Now we had to make the drive from Jersey to Connecticut. The mapquest directions said we'd make it in about an hour and a half... Try five hours. Mom's stubbornness/stress/impaired sense of direction combined with traffic and really crappy mapquest directions make for getting lost in Jersey, folks. Their highways are so confusing and everyone is cutting everybody off! What is wrong with these people? Tolls were also a new experience for us. Finally made it to Norwalk:
We hadn't eaten since the continental breakfast that morning (we were too afraid to get off the freeway at any point). So we went down the main street in Norwalk and got some English Fish and Chips made by Hispanic people (I thought that was weird. I don't think ironic is the right word). Then we headed to my new place. We walked in and the smell of animals overwhelmed us. I dragged my stuff upstairs to my room. It's actually much bigger and nicer than I expected: 
One thing that was very unexpected, however, was the quantity of animals in the house. Cleo the 8-month old cat:
Bella the beagle mix of some sort:
Maverick the black lab:
Four ferrets (names unknown at this point):
Some kind of guinea pig?
A ball python:
Three cockatiels:
Turtle:
Fish
Fish
And more fish.
I feel like I'm living in a menagerie, but they're all very well behaved so I guess that's a plus. In fact, Bella was just sitting on my bed a bit earlier watching me type this.
So today was my first day of my internship. I dressed in a skirt and button up shirt to make a good impression. Turns out I was severely overdressed. I walked up the stairs to the office and said, "Hi, I'm one of the new interns." And a young blonde woman in a hoody, jeans and flip flops asked, "Are you Shawn? I'm Brita!"
She was the woman I'd previously felt so intimidated by on the phone and in emails. She seemed so cold then, talking to her about my difficulties in finding housing but now, as I stood about five inches taller than her, saw her warm smile and shook her hand, the a wave of nervousness left my body. Standing next to her was a man in Bermuda shorts and a yellow Hawaiian shirt, tucked in, topped off with socks under berkenstock-like sandals. He held out his hand, "Hi I'm Jim." The editor. Of one of the most popular environmental magazines out there. What a goofball. And he immediately said, "Bald eagles?" I was supposed to research how bald eagles affect tourism in tribal areas near Bellingham. The only thing that affects tourism in tribal areas is whether or not there's a casino... and that's basically what I told him. Quickly, I made up a story pitch to replace the story I was supposed to have written.
I told him tribal development was a huge issue and doing a story on tribes and their environmental ethic and how that fits in to their whole casino scheme would be a better story. Brita and Jim looked at each other. At this point I was practically still in the doorway. "Hey that's an idea," Jim said.
Anyway, Brita took me around the office. It was not at all what I had expected. Instead of this busy-bee, sterile, cubicle-laiden magazine factory, there were little rooms with stacks and stacks of books, magazines and other media, completely unorganized except by little labels on the shelves such as "topic-specific" and "food." Brita took me down the hall.
"And here on the left is the archive room." It was a dark room with a bunch of boxes stacked on top of one another, open filing cabinets and strewn papers and magazines. Basically it was the Planet archive times ten. I was so glad to see we weren't the only ones who couldn't keep an organized archive.
She showed me one intern office, bordered by bookshelves packed with whales and squid, forests and ferns and nuclear waste and modern medicine in the titles. The other intern office, where I ended up setting up camp was the same. Bumper stickers for Greenpeace 1989 and the World Wildlife Fund were everywhere. I even saw one that said, "Export oranges, not dolphins!" Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised. These weren't a bunch of high end schmucks telling everybody else how to live... they were a bunch of EJs (environmental journalism folks), only grown up and slightly more scatterbrained (if that can happen).
So, Brita assigned me a couple of things to do right off the bat. I wrote a 230-word blurb on the bottled water ban in San Francisco (took me about an hour) and then worked on another blurb that Brita forgot somebody had already done until I had already finished it (another hour wasted). She's also having me write a commentary on the new legislation in Jersey (haha) that aims to curb their greenhouse gas emissions. Okay... first day and I'm already loving it! The people are fantastic, the work pertains to what I really want to do and I really feel comfortable there already, despite being absurdly overdressed.
Tomorrow, Mom and I are heading to NYC so I have to do some research on how to get there and what we're going to do when we arrive besides try to find the Audubon office so I can get back there on Thursday for my interview. I'll be sure to take some photos (tourist that I am) and update as soon as I can.
Thanks for reading it all! I miss everyone and it was a pleasant surprise getting a call from Kendall today :)
-Shawn
