adios

I am officially out of Washington. This morning I woke up early to go to the paper and write my last story and put together my last video. My mom came to the office to have lunch with all of the staff and they gave me a sweet card and a bag full of Kitsap Sun stuff. I definitely choked back tears saying goodbye to the staff. I'll miss them so much. Mom and I went home and packed up all of my stuff. Unfortunately, my summer family was at a bbq, so I didn't get to say bye to them. I was really bummed about that, but I told them that I was saying, "See ya later" instead, because I definitely want to visit. Mom and I hit the road and drove through Washington. We're staying the night in Oregon and in the morning we'll drive more of the 2,000 mile trip.

last night

This was my last full day in Washington. My mom went to check out Samudra this morning while I went to one of my last interviews. It was a 19-year-old who is leaving on Saturday to spend a year long boarding across the country! He'll travel 6,000 miles with a tent, sleeping bag, small stove, water purifier, a change of clothes and his board. It's his "push for peace" and he'll be stopping along the way to speak to politicians and at college campuses. I told him to let me know if he needed a place to stay in Texas, which he'll be in around December. He was so fun to talk to and it was cool to watch him ride carrying all of his gear in a backpack. I had lunch with mom and took her to the ferry terminal. She went to check out Seattle while I went to watch a 90-year-old woman play the piano with her band in a nursing home. She thought my name was Roberta for the longest time, but she was sweet. I joked with Meegan that we saw both ends of the spectrum of life today. I wrote the article about the piano player and put the video together. I picked mom up and we had dinner and came home to pack. I'm almost done! The picture I'm posting with this blog is an awesome view that Mark, the long boarder took me to. I was kind of bummed to find this view with so little time left to enjoy it, but I'm still glad I got to see it. I'll miss the beauty of the Pacific Northwest.

mom!

I was so distracted all day long knowing that my mom was on her way to Washington. In between interviewing and writing my article about rain gardens, I would log onto the Southwest Airlines website and check on my mom's flight, to see when she departed and arrived, how long until her layover took off, etc. I got to the airport around 8 p.m. and finally saw my mom a little before 9 p.m. I got out of the car to run and greet her and I cried when I hugged her, I was so happy to see her. We stopped at I-HOP for some breakfast for dinner and drove to Bremerton. I gave her a mini-tour in the dark of the newspaper office, downtown and ferry terminal and we just got back to the house. I gave a tour of that too and now we're going to sleep. She jet-lagged and I'm just tired. Tomorrow I'll work on my last few assignments and my mom will be hanging out in Seattle.

countdown

I spent the first part of the day continuing to research my last assignments and interviewing people over the phone. I got to leave early and got my tires checked and went to my last yoga class in Washington. I went straight back to the paper after yoga to work on election night results. I left around 10 p.m. and came home to start packing. I think I'm maybe halfway done, which is really nice! I definitely don't want to be in a rush to pack and leave on Friday, and I know I won't be able to pack much tomorrow night, so I thought I'd get a head start. Tomorrow morning I'm interviewing a woman for one of my articles and then I'm meeting with my supervisor to talk about the last half of my internship. And the most exciting part about tomorrow is that my mom will finally be here! This time next week will be the night before the fall semester starts, how crazy.

monday funday

My last Monday was pretty quiet. I researched my next two assignments and sent emails and made phone calls to the people I need to talk to. My editor said she would pass along more stories to cram into my last week, so that'll be exciting! I also cleaned out my Sun email and got to go to the "morgue," which is what they jokingly call the hallway filled with newspaper archives. I went home with a giant pile of papers with my stories. Today was also my mom's birthday and my sister sent me a cute picture of her from dinner. I was sad to not be with her today, but she'll be here soon and we can celebrate her birthday in Washington! And, here's Molly's story.

