Plains, GA

Last weekend the interns had a planned trip to visit the Carters in their hometown, Plains, Georgia. The population of Plains is about 600, downtown Plains is about 4 stores long and the ENTIRE town is dedicated to President and Mrs. Carter.

It was a really cool trip. Mrs. Carter gave us a tour of an inn that the Carters started in Plains, each room is decorated in a different decade that President Carter has lived in. After that we went to President Carter's boyhood home and he talked with us about his recent trip to Spain, his time on the farm and let us ask him questions.



Plains was so small there was no hotel that would hold 40 interns, so we stayed the night in the next town over, Americus. On Sunday morning we got to go hear President Carter teach an adult Sunday school class. He teaches it whenever he is in town.

This past week the Carters were at The Carter Center and on Friday we had a question and answer session with them and had individual pictures taken with them. I asked Mrs. Carter a question (and was the only one who did so), most people ask President Carter questions. I think President Carter was glad I asked her a question because when I was taking my picture with them he told me he really liked my question.

This week was the last week for some of the interns, so over the next couple of weeks it is going to get a lot quieter at the center as more leave. As most people know, I don't really like change, so it's going to be weird to say goodbye to some people I have gotten to know fairly well this summer.

Birthday Weekend

On Friday afternoon I got a flower delivery at work from my parents for my birthday! Last weekend I went to Birmingham, Alabama and Nashville, Tennessee with a few other interns. We left for Birmingham (about 2 1/2 hr drive) after work. When we arrived we had such a hard time finding a place to eat dinner because almost everything was closed down. The next morning we went to the Civil Rights Institute and that was really cool. It was really sad (for obvious reasons) and I think afterwards all of our moods were pretty low, but we were all glad we went. It was very powerful. This is a picture of all of us in front of the 16th Street Baptist Church (where the bombing that killed four children was).


We went out to lunch after that and the interns I was with had made a birthday card for me and had a bunch of other interns sign it and write little notes, it was really sweet. After lunch we split up and a couple interns stayed in Alabama to explore other sites and four of us went on to Nashville. There was quite a bit of traffic, so it took us almost 5 hours to get there (when it should've been a 3 hour drive). We were going about 5 mph for 30 miles, we saw a sofa chair on the side of the road and decided that since we weren't moving we would take a picture on it :)


We went out to dinner for my birthday and went out to listen to some live music. Nashville was a really cool city. In the morning we walked around a lot and went in some shops, there wasn't a ton open because it was Sunday. We ended our time in Nashville by watching the final world cup game and then we headed back to Atlanta. On our drive back we stopped by a really pretty rest stop on a lake, so we took one last picture :)


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This weekend we are going to Plains, GA to spend the weekend with the Carters, so that should be fun, we leave early tomorrow morning.

Things at work have been going well, I have a few different projects I am working on, so that has been keeping me busy. :) Although it is tiring, I really do work better when I am really busy...and I think I like being busy...at least most of the time :)

I think I have said this before, but I really like my supervisors :) I am working on a presentation for the Director of the program and he called me to his office a couple days ago and I thought maybe there was something wrong with what I had done. When I sat down in his office he asked me how I was doing, how I was adjusting, were things going well, was I getting what I wanted out of my experience, what did I want to do in the future, etc. It was really nice to just talk with him and he was really interested in what I had to say. He is really busy, but always takes the time to check in with the interns.

Anyway, things are still going well and I will be starting my 7th week...time is flying by!

meeting the Carters :)

This is a picture of the house I live in, it is a beautiful, large old house. My favorite part is the porch, I would spend all my time out there, but the bugs eat me when I sit out too long. :)

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The past couple of weeks have been great. Things have been picking up at work, so I am pretty busy working on a few different projects. I am working on an event where we are hosting a screening of the film "The Soloist" along with a few other organizations that includes the Nathaniel Ayers Foundation, a group of neuroscientists, and an organization led by Dr. Satcher (former U.S. surgeon general). Unfortunately I won't be here for the event (it's about a week after I leave), but I am looking forward to working on the planning of it. My other projects include working on the Journalism Fellowship September meeting prep and working on an outline for a textbook chapter on media and mental health that the program is being asked to write for a global health textbook. All the projects are very different, but interesting.

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Last Friday was the Board of Councilors meeting and President Carter spoke at it. I really enjoyed hearing him speak and was impressed by how articulate and sharp he still is at 85 years old :) There was a center-wide potluck that afternoon and as we were standing in line to get food, I looked up the stairs and saw President Carter walking down shaking all the interns hands, it was quite exciting! A few minutes later I shook Mrs. Carter's hand and told her that Caroline (who was right next to me) and I were interns in the mental health program, that made her happy and she started talking to us for a few minutes before continuing on. After Caroline and I got our food she asked where I wanted to sit, I looked around and saw a couple seats open next to Mrs. Carter, so we headed that direction and had lunch with Mrs. Carter. She was very nice and introduced us to all the people at her table as the interns in her mental health program. After chatting for a while, President Carter came by to say hi and then they both left to drive back to Plains, GA. That was probably the highlight of my internship thus far. :)