Part one: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday!

It's been so long since I've posted on my blog!

Monday was a normal day. It was our last brown bag lunch of the internship which was nice. I no longer have to hear what menial jobs other interns do! The internship has been a lot of fun, but the brown bag lunches can get a little boring.

Tuesday was lunch movie day. We watched two Future-rama episodes. I didn't think it was that funny, but some other intern suggested it, so we watched it. Tuesday morning was also my first day of touching space objects! In the morning my supervisor took another Space History curator and I out to Garbor and we catalogued some artifacts. I got to touch two kits of screw heads that have been in space. Some name tags, a vacuum, a pillow assembly and a lever for the space shuttle! It was so cool to be able to touch these objects that have been in space after working with them through the computer for so long! I like to pretend I got space germs from them and that I'm going to turn into an alien!

Wednesday a whole bunch of us interns from all around the Smithsonian got together for career fair. It was okay. I didn't really learn much and there was no one I was really interested in talking to. I learned that I can't work at the Smithsonian because I'm Canadian. A couple of years ago they changed their hiring rules, so now they only hire Americans. If you already worked there before the rules changed and you weren't American you got to keep your job, but now they're no longer hiring non-Americans. There goes my dream of working for the Smithsonian. Wednesday afternoon someone from the Smithsonian archives came over to see how I was doing with organizing boxes. She told me what stuff to weed out and how many copies of things I should keep. After she left I got to touch space objects for the second day in a row! After Valerie and I went to the safe room and I touched Shuttle tiles that have been in space and on a shuttle! It was amazing! Now the object itself didn't feel like anything special, but I felt so privileged that they were trusting me with holding these Space Shuttle tiles! I stayed late that day because Valerie and I got so into working with these objects!

Thursday was a pretty normal day except for that I went to my first dance party! It was also Christmas in July. The only Jewish Space History intern made us all dress up in Christmas colours. We then went to Potbelly's for our special holiday lunch and Daniel, Jewish intern, gave us all dreidels. It was a fun Christmas in July, but I'll probably never do it again. After work I met up with Erin and we went out for supper dressed up for our dance party. I wore my red dress and a white sweater and she wore a black dress and white sweater. We ended up in this place called Teaism for supper. I had a GIANT cup of ceylon tea. It was in a square cup which made it seem even more special and tasty. To accompany my tea I had a vegetarian bento box which was also tasty. Erin had a Moroccan Mint Iced Tea and a burger which she said was tasty. After eating we still had more then an hour to kill, so we went and sat on the Mall and just chatted. We got to the dance party just at 8 when it started. The dance party was called Smithsonian at 8. It was a Smithsonian event and held in one of their venues. The theme was the first man in space, the Russian Yuri Gagarin. There was much more then just dancing. Erin and I swabbed our cellphones and shoes for an experiment that might be sent up to the International Space Station. We also made origami airplanes/space ships. We took wacky photos at the photo booth and got Yuri temporary tattoos. We each got an astronaut/cosmonaut themed drink. I got a cosmonaut and I think Erin got a suchi. After our drinks we got our headsets for the silent disco. The silent disco means that you wear a headset and dance to one of two channels. No one else can hear the music and who knows if the people next to you are dancing to the same thing! It was so much fun! Erin told me that she had the most fun at this dance then she had in years because I was so crazy that she could be too. There were three line dances. The first two Erin and I didn't know, but quickly learned. The third was the YMCA. Erin and I started enthusiastically dancing and everyone else left the dance floor leaving just the two of us in the middle. After the song some people came back, but not everyone. We didn't care and kept dancing. In the end we probably danced for about an hour. We left at 10ish after being there for two hours. We were absolutely exhausted, but had so much fun!

A is for astronaut, M is for monuments, R is for Russion Ballet Dancers, S is for sick with a cold

Monday I woke up feeling terrible! I couldn't breath through my nose, go three minutes without having to blow it or move without feeling dizzy. Therefore, I stayed home and had a sick day. I guess this reinforces the idea that I don't actually do any work which isn't true!

Tuesday I was feeling much better so I headed over to work for a fun and work filled day! I spent my day revising the spread I wrote for my supervisor's book, imputing alternative artifact numbers into TMS and I started reorganizing my supervisor's do to list so that she can go through it more efficiently. For my male supervisor I went to a hour meeting about his exhibit and learned more about the layout and how the are planning on putting things together and how much things will cost. I'm in charge of getting copyrights for images and getting a Hubble tool with the help of my female supervisor. It was Tuesday lunch movie with the curators. We started watching "When Worlds Collide" last week and finished it this week. That movie was so stereotypical in its gender roles which makes sense because it was made in 1951. I left at 3:30 Tuesday because I was heading down hill health wise and my supervisor sent me home because she was worried about me.

