Week 4, part one, outdoor movies and bright yellow schoolbuses

The "Screen on the Green"

Earlier in the week me and two other interns went to the National Mall, in order to watch an outdoor screening of E.T. This was a completely new, yet great experience. There's just so much atmosphere with outdoor performances, you can hear people talking, sirens, and all of the usual activity of the Capitol. You can have the cinema-sized screen without the cramped seats. The right temperature, without the noise of air conditioning or heating. The best thing was that during particularly dramatic/happy/sad moments people would cheer and clap together. At one point, during the credits, people from the back began spontaneously dancing, and this spread in a Mexican-wave type movement until everyone was up & moving!

I finally got a picture of one! (Georgia!) This is the culmination of every American highschool film that I have ever seen. Even in the summer, most kids seem to attend some kind of summer school or camp, to either catch up or get ahead.

Today, there was a power cut at work, and we got to leave after lunch! I should add that I do actually really enjoy my work, at the moment I'm just doing the initial reading to create a homeschool curriculum based on the WW2 Homefront. However, having a power cut meant that we got to eat cake, make shadow puppets with our hands and torches, and then head to the pub (where I had a coke, on account of being 19...) to say goodbye to one of the interns who has been at the museum for months now. I think it's fair to say that we're all going to miss his renditions of Disney songs and epic movie conversations in the lunchroom!

We've been very spoilt at work recently, considering our supervisor brought in Dunkin' Donuts the day the Royal baby was born, and on thursday there was a 21st birthday in our department, so, courtesy of the girl's "mom", we had a "birthday buffet"! It's been a good week!

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 two

 

So after work one day I decided to go straight into town to see some art galleries that were supposed to be especially interesting, or at least, they seemed that way to me. Something I'm really liking about working in D.C is that as soon as work ends I can get to the Metro and be on the other side of town in a matter of minutes.

 

After spending most of the day inside there is nothing better than coming across a garden like this;

 

 

 

This was a courtyard in the middle of the Freer Gallery, and it impressed me as much as the art itself.

That being said, the art was well worth seeing, especially as entry is free (another amazing thing about D.C!) because the Freer Gallery (like the Sackler and National Gallery of African art) is part of the Smithsonian institution.

 

It's fantastic to be able to go from staring at paperwork in an office, to staring at an 8th century tomb-guardian statue (Chinese, Tang dynasty) in less than an hour. I also discovered that several Buddha statues were found to have originally had haloes, which were later removed. Interesting.

 

There was also contemporary Oriental art, like Xu Bing's Phoenix exhibit, linking Chinese folklore with modern socio-political issues (according to the description...) but I'm always more inclined to appreciate ancient manuscripts over contemporary art of any kind. I wonder if people throughout history have always preferred historic art to that of the present? Or if the majority of people have always liked older styles, and only a small minority looked beyond this to initiate some kind of artistic change.

 

I like looking at art that depicts something I already know the context of. The African art gallery had a great painting of the Battle of Adwa (in which the native Ethiopians defended themselves against the Italians, 1896) painted by an African artist. The great thing about that painting was the sense of nationalism - ironically a European idea exported via the colonies - that whilst the Italian soldiers all had the same faces and expressions, the Africans were portrayed as individuals. However, after writing this I think that perhaps as a European it might just be my own world-view (Weber's weltanschauung) that made me see the painting like that.

 

Smithsonian Castle Building (the main information centre for the museums & galleries)

Front garden

African National Gallery skylight
 

 Art is kind of like a visual display of history (among other things). One of my favourite things that I learnt from these galleries was the influence of the Graeco-Roman world on ancient Oriental art. Buddhist art was particularly influenced by Western style, depictions of the Buddha develop symmetrical features (a Western ideal, apparently), the robes of monks start to look more naturalistic and flowing, and even the portrayal of hair becomes more textured!

National sculpture garden (archives in background), note the shiny silver tree!