last weekend

It definitely boggles my mind that this was my last weekend in Washington. This time next week I will hopefully be blogging from Texas! A recap of my weekend would include, sleeping really late on Saturday, looking for birthday gifts for my mom, dad and brother, who all happen to have birthdays within a few days of each other, spending a lot of time with my summer family and getting the car "road ready." That included dad walking me through how to check all the engine fluids and texting him a picture of the oil, washing it and cleaning the inside, because it's gotten a little messy. Tomorrow starts the last week of the internship and on Wednesday my mom lands in Washington! I could not be more excited to see her!

tea

I settled up my debts with Bremerton courts today and paid the parking ticket I got a few weeks ago. I figured it might be a good idea to leave on a good note, in case I decide to come back. This afternoon Meegan, my favorite photographer who will soon be reading this, and I went to the Kitsap Patriots Tea Party picnic. It was my first Tea Party event and it was very interesting. I especially enjoyed laughing at the person wearing the Nobama countdown costume. I was nervous that people wouldn't want to talk to me, but everyone was eager to answer my questions and ask me their own. One man asked if I was married, when I said no, he asked if I had a boyfriend. He was also wearing a VIetnam Veteran hat, which is just my type. I listened to the speakers, talked to people in the audience and got some footage for my video and was able to produce this masterpiece. When I checked my email tonight there was a really nice note from the editor of the paper commending the job I did on Molly's story. I've mentioned her in my last three posts and the article that will run next week is in my opinion, more proof of the impact Molly continues to make. While she has inspired hundreds of people to donate and take action in Haiti, she has also provided a learning experience for me. My 9th week is officially over, which means only one more at the Kitsap Sun. Have I mentioned how much I'm going to miss it?

golden

So just as I expected, it wasn't easy to talk to Molly's family members today. Her aunt cried on the phone while we were talking and I felt so bad. Her brother decided that he didn't want to be interviewed, which I was a little bummed about but also slightly relieved. I could never imagine the pain he's gone through losing his sister and I probably would have cried while talking to him. The article is finished now and will be running this weekend. While my editor was going through a box today, she found a couple of silly plastic gold coins. She said, "this is for being a great intern," and tossed it on my desk. Another memento from my internship, ha ha! Tomorrow is the end of my 9th week at the Sun and after that I'll only have five days left. It makes me sad to think that the next few article I work on will be my last, for now at least, I've been joking about coming back next summer. Also, here's the Farm Camp article, please ignore the typo in the 5th paragraph. It wasn't me, I swear.

busy bee

This has been another one of those weeks that has gotten away from me. On Monday I went to a Norwegian dance workshop. It wasn't the most exciting thing, but it was still semi-interesting. Tuesday was much better though, I went to farm camp! A woman in Port Orchard hosts the camp in the summer and lets kids see what life on a farm is like. Her farm was so gorgeous and the kids were hilarious. Today was the first time I worked on a death-related article. Up until now I've never been in the situation where I had to write about someone passing away. The only thing I found that made it easier was that Molly passed away in January during the earthquake in Haiti. Of course, just because time has passed didn't make it any easier to talk to her dad and it won't make it any easier to talk to her brother tomorrow. But her dad was really positive and reading all about Molly in previous articles and reading her blog made it clear why. She was so young and had already accomplished so many incredible things. I feel lucky to be able to write the article about her family's recent trip to Haiti and to get to know a little bit about her through them.

flashback

I went to the coolest vintage store downtown today. It rained all day and downtown is usually pretty quiet, so I was the only one in the store. They had so many racks of clothing, some separated by color, others separated by decades. The store was really big and even had a a mini living room in the middle of it that I loved. I spent more than an hour looking all of the dresses, shoes and jewelry. I bought a Saks Fifth Avenue sweater for $3! Also, here's the article I mentioned on Friday.

better

Thankfully my funk didn't last more than 24 hours. Today was much better. My editor and I were both equally happy with my article, I finished my essay and I wrapped up my 8th week at the Kitsap Sun. It's been almost two months since I've seen any Texans, except for Tina, and I am missing all of them. It's less than two weeks until I finally see my mom and I can't wait! I'm excited to see my family and to go back to school.