Wednesday I continued my work from Tuesday. I finished going over my spread and reorganizing my supervisor's to do list. Her and I also wrote a letter to someone at NASA asking if they had any Hubble tools that we could use in the exhibit. Wednesday lunches all of us Space History interns go and listen to the curators give 20 minute lectures. This Wednesday's lecture was all about how the developed ways for astronauts to urinate in space. It was actually quite interesting, but a little odd. If you want to learn about it Hunter Hollins, or the Air and Space Museum, just published and really good article about it that is getting a lot of media coverage. I stayed at work all day Wednesday and was feeling great and all better by the end of the day!

Thursday my supervisor realized she needed to find something new for me to do since I seem to finish everything else really quickly. She has a storage room full of boxes with papers in them that she needs to go through, so she decided that I would start on that for her. We went down into one of the galleries and got to climb into an exhibit because behind a plane there is a secret door that leads to a storage room. We took four out of thirty-one boxes for me to start with. I only got through about 3/4 of one that day because I had other things to do. My supervisor and I also inspected an object. I then cataloged it and put the information into TMS. The object was a Discovery flag flown on the pad while Discovery was on a mission. The other thing that took up a big chunk of  my day was that the astronaut Thomas Marshburn, who was on the Space Station with Chris Hadfield, came to the museum and gave an hour long presentation and then answered questions. It was so cool! I never thought I would get to see a real live astronaut! I even got a picture of him with the other interns. I wanted one just him and I, but us interns we scurried away so that the public could meet him. He shook my hand and it still feels tingly and magical! Don't worry I have washed it, so all of the space germs are probably gone.

Friday I was left all by myself. Both of my supervisors were out, so I spent the day going through two boxes of files and started going through and organizing a box filled with shuttle images from NASA. During our lunch break us Space History interns went to the Ministry of Agriculture's farmers market. It wasn't very big, but I still got some peaches and two bags of popcorn, one kettle and one white cheddar. Most of the afternoon was spent working except for half-an-hour when we went and watched a planetarium show called Journey to the Stars. Usually that half-an-hour is nap time for us interns, but there was this little girl every time she heard the word star would sing twinkle twinkle little star and she kept yelling out that she wanted to be Whoopi Goldberg, who has narrating the show. After work I went to Jazz in the Park with my Canadian friend and one of her work friends and we ate popcorn and drank sangria. We finished off the night with Thai food and cupcakes.

 Saturday was monument and trolley day! Erin and I bought tickets for the Old Town Trolley at Union Station and hopped on it at 10:00. The trolley is a hop on and off system, so we stayed on the trolley for the first nine stops and just listened to the driver give his tour. When we pulled up to the Air and Space museum the trolley driver said it was one of the most visited museums in the world, but he got his fact wrong. It is the most visited museum in the world, so I told him the correct answer and everybody looked at me and laughed along with the driver. Erin smacked me a bit because I think I embarrassed her, but hey! You need to get your facts right! We got off at the trolley at the Jefferson Memorial and walked our way around that area. We went to the George Mason Memorial, the Roosevelt Memorial, the Martin Luther King Junior Memorial, the World War Two (Second World War Memorial), the Albert Einstein Memorial, the Vietnam Memorial Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial and the Korean War Memorial. It was really busy which was expected. My favorite memorial was the Albert Einstein Memorial! It was in front of the Academy of Science. We got back on the trolley about 1 pm hungry and tired. We got off at the Shake Shack and had lunch there again. Deciding that we still had some energy we wandered down to the trolley's welcome centre and got on another trolley that went on a different loop. On this loop there were two things we wished to see, the National Geographic Museum and the National Cathedral. When the trolley pulled up to the National Geographic museum Erin and I got up to leave the trolley after the driver asked if anyone wanted to get off, but before we could reach the front, about five steps away, the driver started moving again. We fell into some random seats and in the end didn't get to go there. We were both disappointed, but we're going to try to work it out so that we can go there some other time. When we reached the National Cathedral we made sure the driver knew we were getting off. This church is one of the most pretty ones I've seen. The stain glass is spectacular! My favorite one was the Space stain glass. After Apollo 11 someone donated a moon rock to the Cathedral and they built a stain glass window with it. The other window that was really pretty was the Rose window. We didn't get to see it because the catacombs are being repaired, but Helen Keller is buried there and we wanted to see her, but didn't have the chance. After seeing the magnificent stain glass we got back on the trolley and headed back to the welcome centre. The trolley took us down Embassy Road and the driver was pointing out Embassies and living places for ambassadors left and right! I was swiveling my head so much that I thought I was going to unscrew my head! Once we got off the trolley for the final time we were both exhausted and suffering from dehydration, so we just headed back to our homes. It was a good day, but it was so hot and I definitely didn't drink enough water, so I tried to make it up and made sure that today, Sunday, I drank water throughout the day.

