Now that I'm not busy for two seconds...

I can finally sit down and start my blog even though I actually moved in and started working on May 22nd. Before I go any further I want to kind of give you the idea of what is going on here. I am interning with the Bluecoats (a drum corps) who are based out of Canton, Ohio. I will be with them from now until sometime in August. Before we hit the road and start touring the country, there is a month of rehearsals that happen here in Granville, OH. We stay and rehearse at Denison University (and yes I thought I would never sleep in a dorm again). So right off the bat this internship might be different than others for many reasons.

When I'm done for the day I don't go home, no one goes home because we are sleeping in dorms together (yes something like 200 of us). A fraction of people here have cars so no one leaves. As far as food, all three meals of the day plus a snack at the end of the night are prepared and served from the food truck which has a handful of very helpful volunteers cooking enough food all day to feed hundreds of people. This isn't a 9-5 job, breakfast is at 8 and the members have lights out at midnight, in other words I'm interning/"on duty" for most of the day ready to do anything that anyone needs me to do. I think I've done my best to kind of sum up how things are working around here, so I'm going try to explain some of my duties thus far.

First, the biggest and most important thing that I do right now is pick people up from and drop people off at the airport. In fact I just got back from dropping off a staff member and two marching members at the Columbus airport. The reason this is so important (aside from the obvious not wanting to leave someone at the airport) is because alot of these kids are still in school right now, either high school or college and even though rehearsal here is every day from 9am-10pm they are sacrificing all of their time and alot of money to make sure they can march with the Bluecoats without affecting their schoolwork. I just dropped off a kid who is now on his way to his home in El Paso, Texas just to take two finals and he is flying right back here tomorrow!

Within that paragraph I brought up two more points about this group/activity that it wouldn't hurt to address. Rehearsals are every day from 9am-10pm with lunch and dinner in there. There are no weekends off because there isn't time that can be used to learn to be sacrificing. Today is Memorial Day and they are out there right now still rehearsing, and it has nothing to do with the group or the directors not respecting national holidays, there just can't be days taken off right now when there is a show to learn. The other point is that the staff and the members are from all over the place. Of course there are people here from Ohio but also Texas and California as well as many other states in the US and there are also members from Japan and Belgium. So me doing alot of these airport runs right now (and there are ones everyday) is very helpful in making sure that people who need to be here are always here as soon as possible.

Aside from the airport runs, another very important task is going to go buy food when the food truck needs it. When it comes to feeding that many people, there are thousands of dollars spent weekly on food because it just has to happen to ensure that these kids are being fed properly. The airport runs and buying food are pretty big just on a logistical level. I am very often printing off music and drill charts, then making copies, then delivering them to the staff (on a golfcart which is awesome). Along with the golfcarts being fun to drive around campus, we have to go pick up people who get hurt and need a ride somewhere and also drive them to urgent care if needed. Alot of packages come in and if they are too big to be delivered, me or the other intern has to go pick them up from the package service place, which we need last week when all of the uniforms came in.

People order Bluecoats merchandise from our website and this summer we are in charge of making sure people get the stuff that they paid for in a timely manner. I was shown how to go about doing that which begins with printing off the order, going to the souvenir trailer, and getting out the items that need to be shipped. After getting flat rate shipping boxes, putting the item in the box with the packing slip, and printing off the shipping labels they were ready to go which for some reason was just really fun to me. haha

Well that'll wrap up my first entry, the next ones won't have so much introductory stuff. Today is my ninth day here and I am having a really good time and I'm sure I am going to end up learning alot. I'll make sure I write back on here either a week from now or even sooner.