine at each stop! We finally headed back to the Lunetta at 3:30 AM to say goodbye to the kids leaving from Fiumincino at 4. After they left, I went to bed for a couple of hours and woke up to go to mass at St. Ivo- so I got my Sunday mass requirement in, but I wasn't entirely there for the whole thing either! We were picked up at 11 AM and headed out to the airport. Our flight went smoothly; I didn't feel like I slept that much, but I guess I was out for probably 6 of the 10 hours of the flight! We had some of our last alcohol legally(!) and then we all scrambled through customs and luggage to make connecting flights, and in my case, trains.

It was strange taking the bus and having english be the default language! I'm really used to having to try a foreign language when taking public transportation, and the other thing that was strange was the size of the cars! Wow the US cars are big! Anyway, I made it to the train station, realized how much better European trains are, especially with posting schedules, and took the train down to BWI rail station where I got picked up at 11 PM east coast time... 5 AM Rome time! It's still at little strange to wear shorts and have a dishwasher- but I think I'll adjust to that just fine!