Today was a little more relaxed then yesterday, but it was still a long day and I'm now really tired. Erin and I didn't start the day until 10 when we met at the Eastern Market to buy some souvenirs for our families. We stopped for lunch at this taco place called District Tacos and it was yummy. I had a black bean quesadilla, but it was so big that I couldn't eat it all! After we took the Metro down to the Mall and headed over to watch the Russian Ballet dancers at the National Gallery of Art East Building at one. However, we got there to late and they had already closed that floor off so we couldn't go up! There was one mare show at 3:30 and we promised each other that we wouldn't miss it no matter what! We had two hours to kill, because we wanted to be back by three, so we decided to head over to the Sackler Gallery and start it. On our way across the Mall we got distracted by this guy selling ice cream slushies. I'd never had one before, but Erin said they were delicious which they were! By the time we were done with our slushies we had an hour and a half. We weren't sure if that would be enough time to do the Sackler, but we headed over anyway. The Sackler has three stories underground. We thought we could get through maybe one and a half, but the two bottom stories we just one small room each, so we got through the whole museum no problem and got back to the National Gallery of Art by 3 pm. The Russian ballet dancers were so pretty! There were four dancers and they did six excerpts from five ballets. Two of those excerpts were from Swan Lake and one from Sleeping Beauty. Sorry, I don't remember the names of the other three ballets, but they were beautiful! I wish I could dance like that and make it seem so effortless. When I dance it is more of a flaying around of my limbs! The dancing was an hour and a half and Erin and I stood the whole time. By the end of the dancing we were both exhausted again and went our separate ways. Now I'm just hanging out in my room enjoying being off of my feet!

  

Weekend in New York

Friday I went to work in the morning and worked on my next article spread about the STS-103 Discovery mission. I worked really hard because I left at lunch to meet up with my Canadian friend, Erin, because we were off to New York! We had lunch in Union Station before catching the Bolt Bus at 2:30. The bus was supposed to get in at 6:45, but there was a fair amount of traffic the closer we got to New York, so we didn't get there until 8:00ish. We were dropped off at 34th Street and 8th near Penn Station and we had to get to 38th West and 88th Street. We got on the subway quite sleepy and excited and successfully got to the hostel without a problem. We stayed at the International Student Center and shared a room with five other girls. After we dropped off some of our stuff we were just a little hungry. We went over one block and wandered down Columbus which had a lot of restaurants and pubs.We ended up in this cafe thing called Gastronomie 491. We had awesome strawberry smoothies and a quinoa salad and a tasty chickpea and tomato salad. After we headed back to the hostel and I crashed as soon as my head hit the pillow!

Our room

View from the window

The following morning, Saturday, we woke up bright and early! I tried to be less grumpy then normal because I didn't want Erin to abandon me! We wanted the diner experience for breakfast, so we wandered around for half-an-hour before we gave up and used my handy dandy smart phone my American aunt and uncle lent me. We ended up in a diner called the Amsterdam Diner on Amsterdam and 81 Street. The only thing missing was two cops eating breakfast. I had strawberry and cream cheese between two slices of french toast and it was pretty yummy! Truthfully I think I would have ate anything! The next thing on our list was the Metropolitan Museum. We tried walking through Central Park, but they had part of it blocked off for a charity concert that was happening later that night, so we walked on the sidewalk next to the road that goes between two parts of the park. There was a high wall in the way, so we couldn't see into the park. It was still quite pretty and everything was so green! I would live there just for the greenest of the place!

We finally got to the Met about 10:15. We realized that we didn't have enough time to go through the whole thing. That place is so big it could house a village! We decided to start off by doing a highlights tour. The highlights tour took us through most of the museum in an hour and the guide talked about eight objects. The tour started off with a fresco from Pompeii and ended with a temple from Egypt. In between there was a statue from the Baroque period, a tapestry, a modern African art piece, a Baroque painting, a drum from the Pacific Islands and a statue from a Hindu Temple. I think that's it. It was hard to stay focused and with the tour because there were so many cool things to look at and get distracted by. Some how we made it through. After the tour instead of staying in the Met we decided to go to the Cloisters and come back to the museum later because it was open until 9pm. 

The Cloisters are in Northern Manhattan, so we had to hope on the subway again. To get to the right line we found an entrance into Central Park and trekked up to the North West corner. Central Park is so pretty! I could spend a whole day there instead of just passing through. There is so much stuff to do in that one park, but it's really huge in order to accommodate it all. 