There was a room in one of the galleries called the Peacock Room. It was a display of a collection of Oriental objects, deliberately set up as it had been in Victorian London. The collection included a painting of a Western, English-looking woman in Oriental clothing, a kimono perhaps. The juxtaposition of East vs. West in that one painting, and the whole collection, mirrored the fact that the entire ensemble of objects had been translocated from London to Washington D.C. It reminded me of myself, and of this blog, and of my blog compared to my sister's.

I like this clock tower, looks European. I wonder if that's why I like it. Incongruous in central D.C.

 After walking around the galleries for a bit I went along the National Mall. What suprised me was the number of ordinary people doing ordinary things there. People walking dogs, families playing catch (with American-style baseball gloves) and whole teams training for various sports. It's weird to think of life going on as normal with the historic backdrop of the Capitol.

Chinatown entrance

 

Another part of the courtyard in the Freer gallery.

Vocabulary learnt;

"aluminum" - tinfoil. Learnt this after someone in the house came knocking to our kitchen, and unfortunately I answered the door, leading to 5 minutes of gesturing, confusion and eventual realisation. Didn't help that the person had a really deep, Southern accent (they're from Arkansas, I asked them).

Week 1, part six

 

Union Station.This was the first Metro station that I saw properly, having got as coach from the airport and then joined the metro line at West Falls Church. Emerging from Union station for the first time all I remember is the view of white marble, statues, giant American flags, and a view out towards the Capitol, obscured slightly by the rain and humidity.The station also contains a shopping mall on several different levels!

 

View of the Potomac from a bridge that we walked across to get into Georgetown, which residents have deliberately kept slightly exclusive, by opposing any attempt to connect it to the Metro lines.

 

This is the sign from a cupcake shop me, some interns I work with, and their roomates went to, in Georgetown. The shop is famous because it has its own TV show. The fashion in the U.S at the moment is in making reality TV shows about people's everyday businesses (the most pipular seem to be bakeries, or those in the luxury industry, such as "below deck", concerning the life of a yacht crew) or the lives of "celebrities". I put that last part in quotation marks because I, to the shock of my flatmates, have no idea who any of these people actually are, or why they're famous. I get no entertainment from watching people drive around in limos, buying designer clothes or having "issues" (always on camera of course) with their family/ friends. Issues which are always resolved by extensive shopping trips, holidays, or spas and retreats.

 

Back at Georgetown, and having queued to physically get into the shop to buy a cake (only in America) my expectations were high. Luckily, having only seen cupcakes with a handful of different coloured toppings before, I was not disappointed. There was an actual cupcake menu for this place. They also did take-away. I chose "red velvet" because it wasn't chocolate (we may have already stopped to try chocolate chip pancakes earlier in the day...) and was just thinking about how ironic it would be if, after all that effort, I dropped my cupcake, when someone I was with accidentally knocked their bag against me and my cupcake hit the floor. I feel as though I have never known true heart break until that moment. If only my life were a reality tv show, then the sad, classical music would start playing, and the weird freeze-frames and close-ups of my face. Then I'd have an argument with the girl (who was extremely apologetic!) and it would be resolved by us buying more cake, and then giving interviews individually about how we felt about the incident.

 

However, what really happened was that a very kind staff member saw the whole thing and got me another one for free!

 

 

 

View of the Capitol building from the lawns. I like the fact that you can casually walk through the lawns to get to places, I suppose you can walk past the front of Buckingham palace, but the high gates and constant crowds mean that you'd never get a view as nice as this!

 

View of a old-looking building (they stand out in D.C) in Georgetown (possibly part of the university?) from the bridge we walked over, reminded me of Prague, or somewhere European. I'm glad we had a bit of a walk into Georgetown, in retrospect (at the time it was extremely humid and then rainy, so we cheated and got the Circulator bus back to Union station). When we left the Metro at Rosslyn we had technically left the District of Columbia, only to walk into it again a fewe minutes later. Once we were in the State of Virginia (beyond the border of D.C) the buildings instantly became more high-rise. Something notable here is how low the buildings are compared to most capital cities, D.C is completely unlike New York in that way. Strangely, the low-rise, modern look of D.C does occasionally remind me of my hometown, Milton Keynes (also built on a grid-system).

