Friday!

Well, I made it through Boot Camp! It certainly was a long week, but I legitimately enjoyed all of it and feel like I learned a ton. Yesterday we went over video, which was VERY overwhelming because I have absolutely no experience in it. On top of that, we were trained on the two types of cameras that we're allowed to use in a two hour block first thing in the morning. As if that's not intimidating enough, the man who taught us was having to move very quickly because of time constraints, so he stood at the front of the room and basically showed us what the camera did by pointing at tiny buttons I couldn't see and using terms I didn't understand (like white balance) but that I was too afraid to ask questions about because it seemed like everyone else in class understood. It was an incredibly frustrating morning. I was almost in tears by the end of it, but I took a deep breath and thought about Amos's advice to just ride with the program, even the frustrating parts, and approached the afternoon with an open mind. I'm glad that I did, because I found out that I am by far not the only person who hasn't handled a video camera before. Amos paired us in teams of two - people who had experience and people who didn't. I was lucky enough to get paired with my roommate McKenna, and we were sent out onto the streets of DC to shoot video! We got some awesome footage of some characters in the park across the street from the White House. One called himself "Nature Boy" and was obviously a crazy homeless man but had some very philosophical things to say, and the other is a woman named Concepcion who has been protesting in front of the White House for 30 years, day and night, after losing a terrible custody battle for her child. We got decent feedback on our video, and I picked up on the video editing software we learned very quickly. It felt good to be presented with a challenge and manage to work my way through it.

I can't believe I've only been in D.C. for a week! It feels like so much longer. We've already started distinguishing ourselves from tourists. I'm loving my roommates and the other people in the program. There are only 3 guys, but they all seem really cool. We're going to explore Georgetown tomorrow and have a BBQ at Amos's house on Sunday, and we have a project due by next Friday, so our groups will be working on them a lot over the weekend since we all start our internships on Monday.