We left the Met about 11:45 and got to the Cloisters about 1:00. We mostly went there for the architecture and the gardens. Most of the things inside the Cloisters we religious paintings or statues from the Medieval Ages. The Cloisters was actually made out of different parts of other cloisters from Europe. Most of the parts originate from France. Some columns come from 12th Century cloisters. The building is really amazing, but a little weird because some times all the bits and pieces don't really fit together that well. Now a days building something like this would probably be frowned upon, but the Cloisters were put together and opened to the public in 1938. I really liked the stain glass windows. Some of them were so impressive and intricate. I also liked the vaulted ceilings and the gardens! On the way into the Cloisters there was what looked like to be a giant groundhog! I don't know what it was, so if anyone could tell me I would like to know! This animal really fascinated me for some reason. I don't know why, but it did!

Name that animal!

We headed back to the Met about 2:30 and got lost on our way back to the subway from the Cloisters. So we didn't get to the subway until half an hour later! This time we took the subway down to the south west corner and walked over to the Met. We arrived at the Met 4ish and started through our chosen galleries. We only chose to go through parts of the museum because we didn't have enough time or energy to do the whole thing. We went back to the Egyptian exhibit and saw the Temple again. That was followed by the Arms and Armor. On our way to the next exhibits we went through half of the Musical Instruments. Then there was Photography and a special exhibit on punk clothing. Finally we did the Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas. We did all that in four hours and by the time we were finished our feet hurt, our backs hurt and we were exhausted but happy. However, it wasn't done yet. Erin wanted to see the museums J. M. W. Turner paintings, but they were closed off because there wasn't enough security to go around, so we stuck around for the 8:15 tour/lecture on the Turners. The lecture had two parts, the first about the three Turner paintings and the second about his influence on others. We just stayed for the first half before we had enough.

The museum mayhem was followed by us wandering back across Central Park to this pub called the Dead Poet. All of this pub's signature drinks are named after dead poets! I had the Richard Frost and Erin had the Emily Dickinson. I actually liked this alcoholic drink which surprised me. It might have been because it tasted like pink lemonade and didn't burn on the way down. I also had a four cheese grilled cheese which was yummy, but I think I would have liked anything after our long day! The walls had quotes from poets on them and it was just a really cool small pub!

   

By the time we were asleep at 11:30 none of our roommates were back yet. The next morning we got up at 8 am again. This time we were both tired and a little grumpy. I was tired enough and sick with a cold that I fell down the stairs. The stairs in this hostel were not level and I wasn't coordinated enough to make it down them. I now have a bruise across my wrist from where it hit the handrail.  After we got out of the hostel we went and got tea and bagels at a nearby coffee shop and then headed towards Times Square via Central Park. While meandering through Central Park we came across this really interesting photographer. This guy takes panorama photographs and turns them into circles. I bought one of his pictures of the Lower East Side. I'll put a picture of his business car beneath for people to see. Times Square wan't impressive at all! It was overcrowded, quite small and not even a square!

The last thing we wanted to do was go shopping! Erin had done some research and determined that the SoHo district might be our best chance. After wandering through a couple of stores with no luck we ended up in this store called White House/Black Market. The customer service people were so nice! I've never experienced anything like it! The lady who helped us pretty much got us to try on every dress in the store without us feeling like she was being pushy. It was fun to play dress up and this is coming from a girl who pretty much hates shopping. In the end we both ended up with two dresses. I got a red lace dress and a white dress with pink and black flowers and Erin got a black dress and also got a red dress. It was a lot of fun, but after we felt really broke and I still feel broke! We still had almost three hours to kill before our 5:30 bus, so we headed back to our favorite place, Central Park. We sat next to a pond for an hour and a half and ate frozen treats. Erin had a strawberry Popsicle and I had a snow cone. It was almost the best part of the trip! The weather was nice and we were in the shade and not getting to hot! The only thing was this homeless man came up to us and tried to sell us some of the poetry he wrote. He stood there for ten minutes just talking to us and we were both to polite to tell him we weren't interested. When he learned that we didn't have any cash on us he promptly departed thanking us the whole time for listening to him. He seemed like a nice guy, but it was still weird.

We headed off towards the bus about four because we wanted to pick up something to eat on the bus and make sure we get there early enough we weren't running to catch it! We ended up getting food at Le Pain Quotidian. We both had an open faced black bean hummus sandwich with avocados and tomatoes and a giant Belgium brownie. We got it to go and ate most of it on the bus ride home.  We both saved half of our brownie for later because we were getting chocolate sick. When we were headed to the bus we knew what street it was on and arrived twenty minutes early, but there was no one around! Also, there was no way the bus could pick us up because it was a one way street and we were on the wrong side. After a couple of minutes I went and checked around the corner and to our relief there was a sign and a long line of people waiting for the bus. We were lucky enough to arrive early enough so that we could still find seats next to each other on the bus. On the way back to DC we talked about everything from our favorite fairy tales/folklore stories to Say Yes to the Dress and Weddings. All in all it was a great weekend and when I have more time I would like to go back.