Starting the Internship and Actually Being a Social Animal

Lots of stuff to report on this week, mainly 1) the beginning of my internship and 2) my crazy busy weekend.

1)
The first day was rather overwhelming, as first days tend to be. I’m doing my internship in a company of about two dozen people and I don’t appear to have a direct supervisor, so my services are pretty much up for grabs. I worked on projects for five different people my first day, most of them in my department (which appears to be basically the editing area) but not all of my tasks fell under that umbrella. Some of the tasks I did last week were to:
- write polite rejection letters to people who sent in unsolicited manuscripts
- editing the format of a huge guitar book
- removing all of the english from four books so that they could be printed in dutch with the same picture format
- creating barcodes
- updating a database of freelance editors, authors, proofreader, and indexers ( Flame tree itself does not appear to employ these types of positions but instead hires on a short term basis as need arises.)
- Americanizing a couple of annotated tables of contents
- organizing and downloading images for several calendars (In this company at least, the selection of what images correspond to which month is not the intricate and scientific process I had thought it was. It is, in fact, the first task given to the new intern on her very first day. )

The workplace is for the most part one large room divided into sections for the various departments. Everywhere where there isn’t a desk (and there are lots of them) is a bookshelf crammed with Flame Tree publications; the bookshelf across from my desk is filled with books in other languages. There is music playing all the time, louder in some places of the office, a varied mix of easy listening with some more funk and hip hop tunes wedged in. The brits drink an amazing amount of tea. I was probably offered tea of coffee by four different people half a dozen times before they realized that I don’t drink either, and that wasn’t the last time they asked each other. My desk is on the fringe of the editing area, next to a guy named Jordi; I cannot for the life of me figure out what he does. It’s interesting how into the American elections the brits are. A lot of my coworkers were asking me about it and I noticed multiple conversations about Obama and McCain.

You already got the wonderful blow by blow of my election experience. The next day I went out and bought four different newspapers because I was so excited that Obama was on the front page of all of them. So exciting. Wednesday night we watched V for Vendetta, as it was the fifth of November and that movie is so centered on that day and Guy Fawkes.

2)
This week was aparently the week to have a million church activities - I didn't go to them all and I still had a really busy week. For the last three nights I haven't gotten home before 11 - pretty amazing for little old me. Institute on Thursday as usual. There was a dance on Friday, but I didn't go. I gave it a try last time and it's just not my cup of tea. I shouldn't be surprised, I've never been one for huge crowds of people. Instead I went to the house of a couple of my church friends (the same one's whose house I ate at a few weeks ago) and we watched a movie. It was really fun to hang out with them and nice to do something other than just watch a movie in the flat. Saturday was very full - I'm becoming quite the social butterfly. It started with going to Quantum of Solace (which was awesome!) with some friends from church. There was a talent show at church that night, so instead of going home just to turn right back around, I went to Katherine and Leslie's again with Trey and we all played monopoly. Oh yeah, mormons know how to have a good time. That evening we headed over to the church for the talent show, which was basically exactly what you would expect from a church talent show - various female singers, a euphonium, a guy drinking water, some really random and odd dancing, and two guys on guitar hero, among other things. Today was a pretty normal sunday - avoiding work and going to church. As part of our internships we have to take a class that includes a BUNCH of stupid work that we were not warned about. That's what I was avoiding. I also finally found a way to watch the office online, so there was that too. I am amazingly tired right now, which is unfortunate because I should have spent the weekend resting up for the week, not getting more tired. Ah well.

I hope all is well in the first western country to elect a black president!

Miss you guys