Week 2, part four

I've visited some amazing places over the last couple of days. Me and the other interns at the Navy musuem are lucky in the fact that we are genuinely finished by 4pm everyday and so can spend the evenings in town, enjoying the weather (which has improved dramatically in the last few days, and today hit 100 F/ 38 degrees Celsius.) In addition, the British interns spend Mondays doing fieldtrips around D.C, organised by the museum. Quite a few of the American interns also come with us, because they don't necessarily live near D.C, and to be honest, even if I was at home, and in London, there's always something to be seen!

One of my favourite parts of the American National history museum was the exhibitions on the Civil Right movement, from the Emancipation Proclaimation (1863) until the Civil Rights Act (1964). I studied the U.S Civil Rights movement at school (from the 1950s) and so it's great to be able to come here and see some phyiscal items of Martin Luther King Jr.'s, e.g a pocket watch he had engraved for a friend, frozen in time.  There are also highly sensitive items too, like shards of stained glass from the bombing of 16th Street Baptist Church (Birmingham, Alabama, 1963) which killed four African American girls whilst they were in Sunday school.

On a more light-hearted note, there was also a cabinet full of contemporary objects, titled The Making of Modern America which contained items such as Elphaba's costume (2003) from the Broadway musical Wicked. I know my sister at least will appreciate this!

The exhibit on "The First Lady" was also interesting, because the concept of the First Lady/ Family etc. is not hereditary, nor is it an official position, yet it still has an incredible impact on the American mindset. A dress of Michelle Obama's was on display in the centre of the exhibit alongside 18th C. Chinaware belonging to Abigail Adams (wife of the 2nd President), it's like a celebrity cult, continuing to the modern day. Before the title "First Lady" was settled on, the juxtaposition "republican queen" was considered!

National museum of the American Indian

Another fanatastic museum is that of the American Indian. I think part of the reason I enjoyed it so much was because I knew so little to begin with, shamefully my knowledge of Native Americans was formerly limited to information gleamed from Disney's Pocahontas. Now however I feel much better informed having read about initial interaction between English colonists and Native Americans in Jamestown (Virginia) 1607, all the way up to the present-day customs of American Indians, like the "Day of the Dead"(1st-2nd November) which became All Saints'/ Souls' day under Christianity.

3 things that stood out to me from this museum;

1. The museum itself was established in a 1989 Act of Congress, to promote awareness of the history of American Indians, and their place in modern American society
2. Everything in the Quecha (an American Indian tribe) is divided into Paña and Iloq'e. Paña is dark, masculine and present, where as Iloq'e is light, feminine and associated with the things of the past. Neither concept much concerns the future, as time was seen very differently (see below).
3. From the Maidu Creation story, notice the blurring and continuity between the past and present which makes their perception of their own history so intriguing;

"Turtle dove down, was gone for;
 four days,
four years,
four hundred years.
Time isn't that important."

// "over-time chaos returned,
Returns.
And the lessons proved true,
Are true."

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.

Week 2, part one

So I've been in the U.S for over a week now. I get the Circulator to work, I walk to the apartment building where other interns are staying, I show the new interns where the lunchroom is. I've started making a list of all of the things I want to do before I leave.

Alternatively, there are a few things that I'm still thrown off balance by;

a) the casual manner of people at work, e.g. using expressions such as "hey buddy", "knock yourself out" etc. During the Enlightenment, Voltaire stated that the defining characteristics of a people/ nation. The historian Edward Gibbon agreed. I don't get offended by the casual and conversational manner of some Americans, I'm just not used to it, and could never imagine the same atmosphere between myself and my tutors at university!

b) the size of portions everywhere. I can't finish a meal here in any restaurant, and everything just seems excessivly big. Leading onto my next point...

c) trying to find normal-sized food in a supermarket is a true mission. Everything is multi-pack, or sold in deals which makes you buy more, or just over-sized. What I thought was a multi-pack of crisps ("chips") turned out just to be a massive bag, with a suggested serving for one person! Even the bottles of tomato sauce are huge, as if they're meant for businesses or something.

d) American television. Need I say more. Reality tv programmes on every channel, the fact that there is constant repetition (snippets of a programme are shown in previews, then before an advert break, and then "re-capped" two mintues later when the programme begins again...) and even the news here seems very opinionated! I miss the BBC coverage which would never refer to the Duchess of Cambridge as "Kate" and convicted murderers as "killers" or children as "kids".

e) the fact that nothing is energy-efficient, and there is no proper recycling in this area! Seems extraordinary in the 21st century.

