The House was back in session this week and it was in full swing, and of course what it meant for us pages was that this is when the show truly began. We were all assigned to assigned jobs that we may or may not have been familiar with but they all had good and bad about them. The jobs that I had this week were runner, desk page, and votes. Runner is the most common job where I had to go to different respresentatives' offices and pick up documents, flags and other enclosed items and bring them to the assigned destination. It seems like a simple task but the buildings are very far apart and within the buildings there are many offices. The three main buildings are Canon, Longworth, and Rayburn, and for Rayburn there's actually an underground subway that will take me there from the capitol. Desk page is my favorite job so far where it's always busy but basically I just tell the runners what to do. First, I answer the phone saying "democratic page desk," write down the information, give that paper to a runner and then keep record of where it's going and who is delivering it. It seems like the runners swarm the desk as soon as there's a lot of phone calls to take, but it was really fun. The last job was votes where I kept record of the votes on the different bills then making copies and delivering them to the desired documents to the different places that need them. While work consumes most of the day, school has also started to become more challenging because now it's a lot more serious and I have been managing it fairly well, but it is definitely not comparable to last week where we were able to go out every day. The day starts at 6:45am with school and it ends at 11:30 or 9:00 depending on when the House is in session. Then we go to work as long as the house does, so around 4:30 to 8:00 for this week. So, then I go home and do homework and then begin the process over again. To say the least, I'm very busy and it's interesting to have a school, work and dorm life that are all separate but they all have very helpful and kind people dictating them. Saturday we were finally able to go out but began to the day with laundry, then lunch at Union Station and then spent the rest of the day in the Georgetown area walking around the shops and then watched Easy A. Today I spent the morning catching up with sleep and this update and then my roommate and I will go to CVS and Subway for lunch and then of course finishing up with homework. since this week hasn't been as fun I haven't had that to distract me and I've been feeling a little bit homesick. It's hard but expected to know that everyone is busy even without me, so I hope that everyone is doing okay! Also, I'm ecstatic that I'm having a baby brother and I can't wait for him to be with us by February!
