Off to a Great Start

Well, I'm finally here! I moved into the "dorm" in at George Washington University on Saturday. I use quotation marks because this is the nicest dorm I have ever seen! It's a community dorm space just for the SPS interns; we have seven doubles with suite-style bathrooms and a huge common space. There's a meeting area, a lounge, and a huge kitchen, all in a beautiful open layout.

I'm living here with the 13 other SPS interns, who are working on a variety of projects, from outreach demo kits to instruments to be used with NASA. I also got to meet Riley, the other Mather intern-- I should say re-meet him, since we'd actually met last November in San Francisco before either of us knew about the internship! He'll be working in the Senate Committee on Energy. Everyone is very nice, and we've already gone on a number of shopping trips together to get groceries and everything we forgot. On Monday (Memorial Day) most of us took a trip together to Arlington National Cemetery, which seemed fitting!

Then things really got exciting today, with orientation. We all started off at the AIP (American Institute of Physics) headquarters, where we were introduced to the COO, CFO, and other program leaders, took photos for the website, learned more about the program, and finalized bits of paperwork. Things got really exciting when Dr. John Mather, Nobel laureate and patron of my internship, walked in! He was happy to meet with everybody, but I was thrilled to have lunch with him. He is hilarious and so easy to talk to!

Dr. Mather and Riley

After lunch, Riley and I were taken to Capitol Hill so we would know where to report in the morning. Riley is going to have a great time meeting people as they walk down the hall-- to give you an idea, he's two doors down from Bernie Sanders! My mentor seems to be very nice, and I can't wait to get started tomorrow.

As the summer progresses, I will be publishing weekly blog posts on the SPS National website. I've gotten permission to copy them over to this blog, but if you'd like to see my name on a different site, here's the link.