Spontaneity & Freemasons! (Entry 3)
Hello Team!
Featured picture & adventure:
Monday, May 20:
I hung out at the house, meal prepped, and did laundry.
Later, I went to Family Home Evening on the National Mall. We just played volleyball, spikeball, soccer, ect on the Mall grass while the sun set. It was the most epic moment.
My roommate and I had gone together, so after the sunset we went for a night walk on the mall and it was so good to just be on The Mall.
We were both exhausted so we meandered home, where I read an email from my boss. She says that the head of our whole organization - Major General Cooke - will be at the Hatch House (my house) sometime tomorrow. Now you have as much information about it as I do. So I suppose I will be living my best life around the house in a blazer, tomorrow? I'm so confused by this internship, but hey I'm in DC and that's what is important to me.
I'm going to a Nats baseball game tomorrow with the roomies. Should be fun! I'll let you know how it goes!!
Tuesday, May 21
Today, the other intern who works for my organization and I waited around our house - dressed in suits - waiting to maybe run into our boss's boss...
After awhile, we checked the conference room to see if he might be in there. The grounds keeper told us that he would be...at 6pm maybe...for a different organization's conference.
We waited some more while the other organization set up their event until the groundskeeper said MG Cooke was running late. At that time, I had to leave for a Nationals baseball game - with the roomies - so I told the other intern to give him my best. I figured if this were actually important, we would have been given more information and not been crashing someone important else's event.
I also worked more on astro research and somehow I'm still lacking progress, but I'm learning a lot by going through it in depth trying to fix things I missed. Chat GBT has become my best friend, and if you know anything about CIAO, you can be too haha
The baseball game was SO MUCH FUN THOUGH!!! We had such a blast!!! Some roommates and I took the metro - packed with fans - down to the stadium.
We got there and took too many wrong turns to find our seats, but eventually landed in the nose bleeds, with actually a great view.
Our home team - Nats - for sure lost to the Minnesota Twins They finished the game like 0-10, unfortunately.
We sat and talked and watched and it was a great time.
After the game, when we were walking out, we ran into a group of live jazz players with the most beat up brass instruments you've seen. They sounded amazing. There were a couple people dancing so my roommate and I joined in with swing and had fun.
A woman at one of the nearby tables took a video of us, just for her own accord but I thought a candid video of street dancing is pretty cool so she airdropped it to me. I'll try to attach it, but videos struggle on this platform.
We took the metro to a cute ice cream shop near our neighborhood. The line was far too long but the ice cream was far too good. I got darkest chocolate, lavender wildberry, and lemon berry parfait. They were all sooooo yummy. After trying to walk home while eating icecream, and managing to make messes of ourselves. We got home and passed around the stain remover and went to bed.
One of my roommates said that, "if Uncle Sam were a female, that would be you" about my outfit to the game, and the outfit was dubbed my “Uncle Sam Outfit” haha
Wednesday, May 22
Hey team!
Welcome to Wednesday!
Ok not gonna lie, I slept in today and spent the afternoon reading in the kitchen. Right before my meeting with my internship people, I did a quick outside jaunt to the local Freemason temple. They weren't open for tours at the moment but they said I could work in the library during work hours.
I'm planning to go back tomorrow morning after a hot girl walk around the monuments.
I realized that I live a couple blocks away from the White House (I saw it between the trees when I was walking) so I think it would be fun to wake up early and walk around a bit before the day: read and watch people on their way to work.
The Freemason temple is beautiful! There are sphinxes and gorgeous architecture.
I am quite a bit of a nerd about Freemasonry. One of the books I was reading earlier in the day is a book my mom and I picked up at the DC Spy Museum two years ago about how DC was set up by freemasons and their values and what they have to do with DC, so when I went to the temple, I was prepared. I will let you know if it also has wifi tomorrow.
I finally met with my internship team!! It was me, the other intern who lives in the building, an old intern turned partner, and the intern supervisor/hiring manager. And it was on zoom.