I'm counting this as Thursday

I have had better days in Washington! Today started out great, and then wasn't so great, but in the last hour I've tried to put it all into perspective. This morning I went to a Habitat for Humanity site to interview volunteers for an article I was working on. They told me all about the house they were building and how much work they have left to do. When I was getting ready to leave the site supervisor told me that one of the homeowners of a completed house was outside working in her yard and that I could ask her questions if I wanted to. To my complete shock, she was deaf. I went from wondering how on earth I was going to interview her to wondering how on earth I had gone so long assuming that I wouldn't have to communicate with someone who wasn't able to communicate the way I expected. I felt very narrow-minded for a little while and then immediately wished I knew sign language. Thankfully, the woman was very sweet and was happy to answer the questions I wrote down on my notepad. I left with an obvious, but new realization that I can't assume everyone will be able to hear me or speak to me. I'm going to look for ASL classes when I get back to Texas. I went to the office to work on the story for a little while and then left to interview the Boys and Girls Club director about their lunch program. I went back to the office and continued working on my habitat story. My story changed quite a bit during the editing phase and that was definitely frustrating. Other frustrating things included missing yoga class, my phone not receiving text messages and finding out that I need to submit my internship evaluation essay tomorrow instead of when my internship is over. And on top of all that, I felt very homesick. But, I have a home, I have a new appreciation for my ability to communicate, there will be other articles, my paper will get done, my phone eventually got the messages and I'll be home soon. Plus, I had time to think about this while I followed an online yoga class.

la la la wednesday

It was not my day when it came to people returning my calls. I was working on 3 different assignments and only had a couple of people call me back. I did what I could with the info I got from the people who called back, set up an interview and spent the rest of the day looking up different things for the articles. I came home to change and went to yoga. Tomorrow morning I'm going to interview volunteers building a house for Habitat for Humanity and in the afternoon I'm interviewing the director of the Boys and Girls Club. Hopefully both of those articles will get done in time to run on Friday. I don't have a picture to go with today's post, unfortunately, but I'll definitely have one tomorrow!

underwater

The assignments I love the most are the spur of the moment ones that come up at the last minute. I wasn't sitting at my desk for 10 minutes before my editor asked me to go scope out a mural that had been painted in an aquatic center's lobby. While I was checking out the mural and taking some pictures on my phone, the artist, who also teaches lessons at the center came up to me and said I could come back an hour later for an interview. I got my questions ready and got one of the photographers to come with me and talked to her about the giant mural she spent a month painting. She left no piece of wall in the lobby uncovered. All the sea creatures looked extremely accurate and it was so sweet to watch all the little kids point at the different fish while they waited for their swim lessons. I wrote the article and then called different people for my next assignment. After I left for the day I went to check out a different yoga studio than the one I normally go to. I was surprised when it was inside the woman's house, but it was still very cool.

flying time

Hmm, I've been bad about posting. I actually have my planner open right now so I can backtrack and see what the heck I've been doing since last Wednesday. Last Thursday I went to a zumba class for kids. It was really cute and the kids were so funny to watch. On Friday I interviewed a soapbox champion! He was really sweet and gave me one of his buttons that he trades with other racers. Friday also wrapped up my 7th week, which is kind of hard to believe! Saturday morning I went to yoga and then spent most of the day doing some much needed Island Waves planning for upcoming training and the first issue of the semester. On Sunday I went to a Scottish festival with my summer family, which was hilarious. I've never seen so many men in kilts. Today, I worked on an article I've been researching for a few weeks and then wrote an update on a local dog park. I also went to a zumba class taught by the instructor I met last Thursday. It was funny and I'm definitely not a dancer, but I had fun. Now that I have less than 3 weeks left at the Sun, my editors are giving me every opportunity they can find for me to write articles, take photos and shoot and edit videos so that I can cram in as much as possible before I head back to Texas.