Week 2, part six

 

The next day I visited the Whitehouse, because you can’t come to D.C and not try (“try” being the operative word considering the security cordons) to see the Whitehouse. I did succeed, to an extent, though the zoom feature of my camera was put to good use. A more interesting story is that when I was walking to the Whitehouse I went to a McDonalds kiosk to get some chips (“fries”) because the last time I tried to go into an actual McDonalds restaurant here it was surrounded by police, and I was later told that inner-city McDonalds is best avoided as it attracts criminals who prey on tourists, not to mention concerns over food hygiene. Rest assure, I did safely acquire my (by this time) much desired chips but only after this exchange;

 Server; “May I take your order Ma’am?”

Me; “Yes, thank you, I’ll have some small fries please”

Server; looks confused, “you want fries?”

Me; “Yes please”.

Server; “what size?”

Me; “small”

Server, to another member of staff; “Can I get some regular fries please!”

Me; “and can I please have some tomato sauce too”

*server hands me 7, that’s right, S-E-V-E-N sachets of ketchup”

 So, either they misunderstood my accent, or there is no such thing (as I have long suspected) as a small portion of anything in the U.S. By the way, the chips I was served, whether they were officially “small” or “regular” were the size of “large fries” back in the U.K.

Later, I ended up in Dupont Circle, with some Americans (roommates of another British intern) in Starbucks. This is ironic due to the cultural context of the Dupont Circle area of the city. Traditionally, Dupont Circle was the “anti-establishment” part of Washington D.C, filled with vintage shops and gay bars and “alternative” fashion. Now, like the rest of D.C, there resides a Starbucks within sight of the Metro stop (fantastic strategy for attracting the commuters, sick of heat and humidity!) and on the one hand I thought this was a sad product of mass marketing and globalisation, but on the other hand I just really, really, wanted a cold drink.

Words I/ we (the other British interns) have taught the American interns:

-“Jubilee” (obviously they have no need for this one!)

- “Keen”, apparently this word doesn’t exist here, though they now know what it means. A whole intern house full of Americans have gone on to adopt the word and use it in virtually any phrase, just so they can shout “KEEN” at each other in mock-British accents and rhyme it with the word “queen”.

Week 2, part three

 

The above photo was taken a while ago. Since then it has been raining for days, monsoon-style. A few nights ago everyone's phones began to ring simultaneously, which was weird. It turned out to be an emergency weather alert, which continued from 3am until 6am (overriding "silent" and "meeting" settings) saying that several inches of rain were due in a very concerntrated region of the city.

 

 Thunder and lightning storms continued for hours, and although everyone told me it was nothing to worry about, I kept getting up and watching the pavements flood. The thunder was loud enough to wake me up, and the lightning illuminated the entire room, with the blinds closed. The good news is, there were no serious floods, just a lot of rain, unusual for this time of year.

 

Currently the weather varies between overcast and sunny intervals. The humidity is the main problem though, it hovers between 80-90%, meaning that the air feels heavy, and nothing dries, because water doesn't evaporate without a lot of effort (e.g. using a hairdryer to dry wet towels...). Seeing as Washington D.C was built on a swamp, the climare here is oddly tropical.

 

 

A lot of my posts have focused around cultural insights, thoughts, etc. I think I should talk a bit about other aspects of contemporary culture that I have witnessed. Me, some other interns, and their roomates decided to watch Sharknado a film so bad that it was good. Live sharks fall from the sky, tornados form in the Pacific (they form in the Atlantic in reality!) and people decide to leave houses (in which sharks clearly cannot enter) and enter streams where the sharks actually are. Oh, and sharks tend to live in salt water, not fresh water. The film negates science to show scenes of a woman in a bikini running along beaches, supposedly to outrun the sharks. Either way, the film was a great example of self-mocking modern American culture.

 

So this week I've seen the benefits of working on an active Naval base. Seeing people in official uniforms is cool, getting free ice cream (given out to everyone who works on the base "for morale") is even cooler. The best was listening to the cannon fire as part of the retirement ceremony for an Admiral. The number of cannon blasts (which made a booming noise that rebounded around the entire site) signifies the rank of the person retiring from service. It's something most civilians will never get to experience.

 

Interesting things I've learnt in the last few days;

1. In Washington D.C apartments cannot have more than 8 girls living in them without being inspected, due to concerns over illegal brothels. This explains the gender imbalance in all of the student/ intern housing here.

2. Americans call "crocodile clips" "alligator clips". I find this interesting because it's obviously the same concept as in England, with the teeth, but who adapted the concept first?

3. Squid is not Kosher because it doesn't have fins and scales. I guess this is obvious from the Old Testament, but I didn't put two and two together.