Our boss just gave us a task to prepare a presentation for the National Security Council on zoom the first week of June.
After the meeting, I went to return an Amazon package, and on my way home I went to go read in the dupont grass when I heard latin dance music blasting and saw a street dance. It was beautiful. I sat down on the edge of the fountain next to a lady who looked like the matriarch of the event and struck up a conversation. She said that this happens fairly often and gave me some info on the other places they meet. I asked how to learn this dance style, and her husband overheard and offered to teach me.
After my dance lesson, I hung out with this group of girls and they were so cool! They were so kind to me. One had just picked up a box of popsicles from CVS and offered me one.
So I just ate this strawberry popsicle, sitting on the edge of a fountain while chatting with this Colombian girl and watching the dancers dance and a couple rats dashed past as the sun set on a hot day in DC.
My gal pals left and so did I. I called mom on my 3 minute walk home because I HAD TO tell her about how cool it was stumbling upon this very urban experience!! We weren't quite done talking so I was going up to the roof terrace to finish the call when I stumbled upon an ice cream party!
So I told mom I'd call her later and ate ice cream and partied it up on the roof!
One of the girls who lives here goes to Harvard and she organized the party. She's the best, a very good friend to me. The kind of friend who makes and effort to really see you. And so she brought together the 3 circles in a van diagram of friends: Harvard interns, U interns, and BYU interns all partying on the roof of The U's Hatch House on a warm night in May. It was gorgeous to be part of that. I met quite a few cool people. Turns out Ivy Leaguers are just normal people...should have seen that one coming from watching Gilmore Girls. They were very cool and I was very grateful to be having such fun experiences!
I'm starting to understand that this experience is so fun and cool not because the 'main quest' of the internship itself, but because of the street dancing, the people you meet, and the great places you get to go. And that's really life, ain't it?
It's about the people you meet, the places you go, the code you debug, and the street dancing - celebrating life.
Good night y'all
I'll let you know how the morning walk and working at freemason lodge and institute go!
Love you all.
~Sunny Joy
Thursday, May 23
Today I went for a walk and ended up at the top of the Washington Monument.
I had decided that a nice morning walk to The Mall was a great idea. By the time I got to the mall I thought how cool it would be to tour the Washington Monument, because last time I did that was 9 years ago. They actually had tickets available for 11:30 (I picked mine up at 9:30) and so I went monumenting for two hours. I quickly realized that that was just enough time to make my way around tidal basin, get a couple solid blisters, and speed walk back to the base of the Monument.
In my tour group was a business retreat for a Germany based finance company. I tried to make conversation but they were very German… and those who weren't from Germany were from New York City, so the Utah friendliness wasn't charming to them.
From the top of the Washington Monument - at 555 feet in the air - you can see the whole city. Each direction you can see an amazing monument or building. Most importantly though, you can see the format of the whole city, which really helped my sense of direction haha
I made friends with the park rangers at the top, so they showed me all their favorite fun facts and sights. They also went into depth about how they put a lightning rod on the top, but somehow forgot to ground it…which is very counter productive to the purpose of a lightning rod haha
Since I had brought my lunch with me, I decided to hunker down for a bit of the hot afternoon and read my book. I found the cutest little spot near the WWII Memorial. It's directly to the right of it if you're facing the Lincoln memorial.
Unfortunately, that walk turned excursion took up my energy and time, so I did not work at the Freemason temple today. I did go to institute though! Which was fun!
Friday, May 24
The Freemason temple is closed on Fridays, so today was just kind of a weird day of staying at home but not wanting to work, as Fridays tend to be…
Exciting news for those of you who know I like to have multiple things going on at once: I got hired as one of two Assistant RA’s for the Hatch House!! I had the onboarding meeting today. It’s predominantly lockouts, but should be nice. Especially because I lock myself out so often!
Me and the other intern for ACNSL worked together, and it was chill.
I spent the evening knitting while watching the sunset on the rooftop, which was lovely. I came inside to eat ice cream when it started raining.