 

 The rule is, no building inside D.C can be taller than the Capitol building or the Washington monument. Kind of like how in Oxford no building/ spire is higher than the spire of the University Church.

 

I've met people my own age from all different parts of America now, and a Canadian! It's been amazing to listen to stories of "a coyote ate my cat", or "I live on a ranch". A girl from Oklahoma told my about the time a "twister" (my nan reminds me that this is an American word so I'm putting it in quotation marks) went through her backyard. A Canadian girl told me that the temperatures of an English winter are like a summer's day where she comes from. In return, me and some other Oxford interns are happy to talk about Formal Hall, the College system, and Sub-fusc*, which to be honest are bizarre even to most English people!

 

Something that stands out in particular is a girl I spoke to who is of American Indian origin. I learnt that the term "Red Indian" is considered offensive, and that the law surrounding the rights of women on reservation land has recently been changed. She's in D.C to work with the Division of Indian Affairs here in Washington, and wants to eventually become a lawyer to represent the people of her tribe, the Choctaws.

 

Vocabulary learnt;

 

"toque" - a type of wooly hat with two long tassles, this is actually a Canadian word (the Americans I was with didn't know it either). We have these hats in England, I just don't think they have their own name.

 

"noodling" - when you put bait on your hand and then catch a fish with it. A Texan assures me that although she's never tried this fishing technique, people do it in the "creek" at the back of where she lives.

 

*Sometimes I forget that not everyone understands Oxford vocabulary! Sub-fusc is the black and white clothing (white blouse, black skirt/ trousers, black shoes, and then the "academic dress" which includes the mortar board and gown) that students at Oxford wear for exams, matriculation (joining the university) and formal hall.

 

 

 

 

 

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 three, 4th of July

 

"America's Birthday", complete with a special edition "flavor" in Baskin Robbin's ice cream parlour. Being British and observing the 4th of July is a strange experience in itself, but it seems especially ironic as a history student. However, I still found the events of the day extremely entertaining, and even more enlightening for being an "outside" observer on the scene. We decided to watch the Independence Day parade along Independence Avenue, close to the Washington Monument. Shops were closed, street sellers had set up to sell American merchandise, ice cream, hot dogs, and other fast food. Roads were closed, Metro stations full, and there was a general carnival atmosphere around the Capitol.

 

There was a heavy military element to the parade, with all parts of the Armed forces represented. I would say the soldiers and other army personnel attracted the loudest applause, and once again I was reminded that this nation's identity comes very much from their historic debt to their troops, who helped to win independence.

 

There were also colourful floats like these, someone said that they were supposed to represent each state, and I think this was somewhere rural, maybe Kansas, if had a lot of balloons on it and then some fields.

 

The American Eagle

 

One of many marching bands. Each "College" here has it's own colours and marching band, especially to perform at sports matches, which are taken at least as seriously as academia, and in some places more seriously. I think this is one of the biggest contrasts between U.S and U.K tertiary education.

 

More interesting floats. The people holding up the giant Tweety bird balloon had a routine in which they ran in a circle to spin the balloon, whilst keeping the strings untangled.

 

At first I thought that this was just another case of flag overload. Actually each flag on the float is one of the individual state's own flags, carried together with the flag of the United States on top. I don't think I knew that each state had its own flag, although the Italian states etc. have their own flag, so I probably just didn't think of it.

 

 

The stars & stripes are a central part of the parade. Strange, in Britain, although the flag is seen at events, e.g. Diamond Jubilee (some Americans don't know what the word "Jubilee" means, I guess that should have been obvious, but I found it an amusing concept to explain to them, that people should celebrate being ruled over by a monarchy) or the Olympics, it would never be a central focus of celebrations. Apparently (if my American housemates are being serious) it is illegal to leave the flag out in the rain, or to set it on fire, or to leave it on the ground for  more than 3 days.