Yet, there are still unexpected things which remind me of home!

This is a display in the museum concerning Bletchley Park! Coming thousands of miles away from Milton Keynes this was great to see. Living so close to it I think I sometimes forget the significance of the place, even though I wrote my GCSE History coursework on it.

 

 

I suppose it really shouldn't suprise me that there was direct communication between Bletchley Park and Washington D.C during WW2, with the breaking of the Enigma code. Despite this, it's great to be in the middle of an unfamiliar place, and be able to point at a picture and think "I've been there! I know this!"

Vocabulary learnt;

- "catfish"/ "catfishing", when someone sets up a social networking profile, assuming a false identity, with the hope of deceiving someone else.
- "invested" - don't think this is necessarily American, but the saying is popular here in terms of expressing commitment and emotional attachment, e.g, "in the movie I felt like I wasn't really invested in that character, unlike in the book, I just didn't care what happened to them"

Week 1, part three, 4th of July (continued)

 

After the Parade which ran from mid-morning until mid-afternoon, we grabbed lunch, came back to where I'm living for a few hours out of the sun, and then headed to the Capitol building, specifically, to the West lawn where we knew the annual concert and firework display would be taking place.

 

 We left hours early because we knew it'd be insane, and we also spent an hour passing through security check points.Whilst we were in the queue (or LINE, because Americans don't seem to understand the work queue) they test-fired the cannons on the Hill. Luckily they warned us beforehand, because it was like standing next to a industrial-sized firework, the air seemed to vibrate, and given the current anxiety over terror attacks it would have been enough to have me leaping over fences and running for the exit, had I not already known it was going to happen.

 

I should mention that before we went out again, we watched an event of epic proportions on the television. It was the annual hot dog eating competition, held on Coney Island, New York. What amazed me was not just the amount of food consumed (the winner ate 69 hotdogs in 10 minutes, including the buns and everything) but the amount of coverage it got. Wimbledon, by contrast, was a sidenote, displayed in a tiny bar at the bottom of the screen, right under where the "dogs per minute" rate was recorded for each contestant. Watching men stuff their faces with hot dogs, whilst being drapped in their own flag, and justifying their activities as "FOR FREEDOM" and "to reprsent the struggle for human dignity" has got to be one of the most bizarre things I've ever watched. But I didn't turn it off.

 

 

Once inside we found a place to sit, amongst thousands of other people, and were able to listen to the likes of Neil Diamond, Barry Manilow and Darren Criss, in a free concert which was broadcast live, nationwide. Before the concert, the national anthem was played, and complete silence fell over the lawn. It was one of the most uncanny things I've experienced, considering there were so many people, who at once got to their feet, held their hand over their heart, and recited The Star Spangled Banner. No one moved. Everyone stood. Grown men cried. This was nationalism in its most pious form.

 

Fireworks followed the concert, to the tune of Thaikovsky's 1812 overture. The fireworks themselves exploited into more little stars, red, white and blue. There was even a good attempt at spelling out USA with fireworks, which was at least discernible.

 

 

Finally, as we left the fireworks we admired how nice the Capitol building looks when it's lit up at night. It's almost so grand it's almost intimidating, but at the same time it's strangely familiar. Either way it's so iconic we had to photograph it.

Week 1, part two

I took this photo because to me this house IS the stereotypical English idea of an "American" house. It has a porch with lights, trees in the "front yard" and of course, at least one American flag. Even the white pillars give a kind of colonial look that I associate with the U.S.

 

So the next few days were spent getting to know the local area, where the nearest 7-Eleven was (an American supermarket, which I am told is usually found at "gas stations").  Finding ordinary supermarkets in Washington D.C is surprisingly hard, I think it's like going to Mayfair or Westminster in London and looking for a corner shop.

On Wednesday I managed to accidentally miss my own field trip to the National Art Gallery, which was disappointing. I got sent an email telling me to go to a certain Metro stop at 10:30am, instead of gong to work. Sadly, I hadn't checked my email in the past 12 hours, and so here's the day I had at work instead;

I arrived at around 9am and walked into my department and the space that interns are given to work in. My supervisor didn't look suprised to see me, but the Head of Interns did, and said something about an art gallery. At the time I was reading something about the Cold War, and, having only vaguely heard what he said, presumed that he just liked art, and was advising me to go to the gallery at some point. (To be fair he does have some kind of art work by Jan Van Eyck on his desk, even though it was facing away from me and the captions were in German or Dutch, I recognised the painting as one in which I had quoted in my Prelims, for my Nature & Art in the Renaissance exam. I suppose this also indicates may have missed some vital information during my briefing)

Lesson learnt; if you don't hear someone properly, just say "excuse me?" It'll be awkward for a minute, but otherwise you could miss something important, like a trip to a National Art gallery.

