My New Roomie

Korrin B.

April 24, 2010 - 6:45 PM

This summer will be my first ever trip to the South. I will be living in Atlanta. As soon as I found this out, I began the process of looking for housing. I have been told that Atlanta is very much a car-based city, so I began the struggle to find a place ideally in walking distance to The Carter Center. This was harder than I thought because the places nearby were already going fast. I was about to secure a room in a home that was about a thirty-minute travel by bus to The Carter Center. However, right before I did this, I got a very exciting email!

The Carter Center had set up a Facebook group for all of the new interns so that we could start to get to know each other and figure things out, such as housing. I realized that one of the other interns in the mental health program was from Portland! I was very excited to find someone else from the Pacific Northwest. I thought it would be fabulous to be able to connect with her when experiencing the culture shock of the South!

Before I settled on the house I had found, I got an email from this intern saying that she knew someone in Atlanta who had referred her to a house that was a five-minute walk from The Carter Center. She said that there was one other room in the house and that she would love to live with another intern. I, of course, was interested and emailed the landlords right away to secure the other room. They sent me pictures of the place and it is such a beautiful, large southern home!

This last weekend, I traveled up to Portland to meet her. We got to have some coffee on Hawthorne and chat. It turns out that she goes to Linfield College and has several similar interests to me, including homelessness nonprofits. We both talked about our application and interview process and shared our overall general excitement about this summer. Meeting her made me even more anxious to begin this incredible internship! I think I'm going to be meeting some really amazing people this summer. I cannot wait.

I also was able to arrange to take my finals during week ten so that I can make it to the final intern orientation day on June 7. The next few weeks are going to go by so fast.