Settling In

I left California last week on the 18th, a day-long flight with minor delays in Atlanta. As I touched down at National Airport, my heart leapt with eagerness and trepidation--I would soon see my apartment for the first time. I had signed a lease based only on photographs of the place, as Jessica and I had conducted our apartment search remotely from CA. Would it be nice? Spacious? Safe? What of all the intangibles that cannot be expressed photographically? There was nothing left to do but hope and pray.

I caught a taxi from the airport. The cab driver didn't know where my apartment was, so I had to look up directions on my iPhone. (Thank goodness for GPS!) As we drove up to my apartment, I couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief--the neighborhood was gorgeous. The streets are lined with trees, children were playing outside, and everything seemed fresh, aided by the warm rain.

Once I entered the apartment and greeted Jessica, my joy increased dramatically. Our apartment is so nice! I love it! It has tons of room, everything seems new and clean, and, most importantly, the windows provided an ample amount of natural light. Jess and I literally danced in our living room, then devoid of furniture, out of sheer exuberance for our good fortune.

The week that followed was filled with many trips to IKEA, Target, a mattress outlet, Office Depot, and Home Depot. Thankfully, Jess brought her car, so we were able to get things fairly easily, though we had to have some things delivered, such as our beds, couch, and table. We were also fortunate to have Jess's family in town for a few days; they kindly helped us carry things upstairs and build furniture. It took me a few more days to finish unpacking my boxes, but everything is now complete! I took a ton of photos--the album is on Facebook.

It took me a little while to unpack everything this week because I had other things going on--namely, Georgetown Law's Early Interview Week (EIW). EIW is where law firms come to one's law school to conduct job interviews for internships for next summer. I had 10 interviews, all with law firms in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. I was a bit nervous about the interviews, but they went well. I had some interesting questions:

• What is your favorite subset of 20th century literature?
  
• What is International Political Economy?
• What do you do in your free time?
• I see that you worked for Kaplan. Did you hear that Stanley Kaplan died yesterday?!
• Tell me more about the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act.

Most of the rest of the questions were more standard inquiries about my resumé, and asking why I was interested in their law firm in particular. Consequently, I did a lot of research about the firms; the encouraging part of my research was to see how many firms have international law practice groups, and offices abroad. Very exciting! Keep your fingers crossed for call-back interviews, and I'll keep applying for jobs in the meantime. Can you believe that the job hunt for the summer of 2010 starts so early in the law school cycle?

Classes start up on Monday. Here is my fall schedule: Corporations, Current Topics in Transnational Law (Writing Seminar requirement), Ethics in Public Interest Practice (Professional Responsibility requirement), and Tax Law. I'm a little intimidated by some of the course topics, but I'm also excited. It's nice that my schedule is so light, with regards to hours:


I am taking more units in the spring, but I wanted to keep the fall a little lighter as I adjust to living off-campus, being on a journal, searching for a job for next summer, and fulfilling my writing seminar requirement (a 6,000-word paper, exclusive of footnotes). I'll share more about the classes next week, after I've attended a couple of lectures.