Welcome to the District of Columbia.

Oh, the anticipation! The planning, the packing, the Google mapping... literally, this internship has been nearly a year in the making. Will it be worth it? Can I live up to my own hype? Such profound questions can really only be answered with thoughtful blog posts, made available to my dear friends and total strangers.

Let's begin by establishing a framework, dear reader(s?): I've travelled and lived abroad, I speak three languages (sometimes five), I write, draw, cook, exercise, etc. I'm from Portland, Oregon, an amazing city where the hills are green and full of artists, musicians, bohemians and bikers. All in all, I've had a pretty awesome life. So why mess it up? Why am I spending my summer in a dorm room, surviving on minute rice and instant coffee in our nation's capital? Why do I have student loans in lieu of a decent paycheck?

All valid questions. The long answer includes my childhood desire to be an artist (flattened by the standard kin denial of dreams) and the short answer is the fact that, if I have to be a responsible professional woman, I'd damn well better be doing something I like to do. I gave education a good try, but all those people who "love children" give me the heeby-jeebies. Whatever happened to loving learning? Embracing the human condition? Improving our lives through beauty and art and culture? Frankly, the more lesson plans I wrote and meaningless grades I assigned, the further I felt from the things in life that have always sustained me.

Administration -- becoming a bureaucrat -- became my unexpected lifeboat in the sea of professional identity. I know this sounds weird. But hey, I'm not the freelance type, and I never will be. I like people, I like projects, I like colleagues. I'm organized and efficient, and it's awesome to put my skills to good use about things I love -- the French American International School, for example.

Yet I needed a change, and I believe I deserve every opportunity to succeed. So, I began the Arts Administration program at UO. That's a whole other story.

I've wanted to intern at the National Portrait Gallery since the Spring of 2008, when I visited a college friend who has adopted DC as his hometown. I had no idea I'd be so impessed -- from a NW perspective, the idea of DC always brought to mind images of hideously dressed worker drones (Chico's, khaki tones and an overly thriving button-down shirt industry). It smelled like self-obsession and career-heads. I wasn't supposed to like it at all.

But oh.... the museums.

Museums are such wonderful places. I wander around them, grinning like a fool, and completely lost in the experience. We have two in Portland. DC has, like, a gazillion. And they're free. And in Washington DC there are farmer's markets, and excellent restauraunts, and perfectly nice people who aren't perhaps dressed very well, but who are at least educated and trying to do something cool with their lives. There are some fun neighbourhoods, even, and I think there might be some artists around -- I mean, there's no way this will ever be Portland, but it's not bad.

So the point is, I learned that I liked DC /DC was full of museums / museums are a good place to combine arts and administration / I therefore dedicated four months to the filling out of applications to major museums in DC. I achieved something like four offers, but I chose NPG for sentimental reasons (I could be perfectly content as a security guard, so long as I like the museum).

So, DC. It took me five hours to fly here, and four hours to travel from BMI to 19th Street NW, at which point I nearly lost my sanity in the back of a Super Shuttle. I was delirious with fatigue, excitement, jet lag and the brand of claustrophobia unique to small metal cabins.

And that's the weight that arrived on my wee shoulders!