Anyway, time passed and I remember thinking "I'm such a dedicated intern. No one else came in, but I did". I met some interesting people, including a brother and sister who live permanently in the Navy Yard in which the museum I'm working at is based. At lunch I ended up having a long conversation with the permanent staff in the lunchroom, which ranged from England and the royal family to baby names, names in general and history. We all gently correct one employee who thinks that the Great Fire of London happened in 1066.

In all honesty, I still don't regret going to work. I suppose this demonstrates the persistence of the Oxford mentality. I've spent the last few days at work shadowing tours of the museum, and helping six year olds make Cartesian divers. My knowledge of American history has probably increased 100% in the last three days.

 

It's not just the date of Gettysburg (1-3rd of July 1863) or the identifying of famous quotes (“the only  thing we have to fear is fear itself", from Franklin D. Roosevelt's inaugural address). It's finding new places in unfamiliar places and trying to understand contemporary American culture.

 

This song is popular with the young Americans I know here, can't tell if it's a recent trend or because of the Independence Day celebrations;

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gX1EP6mG-E

 

In addition, I've discovered that even animals with the same name can be different animals in different countries, I present;

 

A Red Robin (American)

 

 

 

 

and, what people in Britain would recognise as a Robin, clearly sparrow-sized and with a different coloured beak.

 

 

I was incredulous when people told me the birds I kept seeing here were robins, and only a fair amount of Google image searching could resolve this (completely friendly) dispute. Anyway, all's well end's well, because we were both right.

One world: two stories

My sister (left), who has just finished her A-levels, is also writing a blog to document her time abroad.

The difference is, she's going to Chiang Rai, Thailand, and is literally as far away from Washington D.C as possible! We're going to be so many time zones apart that live conversation will be difficult, or at least impractical. In addition, this will probably be the furthest we've ever been apart.

I wanted to share the link to her blog as a counter-part and contrast to mine. I'll be heading to the heart of capitalism, materialism and Western culture, whilst she navigates the Orient and Far East. Max Weber characterised the Orient, as opposed to the Occident (Western world) as being irrational, less bureaucratic and much more "enchanted" than the "disenchanted", capitalist West. We'll see about that.

Whilst she lives in a shared domitory, eats rice three times a day, and teaches English, possibly to monks, hill tribe and other ordinary people, I'll be neighbouring Capitol Hill and anticipating the splendour of the 4th of July/ Independence Day celebrations.

I'll let her speak now, if you're interested;

http://openmyjournal.blogspot.co.uk/

Welcome!

So, I'm Nikita, and I've just finished my first year reading History at Oxford. Anyone who has been observant enough to note the URL of this blog will have seen that I'm about to go literally "across the pond". Whether or not you've already noticed this, keep reading.

This kind of reminds me of a bridge in my college, Worcester, which goes over the lake (see above). Only instead of a lake it's the Atlantic Ocean. "Across the pond" is the phrase used by English people to describe going "stateside" or to the United States, I'm not sure if Americans use the same phrase when they come to Europe...

Anyway, a few quick links by way of introduction;

This internship opportunity was made possible by the University of Oxford's Careers Service, who run internships abroad and in the UK every summer for Oxford students - http://www.careers.ox.ac.uk/ I genuinely don't think that enough current students make use of everything they have to offer!

In turn, the funding which has made this internship possible for me this summer comes from my Moritz-Heyman scholarship, and more information concerning the scheme can be found here - http://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate_courses/student_funding/moritzheyman.html I've spent quite a bit of time over the past year promoting and informing people about Sir Micheal Moritz, and his wife Harriet Heyman's donation to Oxford and the difference this has made to the lives of the selected students.

e.g, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaDp5wjT0Jw

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzUmWc9kr_o


I'll be staying in an apartment shared with other interns, close to the centre of D.C. I'll be working in a museum, with their education and outreach programme, hopefully designing some activities for their curriculum and delivering one of their annual summer camps!

Well, I'm setting off for Heathrow in a couple of hours, so I think I'll leave this for now, see you in the U.S.A!