It was an all around good, chill, day!
I was this cat today haha:
Saturday, May 25
Stake Temple Day!!
I went to the temple today! I went earlier than I had planned on leaving to go with a member of the bishopric who apparently lived near me. We took the metro to Bishop's house from which the Bishopric Member, Bishop, Bishop's wife, and I drove to the temple.
It was a fun experience! Very long though, temple days shouldn’t be 5 hours long haha Not with baptisms and wet hair at least.
There were some kids from the Naval Academy there, wearing their white uniforms from Top Gun. It was cool to talk to them about what the Naval Academy is like! One of the kids was from Elko Nevada! Unfortunately, he was from Elko Nevada though, so wasn’t very interested in chatting…
The DC Temple itself was so great though! I had never gone in before, and it was gorgeous! It is also seriously the biggest temple ever though! Like I thought that Salt Lake Temple was big, no…not compared to this one. The inside was fairly standard though, since they just renovated. Nothing too out of the ordinary. The portraits were absolutely beautiful around the font though!
When I was waiting for the appointment, I was wandering the visitors center and they had a new exhibit that had scriptures about the Universe and Our purpose, next to new pictures from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and I just sat in that room for a very long time, and honestly sobbed. I just felt so seen by God and so grateful to be in DC, looking at these JWST pictures next to quotes from Abraham 3 about God setting the Universe in order and how much He loves His children. I felt so loved and so near to God. I got to go do baptisms after that and my heart was just so full.
There was also a pizza social afterwards where I ended up finding the like three STEM kids and we talked about maths and coding, which was really fun haha
I had to get back home though so I could get to the dress rehearsal of the Memorial Day concert on the Capitol Lawn, with some other friends. An uber was organized for those of us in Dupont, and we all squished. We laughed and chatted on the way home, and it was actually a really good time to just enjoy each other's company after a day at the temple. Very peaceful, unsurprisingly.
I rushed off to the concert, where I met up with some new friends from church. The concert was really cool, and the emotional stories of loss made a couple of us cry. Thankfully, the rain started so we could cry in the rain to make it extra melancholy.
There were new friends I met at the concert, and a group of us have been looking for adventure buddies, so Team Snacks was formed! More to come on our adventures later.
When I finally got home after the forever long day, my housemates wanted to stand in the rain on the roof. I had just showered the chlorine out of my hair from the baptisms and the rain from the concert, and so I mean what’s one more time getting drenched today? We all met on the roof, and they had umbrellas…I suppose as a desert rat, I didn’t get the memo that being in the rain doesn’t really mean being in the rain. But it was great to share the rain, even if I was enjoying the moisture and they were enjoying the lightning. I’m really grateful for all these friends and fun times!
Sunday, May 26
Unsurprisingly, I’m so tired. Church was very good! I think I stayed awake, because it’s a Young Single Adult ward, there’s always something funny or awkward happening.
I apparently did not have enough adventure yet so I was on my way home from church, waiting for the metro, when someone from my ward said, “hey I’m going to Mass at the National Cathedral, want to join?”
And I said HECK YEAH.
And so we traveled to the National Cathedral, but unfortunately Mass was not happening.
We had met up with another guy in the ward, so we just sat outside the Cathedral waiting for ??? nothing ??? I was just waiting for them to be ready to go home, because I did not navigate to the Cathedral, and didn’t want to leave by myself.
Instead, the guy that I came with decided to stay for many more hours and the guy we met up with was going a different direction home. So they both said See Ya! And I had to navigate home by myself. I took 3 wrong busses, and was an unhappy camper.
Lesson learned is that not every adventure is meant to be taken, especially when you’re already tired.
All in all, this week has been absolutely incredible, and the experiences have been priceless!
I apologize for not sending out this Entry until weeks later. I’ve been documenting, just not polishing and sending. So here is the polished and sent one!
Hope y’all are doing fabulously!!
<3
~Sunny Joy
