In which I travel to DC, start an internship, and find an apartment

So.  Last week, on Friday, I flew into Dulles.  I figured I'd spend a couple of days staying with my cousins in northern Virginia, and I'd find an apartment and move into it very soon, maybe Sunday or Monday.  It didn't so much work out that way, but a week later, I do have an apartment.  Details later.

I am in DC for a summer internship with The International Council on Clean Transportation, which sounds fancy and you've never heard of it.  This is the group that found the data that tipped the EPA off to the fact that Volkswagon was cheating at their emissions testing procedures.  Anyway, my internship will be about biofuels technologies and their current states of development, for a document that will eventually be part of a larger document, that hopefully European lawmakers will read and use when making legislation about biofuels and transportation technology and climate change.  It looks like it's going to be a lot of fun.

I have spent the first week of the internship doing a lot of background reading, and a bit of research into biogas, which is what you get when trash or other organic materials decompose, and release methane and carbon dioxide.  Methane burns, so it is a useful fuel.  The research and background reading are really interesting.  Technical enough to keep me interested, and not so technical as to be tedious or unpleasantly difficult.  That's it.  It's pleasantly difficult.

The people I work with seem cool and smart and nice, and I look forward to working with them. I have the impression that a very high quality of work is expected here, so I'm partially nervous about doing a good job, and partially excited to be pushed and see what I can do. 

In the meantime, for this first week, I was living with the aforementioned cousin, and commuting in to DC.  I was looking for apartments, but it has turned out to be fairly difficult to find an apartment that is furnished, available short term, near a Metro stop, not too sketchy to walk around at night, and costs less than a third of my income. (It's a paid internship.☺)

I'm living with a friend who used to live in Houston, and moved to Austin for graduate school.  She also has a summer internship in DC, (and she may also keep a blog; if so, I'll link it. ☺).

After finding a lot of scammy listings on craigslist, and looking at a handful of places, we found an apartment in a basement under someone's house.  It is all of the things I listed above, though in some cases only barely.  I moved in yesterday, and today we went grocery shopping, and now I have a home!  🏠

Fun things.  Last week my cousin and family and I went to the National Zoo.  It was fun, although it was a lot of walking for surprisingly not so many animals.  Also, it was super busy.  (It was a beautiful spring Sunday afternoon, what did we expect?)  I did not take any photographs. 

In fact, I haven't taken any pictures yet.  I have a camera.  Maybe I will get better at that.

Also, I got a library card.  I guess I live here now. :)