Orientation week

Well I am now fully oriented, I guess. Honestly I am a little disappointed that I didn't get more information, but I don't feel lost, mostly I feel eager to get started. (Also I feel loaded down with goodies, places love giving you free stuff when you are in law school. I now have two new computer bags, four flash drives and enough , highlighters pens and sticky notes-of course in slightly annoying and hard to use shapes and sizes-to last me a lifetime.
Tuesday was in my backyard, IMBY as we call it because lawyer like everyone else in DC love their acronyms. Which is an event where we are divided into smaller groups to do volunteer work around the city. My group worked along the Anacostia river doing garbage pick up. The group we worked with was really cool. Their mission is to empower the youth that live along the river through taking charge of their neighborhood. (In case you don't know the areas around the Anacostia river are some of the poorest in DC. The river is also one of the most polluted in the country, in part because DC's raw sewage is allowed to run into the river during large storms. Part of what the group does is educate the student on environmental issues but they also teach them "soft employment skills" (what my dad would call essential employability skills) showing up to work on time, working with co-worker, dress, obeying the chain of command. In addition the students also learn teaching skills, they were the ones that lead our group and they teach green collar job skills so that after they leave the program they can get a job. (Here's praying that American does the same for me, although I guess the goal is that in three years I won't have to become a green roofer.)
One of the most moving things was that in the groups headquarters (a converted pump house) they had a wall of all of the students who had been killed. It made me so thankful that I have been give the opportunities I had been given in my life.
Later in the evening all of us met up for what I realize is a law school tradition- drinking. So far I have been pleased with the way people drink, it seems like it is only social lubrication, as apposed to the insanity that is the college drinking scene. Then again maybe everyone was putting their best foot forward and it will all change once we are settled here.
On Wednesday I convinced Dip Girl to play hooky and go to lunch with me. Wee ate at Chef Geof's which was amazing, such good food, another place that had their whole menu offered for restaurant week. I have the lobster roll, which was amazing, but their key lime pie was so good that I had to send off a message to my father and gloat. (He loves key lime pie, we spent our family vacation in th Florida keys going from restaurant to restaurant asking not eating there unless they made their own key lime pie, trying to decide who had the best in the keys. Now Chef Geof's didn't have quite the same aesthetic as the funky side of the highway place we found on maroon key, but the pie was nearly as good.)
After lunch Dip Girl and I went to see Vampires suck. Both of us love true blood, although being that I no longer have a TV (let alone HBO) I won't be watching it; and we have sick fascination with all things twilight (mostly we like to make fun of it.) So we were really excited, not expecting quality but expecting to laugh really hard (there is so much material in the series) we went. And we were really disappointed. There is a ton of material in the books and movies, but mostly it was just awkward. It felt like they were making fun of the actors more than the characters they play, and honestly there is a ton more material from the characters. Dip Girl and I both decided that the originals were a funnier parody of themselves.
Thursday and Friday was orientation. Much of it was information I already knew, and there were more reassurances that we were not going to spontaneously combust from stress than I know what to do with, but maybe some people needed the reassurance. The mock class was great, I made one of those arguments where the pieces all fall together and my professor was really impressed, so that is a good way to start the year. Friday was more of the same, we went to our rhetoric sections, which is a class that I think will be a lot of work but very rewarding.
I met more people after, including a Georgia alumnus who invited me to go to the Lambda (that is our LGBT activist group) barbecue on Saturday. Given my love for gay men, of course I went and had a wonderful time, and was able to meet quite a few more people.
Which leaves toady, my last day of freedom before school starts. I am going to finish cleaning the house, I mopped, swept, swiffer-ed , cleaned the bathroom, dusted and did laundry yesterday. Most of what I have left is cosmetic i.e. windex-ing and daily dishes. Also I need to finish my reading for class. Later the DC parents are coming over to help me finish getting stuff set up, and for dinner. All and all it has been a pretty crazy week, I think it is a sign of things to come.